Tae Kwon Do: Setting the Example

As a public school teacher, I have had the opportunity over the past nineteen years to observe firsthand an alarming trend. Over this period, I have noted that young people in general have become progressively more egocentric (self-centered) and materialistic. Since egocentrism is to some degree one of the definitive characteristics of early childhood, one could easily dismiss it as a cause for serious concern.

There are two aspects of this trend, however which I find to be deeply disturbing. One is that today's youth seem to be holding onto this egocentricity more tenaciously. That is to say they do not seem to be growing out of this stage as quickly and smoothly as did the young people of twenty years ago.

 The second, and in my opinion, more grave concern is that in their pursuit of personal pleasure and material gain, they are becoming less and less cognitive of the rights, wants, and needs of others. The lengths to which they are willing to go to satisfy themselves can often prove to he detrimental to others.

Being inconsiderate is bad enough, but an ever increasing number of young people seem to be receiving gratification from deliberately causing others to suffer pain and indignity. These behaviors range from verbal abuse and theft of personal property to outright physical abuse. As common as such incidents have become in school, one should be able to safely assume that they occur with even greater frequency when these young people are left unsupervised. Although instances of this nature are all too common, I am not yet convinced that deriving pleasure from causing others to suffer is an integral part of our "human nature". It will therefore be my intention in this article to offer a hypothesis for this degenerative behavior pattern and relate how traditional martial arts training could ultimately prove to be a remedy for this malady.