Teaching boys, teaching girls

[IcemanSK]

I heard a discussion today (by two women) about teaching martial arts to boys & girls. The discussion around the idea that boys need to taught primarily by men, in order to learn how to grow up to be men. Women, they said, just cannot teach boys how to be men.

There are many public high schools & private colleges have the idea that girls learn best in same-sex classrooms.

Some people say that there is a lack of leadership from the men in our society toward the boys of our society.

What do you think of this idea? Does it have merit? Is the importance of same-sex role models in the dojo/dojang over stated?

 

[David43515]

I don`t know that it really matters for thier martial arts education, but I do believe that kids need to have strong same sex role models outside of the dojo. A dad can be a great friend and insperation to his daughter, but he`s going to have trouble relating to things like getting her first bra or going through her period. A mom can teach her son how to throw a ball or bait a fishhook, but she can`t teach him what other men expect fromhim as far as social responsabilities.

Our rolemodels may be from outside the family, but we need good rolemodels of both sexes to help you learn our roles in society, and how to relate to the opposite sex. I can`t count the number of times I`ve seen a kid who just doesn`t fit in and has no idea why, and it`s usually because they`re breaking unwritten and often unconcious rules that everyone else in thier group learned just from being around older rolemodels.

 

[Bruno@MT]

I think it is true that boys need a male role model as an example. An additional issue is that you have 'to become' a man, whereas girls are born into the sisterhood of women. I see / feel this with my daughters.

 

[terryl965]

I believe our young men need a strong role model why because sociaty dictates it. Our youth has the wrong ideal what a man really is.

 

[Bruno@MT]

The human race had a very strong image on what 'being a man' means for a couple thousand years. It's only around WW2 that things started to change. So it'll take more than a couple of decades for us to come to grips with that.

How we behave (or rather, our behavioral bias) is the result of thousands of years of evolution. Many books discuss this issue in details. The one I read is 'Why men don't listen and women can't read maps. So don't be too quick to put the responsibility on 'society' when society itself is the result of evolution itself.

 

[Chris Parker]

A little earlier than that, actually Bruno, although that was a time of rapid change. The beginning was the Industrial Revolution, a major result of which was the men working longer hours away from the home, removing their influence from the home. When they were there, it was most often later at night, giving the youngsters only a short time with them, which was spent more with the fathers "mood" than with him, often tired after a hard days labour.

As a result of this, women (the mothers) became a surrogate father to the new generation of young men, however they couldn't impart the masculine energy the young lads needed to understand what it is to be a man. This continued with the men going off to war, leaving the women to now take over at the factories that the Industrial Revolution had established as the method of construction (forgoing the older hand-crafted practices). When the men returned, many women didn't want to give up this newly found experience, setting in place the path to the Womens' Rights Movement.

In the end, we are left with households where there is no, or limited, exposure to either dominant role model. On the masculine side, this has left many young men leaderless, searching for what they know they need, but without the experience, unable to recognise the true from the false. So we have a prevalence of gangs, which are really a way for young men to feel like they belong, and have an established (structured) heirachy. Women have faired a little better, but the roles are very blurred. Essentially, men have become feminised and weakened, whereas women have been more masculinised. Part of this is good (equal pay, equal rights and so on), but part is rather negative for society as a whole (I believe).

The men's movement began in the 70's with things like Forest Drum Circles and the like, as well as with people such as Robert Bly, a poet who was intensely interested in understanding masculinity, something that was part of a realisation of his own masculine journey after his father passed away (in Robert's 40's). The modern form of it actually begins with what is sometimes refered to as the seduction community. It's major purpose is getting men to define and understand what it is to be men.

Interestingly, though, if you look at initiation rites and mentoring throughout societies and history, the actual "becoming a man" aspect was not done by the father, but by other older men of the society, uncles and so forth. As a result, this is not a cry for only mother/father families, same sex families can give just as complete children provided the approapriate role models are sought out (just as in every childs growth, ideally at least). So to take that into today's world, and into our little realm here, martial arts instructors are one of the best possibilities of being that masculine role model for young men. It's actually something that my organisation takes very seriously, and something that we expose our seniors to as they are ready for it (obviously it's a little different for our female practitioners than for our male ones....).

There's actually quite a lot in modern society to fight against, though, including the lack of proper role models for either gender, all the way through to popular media. In the majority of popular television shows (particularly the comedies), the wife is often portrayed as being smarter, wittier, simply much more "together" than her hapless husband. He is typically somewhat stupid, usually overweight, gets into trouble, blunders through everything, and usually has to have his wife bail him out. Now we know that that isn't reality, but unfortunately our unconscious when watching doesn't know how to differentiate between them. So the image (model for reality) that gets input is that men are stupid, and women are the clever ones. Of course, women have to thin and attractive, whereas men are allowed to be less considerate of their looks as well, which is just as false (and damaging).

So to the original concept of this thread, yes, men need to learn how to be men from other (older) men, just as women need to learn how to be women (and what it is to be a woman, which is not the same as looking like one, and honestly has very little to do with the womens rights movements as well) by being around older women. But these older role models have to understand what it is to be a man or a woman, and how to transmit that across. In martial arts classes, the msaculine is easier to get across as it is more in line with masculinty, but there are definately areas that are strengths to femininity as well. Ideally, everyone should be taught by both, they just should be taught the appropriate things by each in their place. And that will mean a higher degree of teaching from the same gender. A man who has had no feminine role models is still just as incomplete as a man who has had only feminine role models (and vice versa).