Well, whoop de bloody doo....

I watched with a certain amount of amusement a feature on one of our current affair programmes the other night. It would seem that there is this boys school down Hawkes Bay way somewhere that has come up with an incredibly radical concept that produces happy well adjusted, roundly educated boys. It would seem that all you have to do is come up with a curriculum that encompasses a good range of subjects including how to find your way round a kitchen & a physical education programme that IS a touch radical & make all subjects compulsory. The PT programme includes such radical activities as mud slides & a game called "Bull Rush" Those of you of similar vintage to me will know the game Bull Rush. Its a fairly solid contact sport that we used to play at school. I wont bore you with the details, but I did end up sporting a gold tooth from one particular game of it.

My point is this. Every other species on this planet is instinctively aware that for the adolescent male to grow up healthy & well adjusted, they need to go through a period of aggressive behaviour. There are a few that get hooked on the agression & carry it through life with them, the same as there are those that get hooked on alcohol & tobacco & have that as a burden for the rest of their lives. In this increasingly PC world that we live in, we seem to be doing our best to condition our young to a set of mealy mouthed values. Its "okay" not to want to win , its "okay" just to "participate." You don't need to keep scores with kids sports events like rugby & soccer. BULLSHIT...... Kids, especially boy kids love to compete & love to know if they have won or not.

Girls too. Herself still can't challenge me to the odd game of 8 ball without going for the throat. Trouble is she is so damn good at it that I have to play a very defensive game to avoid getting my ass thrashed. We have a lot of fun & it sure gets the adrenaline flowing. Its certainly much more fun than "just being Okay to participate"

My point is this. Well done that school for rediscovering the old values. I'm all for it. At present I am working with a young man who is very negative in his whole attitude to life. I think he was menopause baby & I know he had learning difficulties at school. This meant special tutors etc etc . This seems to have spilled over to his personal life, so that we now have a young adult who to quote the old Walt Disney movie , has an attitude of, "The world owes me a living." Nothing that goes wrong is ever his fault, he seems to have no initiative, & everything has to be done his way or he packs a tantrum. He needs putting over someones knee & spanking. But we aren't allowed to do that any more.

Maybe one school picking up the old values won't stem the tide. God knows that we have a whole generation of kids with mediocre values coming through. But it is at least a start. Maybe they can make the difference to the world that our generation wanted to. Sad but true, most of our really radical free thinkers got side tracked with music, free love & drugs.