Shoot Boxing Offered in High School

[cjsreport]

Shoot Boxing will become a class at a high school in Japan.

The class will be taught be Champion Hiroaki Suzuki. From what I have read, it seems that the school reached out to him to teach the class. The school reached out to him because of the positive effect he has had on children in the community.

 

The Japanese school system is a lot different from that in the US. Children, in general are tracked from a very young age. Most high schools have entrance exams, with some junior high schools having them as well. As a result, my experience, has been that there are kids for smart kids and schools for troubled/kids who are not performing well. This leads to a lot of depressed and troubled kids. 

 

In addition a lot of bullying goes on in Japanese schools. So a lot of kids just don't go to school. They wander around during school hours or sit in the nurses office all day, then they come home. (Japanese schools will not fail kids, they just move the empty desk to the next grade ect.)

 

Noticing that a lot of children that came to his gym were no longer going to school, Suzuki became concerned. However, he noticed that while a lot of these kids had low self esteem and poor social skills that training helped them. He urged the children to go back to school and some of them did. As a result, the school has asked him to teach Shoot Boxing as a class at the school. The aim of the class is to help the children develop, teach them social skills, and to let kids work out their aggression.

 

I think this is awesome and that more schools should offer martial arts. When I was a teacher, I taught at a under performing school, I noticed its affect first hand. Girls were outgoing and did very well in my classes until 7th grade. Once they reached 7th grade they all become shy, refused to partake in class, and performed poorly. They also seemed to hate being at school. The girls who seemed to be unaffected by the transition into middle school were the girls who were part of the Judo club. They all seemed confident, did well in class, and didn't seem to hate being at school.