The BBC News reports that an 8 year-old boy and a 9 year-old boy boxed in a cage at a Labor club watched by about 250 adults in Preston in England on 10 September. According to this article, this fight was filmed and then had been posted on You Tube for two weeks without complaint, which was taken down for people who had expressed their worries later. In the video, when the two boys fought, they didn't wear protective padding or head gear, and there were scenes in which they were receiving medical attention. It is said that Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary of England, showed his deep concern by saying that "A fight between two boys watched by adults at a cage-fighting event has been described as 'barbaric'" and he addressed that those kinds of sports are not proper for childern. On the other hand, Sharefight, the company allowed to film the event, the club manager of the Labor club, and the father of one of the boys said that the boys loved the fighting and the event was a controlled so it was not dangerous.
Of course, boxing could be a good sport when people use it as a sort of exercising method, so these days, there are some women who resister boxing gyms to improve their health, and even a few women boxers appear. Nevertheless, whether the boxers are men or women, they have to be adults who have responsibilities of potential dangerous situations when they play boxing games in public or private. The article about two young boys' fighting made me feel unpleasant. The two boys might practice boxing as a sport indeed if they loved it, and it must have been a way to keep healthy or a way to make them stronger when they practiced with sandbags. However, because of adults' selfish greed, the two children became victims of the hot issue and as a result; this could excite peoples' hostilities of boxing itself.
Even though some people advocate the fight between the two young, they can't be given supports by most of the people because they trembled their bodies two months ago. This article must make them remind of the 10 year-old Vogue girl. When the magazine in which the girl's sexually attractive pictures were printed was published, the world's media focused on that issue , and there were seriously disagreeable responses. Just like the girl's story, these two English boys' article shows that some adults are struggling to exploit innocence of pure children. Also, it seems that unless they throw away avarice, annyoing lines will be drawn on the foreheads of the other people.
References
Cardiff, A. (2011, August 1). 'Sexy' Images Of 10-Year-Old Girl/Fashion Model Thylane Blondeau Go Too Far. BBC News. Retrieved September 23, 2011 frm http://thegloss.com/beauty/thylane-lena-rose-blondeau-beautiful-10-year-old-fashion-model-makes-us-uncomfortable/
I agreed with completely! Parents really have to be responsible for the things that children have done. This kind of activity is not promoting good character. We want our children to be kind, gentle, love, and self control. I think they are introducing bad habit to them. They are many kind of spot that are very useful in now days. Parents can introduce soccer, tennis, badminton, swimming or others. These sports can bring the children to get along with others, learn to be in the team and working together so in the future.
ReplyDeleteDoes boxing promote bad character? I'm not so sure. Traditionally, in Western countries it was strongly linked with discipline, courage, and good sportmanship. I those are all good values.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there is any evidence that boxing causes kids to more violent? It reminds of the common idea that violent video games cause violent characters, but the evidence for that is very weak. Violent video games don't seem to make kids more violent, although there does seem to be some correlation between playing them and violence.
I also wonder how innocent and pure children are. If I remember back to my primary school days, I don't think innocence or purity are the best descriptions, and it seems to take a lot of work from parents to raise decent, polite, civilized children rather than bullying, fighting little beasts. I don't think that peacefulness is the natural state for children, it needs to be taught and enforced by adults.
ReplyDeletePeter.
ReplyDeleteI am not taliking about the bad effects of children boxing. I am talking about the adults' greed. The kids are only 8 and 9 years but adults used them as their fun as if the childrens had been like professional boxers without wearing head gear or protective tools.
That is my unpleasant view. Moreover, the words "innocence and pure" in the sentence mean that innocent goals of children practicing boxing as their sports. I agree with that you said you don't think innocence or purity are the best descriptions, but I think they are also important characteristics which children keep in mind.
Sunny,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the extra explanation. I agree with most of it.
Perhaps the meaning of the words innocence and purity need some clarification. I think people often use these words, which sound very positive, without being too clear about what they mean.
If innocence means "ignorance" then I think children are innocent. But I'm less sure that that is a good thing.
And what might purity mean?
I have already seen the video of this news from the BBC page. Obviously, it doesn't seem like boxing that I familiar with but looks like wrestling or quarreling and fighting of 2 children. In my opinion, they fight without any safe equipment and no rules like normal boxing that makes it much more aggressive than sport. The parents should realize that this aggression can be easily cultivated in the mind of their children. They should support the children in the right way.
ReplyDeleteGolf's comment reminded me that I did not watch the video or get any other evidence, so it's a good thing that Sunny corrected my misunderstandings. Golf's comments have confirmed that I had misunderstood the situation.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, this is a response writing, so the main criteria is that we are sharing our ideas in sentences that can be understood. Naturally, we like to be right, but if I'm wrong because I'm sharing an idea I have not researched, it's not surprising, and other people like Sunny can help me when I'm wrong or have misunderstood. In the process, we all get to practise writing to more clearly and fluently express our ideas in English sentences. And that is success.
Maybe I should watch the video! But not tonight.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to fail to attatch the video. I tried to but failed and I also felt that I didn't convey the issue exactly. As you said, I will try to write something more cleary.
Sunny,
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to include the BBC videos. With YouTube and others such as the TED video I recently included in a blog, it's easy. They give you the code and you just have to copy and paste it in in edit mode.
But when I was having a look at the BBC News to see how the video might be attached, I did actually look at it and read the full article. The BBC's reporting seemed a bit sensationalist - they wanted to shock people, and might have been a bit reckless to get that effect.
The secretary of the Ministry of Culture (like Culture Ministers everywhere) sounded pretty silly - he's saying that traditional boxing is to be encouraged as a sport that builds characcter and so on, but it's actually more dangerous than what was shown on the videos. People do suffer brain damage when hit on the head in boxing, whereas what teh boys were doing did look, as father Nick Hartley said, "not one bit dangerous".
Sunny's response very thoughtfully recognizes that boxing might not be a problem, but that the way these young children were treated was grounds for concern. And as Sunny notes in her response, it has certainly attracted a lot of negative media attention. I'm not sure that that negative attention is justified. Or the responses to it.
The local government response, for example, shows an impressive lack of critical thinking. If they are going to ban sports events because they involve children, then swimming, football, which also has real risks of serious injury, and every other sport must also be banned for the same reason.
Whilst not as irrational as the politician's comments, the British Medical Authority (BMA)'s comments were not very intelligent either. The doctors are probably very good at medicine and perhaps science, but they are unqualified and not reliable when it comes to making connections between medical facts and public policy - as is so often the case, what the doctors and other experts recommend is very bad policy.