Yesterday was International Stand Up to Bullying Day. I thought of my Kung Fu trainer in primary school.
When I was little, there were bad boys bullying others. They were taller and stronger than most pupils, with bigger fists, and flocked in groups.
They had robbed many pupils of money.
I was one of them.
My dad, still in the army, signed me up in an after-school Kung Fu class.
“Defend yourself,” he told me.
I did, and soon the bad boys left me alone, but they continued abusing other pupils.
I asked my coach if I should stand up against them when they bothered my classmates.
My coach told me this:
No, you shouldn’t. That’s for your safety and benefit because even a lion should not fight an army of hyenas.
But, you should always stay away from those bad boys and never cheer for their evil deeds toward other pupils.
In middle school, bad girls joined hands with bad boys, lurking outside the entrance gate, smoking cigarettes, looking for easy prey, money, and trouble. Some of them were my classmates.
I was puzzled, so I asked my coach how to deal with those classmates.
My coach said this:
“That’s what you need to find out from the teachers, and that's why you go to school - to learn to tell good from bad, right from wrong, friends from foes, justice from evil, poison from liquor, sheep from the wolf, water from urine, salt from the sand, false partners from real enemies, and classmates from hooligans.”
My Kung Fu coach was right, but unfortunately, many people haven't learned basic common sense from bad education.
Feb 26, 2005
Jef Raskin, American human–computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project at Apple, died at age 61.