Jumping in right here. Is it clearly the case? I disagree. It's only the case if fighting skills are particularly important. Forgive me, guys, but it really seems like you have an antiquated idea of what bullying looks like in the 2020s. Bullying today is way more likely to be emotional, social, and/or psychological. Even where a kid is being physically bullied, learning skills to fight is no more (or less) helpful than being able to throw a football or play the clarinet. The benefits of participating in organized activities is universal, regardless of the specific activity.
Confidence... you're on to something there. Confidence, self esteem, community, mentorship, coaching... these things help kids handle bullying. And it has very little to do with how good an individual kid is at whatever it is they're doing. They can fully enjoy the ancillary benefits mentioned above, even if they stink at the actual activity.
My opinions are pretty simple, and if you go back to the various threads over the years, I've been very consistent.
- If you're going to learn something... anything... you need to do that thing. If you want to get better at something... anything... you need to actually apply what you learn and make real world mistakes. Otherwise, the best you can ever hope to achieve is to be a functional beginner.
- Knowing how to fight is not a bad thing. Don't get me wrong. But if you want to learn to fight, see above.
- If being safer is your goal, there are so many things a person can do to mitigate real world risk other than learning to fight. There have been several threads over the years where I've gone into this idea in detail.
- Sometimes, it's just bad or good luck, and we tend to blame the victim for bad luck and congratulate the system for good luck. I think neither is all that helpful or constructive.
Exactly. Further, fighting skills that MA may (or may not) be all that good at teaching are functionally irrelevant if you're talking about real world bullies.
Edit: There is one other related point that I've made over the years. While it's relatively unimportant (IMO) how good a kid is at the activity, it's important that they're learning and practicing actual skills. For example, it doesn't really matter how good an individual kid is at wrestling, it's important that they are learning and practicing useful wrestling skills. I believe "self defense" martial arts schools generally drop the ball in this area if they state or even imply that fighting skills are being learned.
