except for vd and pregnancy. a black eye will heal a lot faster than herpes will.

These people are also beginning to experiment with mind altering substances, but we demand that they leave that at the door. I'm not saying they should leave everything personal at the door and act like little robots; I am saying that they should leave the exploration of their bodies and each others bodies for a different, more appropriate venue. I believe that school should be somewhat of a haven from what these kids have to face outside; like how animals generally leave each other alone at watering holes because they all need water.

And remarks from them are absent because this was a cell phone video posted on a pseudo porn site. These could be post-collegiate women for all we know.

By eighteen women are mostly done with puberty, they may have another year or two, on average. Men will be about three quarters of the way through. So while you're right, technically, I would also argue that they are a far far far cry from children.

I disagree. High school is a great place to explore one's sexuality, and is the place it's often done. What I do agree with is that it's probably not the best idea in the world to explore your sexuality with your teacher. Patently untrue. School is an institute of learning in name only. It's more of a training regime to make you into a productive adult--meaning it's preparing you for the dullness and repetitiveness of modern mid-income life.

There are much much much more effective ways to learn than to sit in a class and listen to someone drone on about participles and physics. Some of them are even cheaper than current methods. Anyway, the point is that the classroom environment is meant to teach SOCIAL practices even more than it is meant to teach anything else.

Dealing with your sexuality, coming of age, and violent tendencies are all part of the social learning that happens during highschool. Granted, most of what the classroom environment teaches us is to repress, repress, repress.

While this is rather effective in making a good working drone, it's terrible for the health of the individual--which is to say it's a flawed system.

I'm going off on a bit of a rant here.

All I really want to say is that schools should be a place to explore those things safely and control them in a healthy manner instead of a place to learn how to repress them--as it will result in healthier and happier people.

Yes and no.

On the one hand I want to say that different cultures can do whatever they want and it's not my job to judge. If it happened in the states? I'd be all about the yes, just because of teacher participation. I mean, if these girls had set up a little private strip party or something, it's all good in the neighborhood, but I just couldn't imagine facing a teacher I just did a strip tease for the next day. It'd be like if a shook my booty for my boss while she objectively scored my ass-shakin' performance against those of my co-workers, and then had to go back to work for her the next day.

I mean, on the one hand, I'd totally bone my boss... on the other hand it'd be fuckin' awkward to know exactly how hot she thinks my johnson is... especially compared to my coworkers.


However, the culture in Denmark is different, and it may not be an issue there like it is here with our deeply ingrained puritan ideals.

That'd be awesome.

I think you and I grew up in really different school environments. My community was a lot more Sparta-like in that if you wanted to do something 'naughty' you had to earn it. If you wanted beer you had to scrape together the cash then find somebody grubby enough to buy alcohol for teenagers but trustworthy enough to not just take your money and run. It taught craftiness. Having an anything goes attitude just makes these kids lazy.

Having to 'repress' their tendencies is healthy sometimes. You can't just go around shitting where ever you want, you can't go around having sex in public, you can't start a brawl in the streets - without consequences. Pretty sure that's true in Denmark, but I could be wrong; I've never been there.

No, I grew up in the same type of school. I just also have read a lot of psychology books and spent enough time reading and watching and learning to know that the way schools are set up isn't particularily effective OR healthy.

While it's true that you can't fuck in public, I see nothing wrong with kissing a significant other quickly to say hello or goodbye. You, however, can't do this at (most) school(s). I don't see the problem with holding someone's hand. Again, usually taboo. I don't see the problem with discussing your day with the guy sitting next to you during homework time at the end of class (or if you're in the back and quiet enough that it's not disturbing anyone else, even during lecture). Also taboo.

I also realize that young men and women of the highschool and middleschool age groups are teaming with more hormones than most pharmaceutical companies. As a result their emotions and urges are stronger than mine or yours.

As a result of THAT, they're more prone to violent behavior and, though I hate the phrase, it is, indeed, more healthy to 'let boys be boys' and get into the occassional fist fight than it is to keep them from ever doing it.

