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Martial art instructors should not teach children a martial art

My opponents main arguements for children having a right to learning martial arts for self defence are: 1. teaching kids martial arts helps reduce crime 2. teaching kids martial arts helps reduce bullying A criminal with (or without) a gun won't worry whether a kid knows karate. But this kid might die trying to be a hero. We will always hear stories about kids preventing murders using martial arts but not the ones who died because they did. There are a lot of children who do martial arts and a lot of children being bullied. Teaching kids a martial art just makes bullying worse, children are prevented from knowing when someone is abused, and will be less likely to call for help (either by screaming, or asking). Anyone can be a bully, the fact instructors can be abusive shows this is true. Children under 18 are suffering more pain than they would if martial arts were not taught at that age. It is irresponsible to expect children to not misuse these fighting techniques. If children were encouraged to do other things they would be friendlier to each other instead of experimenting moves on others and similar things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are too many martial arts to talk about individually, but they are all similar in what they claim to teach. I do not need to establish that all instructors are bullies because whether it should be banned for children or not is not just a question of how many children are abused by their instructor. There are many children who go through life without being able to recognise when someone is abusing them or when someone else is being abused right in front of them because they took up a martial art and had their mind conditioned to accept such things. Bowing, doing what you are told is not respect. People need to wake up! Worryingly my opponent (who is learning a martial art) and others like him do not think the videos I have shown are legit including the graphic video showing a martial art instructor stamp on a mentally ill mans head, knocking his head against a metal post despite hearing him hit it, and being able to see his blood! These videos should be taken seriously because people are being abused. What can someone learn from being knocked out? Obviously there will be much more of this happening than we can see because I doubt many dojos allow cameras or phones whilst training, and much is unreported, or not uploaded on the particular site I've looked at. Hopefully I have summed everything up, I apologise if I have miss some points out. Finally I'd like to leave you with a question: Can someone be abused if they are paying for something? Feel they are learning something? And enjoying it regularly? My answer of course is yes. Many thanks for having this debate. Please leave your comments and don't forget to vote!