If you’ve seen the news today, you’ve probably heard of this. I merely posted it since it’s close to where I’m at (somewhat…thank god I don’t live near DFW). Anyhow, this quote sums it up:
The principal and other staff members at South Oak Cliff High School were supposed to be breaking up fights. Instead, they sent troubled students into a steel utility cage in an athletic locker room to battle it out with bare fists and no head protection, records show.
Seriously, some kids have to play against a heavily stacked deck to begin with, and the last thing they need is to have someone say it’s okay to have their face turned into hamburger, which they will most likely live with for the rest of their lives.
Frankly, I find such a spectacle and anyone for it disgusting. And that includes you too Ultratech87!
Nah, but those people really shouldn’t been doing that stuff. Curiously, it happened to be pretty common knowledge amongst a lot of people. But not everyone belongs in a steel cage fighting it out. It does seem kind of stupid that it went on for so long without anything happening.
Frankly, I think if schools were more tolerant of mutual fistfights and other physical altercations, many of the emotional problems on the rise among young boys would vanish. Not by placing them in a cage, of course. But I think casual fights at school are entirely natural, and that the draconian punishments now employed against minor violence (e.g. suspension with grades of zero while absent) lead to an unhealthy repression of masculinity.
So while I agree that holding high-school cage fights is horrible, I worry that this sort of article causes a trigger-finger reaction against <i>all</i> violence in schools: zero-tolerance policies, new juvenile criminal laws, etc.
Sorry, but I don’t think that this is funny at all.
Originally Posted by Xwing1056
[i]Frankly, I think if schools were more tolerant of mutual fistfights and other physical altercations, many of the emotional problems on the rise among young boys would vanish. Not by placing them in a cage, of course. But I think casual fights at school are entirely natural, and that the draconian punishments now employed against minor violence (e.g. suspension with grades of zero while absent) lead to an unhealthy repression of masculinity.
So while I agree that holding high-school cage fights is horrible, I worry that this sort of article causes a trigger-finger reaction against all violence in schools: zero-tolerance policies, new juvenile criminal laws, etc. [/i]
While I agree that winning a fight against a bully that’s been following you for most of your life up until that point might be awesome. However, I’m pretty certain that I would lost any knock-down drag-out fight to many of my bullies from back when. And frankly, this whole cage match thing is just plain awful on every level imaginable (and then some).
Edit: Thank Zepp for lightening the mood of this thread. It’s been pissing me off since post one.
Heh, the liberal line at NYU is that all violence is a manifestation of a primitive patriarchal impulse that should be smothered at all costs. I say, “A little fistfight isn’t <i>that</i> terrible. Maybe we shouldn’t make it a criminal issue,” and people look at me like I’m Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter’s lovechild.
As a DFW resident, I want to make it clear just how unfunny this is. No one should be taking this as ironic or entertaining or a quirk in our society which we should shrug at.
My Dad went to SOC. I’ve been to Oakcliff. I know about how dysfunctional DISD is; it’s incompetence is part of the reason why my parents worked so hard to move out of Oakcliff - so I wouldn’t have to be taught in a school district that’s of such poor quality due to the bureaucratic nonsense that goes on there. Hinojosa? The DISD superintendent they referred to in the article? Yeah, his accountant missed a budget error that made the district over 30 million dollars short. There was talk of the federal government intervening because of how horrible DISD has been for years.
This is unacceptable. It’s intolerable. It’s that simple. Analyze it all you like but don’t lose sight of the fact that this is just another failure of our society. Those students deserve better, the people of Oakcliff deserve better and it’s high time they get that.
Instead, they sent troubled students into a steel utility cage in an athletic locker room to battle it out with bare fists and no head protection, records show.
So would a helmet have made things ok?
Not to poke fun, but it kind of kills the outrage people should have over this when you are equating school sponsored cage matches to a helmet.
Didn’t go to court, but I did get suspended for this once. What pissed me off the most was that the other fucker, who started the fight in the first place, got off free because he got hurt and I didn’t. The “fight” lasted a grand total of three damn punches: I dodged the first one, parried the second, and slammed his face from the side by throwing the third. We were in the fucking school yard since the moron went ballistic right there in front of everyone, and I get suspended because I wasn’t stupid enough to let him smack me!?
My suspension was revoked on account of it being not my fault and the fact that there was evidence I was trying pretty hard not to hurt him very badly.
XWing is probably saying something along the lines of this:
Men were bred to be more violent. Natural disposition from the hunter/gatherer stage. It has only been in the past 30 or so years where this violent tendency has truly been fought against by society. Boys are still going to have these aggressive tendencies because it can’t be bred out of them in just 30 years after thousands of years saying otherwise. It would be better to let them blow off with the occasional fisticuff that’s really not all that bad rather than to squelch it completely until it blows up in a huge mess like the cage fighting or whatnot.