There's a few reasons for this. Firstly, at that age and with that much testosterone, they damn near NEED violence. Not ever getting violent at that point in time is simply going to make those urges build up. Some kids get through school just fine like that. Some end up bringing a rifle and shooting at classmates (there are OTHER and more pressing reasons for this as well, but... well there's a reason school shootings started getting popular a few years after the huge crackdown on school violence country wide). Secondly, there's no better way to teach someone that they don't want to fight than to let them get into a fight. Getting punched freakin' hurts. Thirdly, not only is it a good way to release aggression, it's actually a bonding experience for many young men. Partaking in their violent urges together can bring them together.

Honestly I could go on forever about the benefits of allowing a controlled amount of violence in school, but there's no need.

Also: Fencing wrestling and boxing programs are great for this--but the kids who usually need it the most (the ones who are picked on) are the ones who don't join those programs.


...and I've gone off on another rant.

All I'm REALLY trying to say is that while repressing them a little is good, school forces people who have a lot more to repress to repress it all to levels far lower than will ever be necessary in the real world.

You've been sig'd.

It's not like we don't have wrestling and football. Considering some of the long-term physical trauma that football can inflict, a black eye / bloody nose would be practically civilized by comparison.

Actually none of those things were taboo in even my middle school. Tongue-fighting was, but a quick peck wasn't. But we weren't allowed to strip our clothes off and dance around for the merriment of others. (edit: or for the merriment of ourselves, for that matter.)

The expression of the mild violent tendencies are what sports are for. But anything taken to the extreme - such as out-right brawling - is unhealthy. These kids should be allowed to kiss, write love notes, hold hands, etc etc etc (in my experience we were) but a striptease is to appropriately expressing one's sexuality in a school as beatings are to sports. (Most of the injuries in sports are due to accident if I'm recalling my statistics correctly, Fifth.) There's a time and a place for just about everything, and part of being an adult is knowing when something is inappropriate. Throwing yourself on the ground and screaming/thrashing your arms like a wee baby, for instance, is not a good way to express anger or frustration (hilarious though it may be).


YAY!

I'm guessing you're older than me as that you're a teacher off in Korea.

So I'll just say that school's have gotten stricter and stricter about these kinds of things as time goes on. All of those things were illegal in the three schools I went to in two different states. They weren't always enforced, but they could be at any time. Mostly you just had to figure out which teachers were old bitter bitches/assholes and avoid doing anything around them. Ever.




I disagree that outright brawling is necessarily unhealthy. It can be if it goes too far, but kids very rarely take a fist fight too far... and it's a natural part of the growing up and maturing process. It helps the emotional and physical development of young men in a myriad of ways.

You teach english you said?

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Anyway, I mostly agree with this. The problem being that you aren't allowed to do those things in a lot of modern schools. You were able to back in the day, and hell, go far enough back and you'll find that even knife fighting was mostly allowed. I mean, I wouldn't allow that, but our great grandparent's generation did.

Thing is, more rules are put into place every year as parents make more and more fuss about 'protecting' their children, and every year their children get more and more repressed and we're getting to the point that protecting them is leaving them unprepared for the real world. Not to mention turning them into emotional messes.

I'm not saying anything as to the cause, just as to the level of harm inflicted, particularly in the long term. I just don't know that you aren't more likely to get a concussion or tear a ligament or break something important or generally develop long-term trauma playing football than you are in a refereed fight.

The comparison I was trying to make with teacher-endorsed fighting was less along the lines of a boxing/wrestling match than something more Mortal Kombat-esque, but obvioiusly not quite that extreme. Like a last-man-standing orgy of violence.

The rules crackdown are a wrong-headed attempt to avert scandal. There was one I'd heard about recently where students in a middle school (?) were caught having sex during an assembly or something like that. I don't have a link because googling "school" and "sex scandal" made me want to go on a shooting spree of my peers. Repressing all forms of affection is going to damage the decent kids and it's not going to stop the freaks.

Just out of curiosity, what state do you live in?