Student knocking out a bully?

[Wastelander]

Hello everyone,

This is an interesting question, to me, so I thought I would pose this question to the forum--how do you, as instructors, handle a situation in which a student who has been dealing with being bullied finally cracks and knocks the bully out?

[MasterPain]

I give the "reasonable person, in your situation knowing what you know" speech. If that doesn't sound familiar, it's from state law concerning self defense and use of force. To simplify matters, did you use the least amount of force necessary to stay safe and control the situation? Did you exhaust all other means of conflict resolution before resorting to physical force? Do you carry yourself in such a manner as to not appear to be an easy target for bullying?

If the answer to all those is yes, then congratulations on successfully defending yourself.

[JusticeZero]

"Good job. But I see we're going to need to work on awareness and composure and criminal psych and stuff so that it doesn't get that far."

[tallgeese]

I agree wholeheartedly with both of the above posts.

[Montana]

The first thing I'd ask my student is "Did he touch or swing on you first?"

Depending on his answer he'd get obne of two responses from meL:

1. Good job! You defended yourself!

2. All he did was verbally assualt you? *insert butt chewing at this point*

[ninjanurse]

I agree with MasterPain on this one!

[joesteph]

I'm assuming that the bully put your student in a situation in which it's self-defense, even thought the OP says "finally cracks." I'm making that assumption b/c my children have been bullied and have responded with self-defense protection, rather than be punching bags.

Knocking someone out is dangerous. It likely means that your student has gone too far. The bully came at your student, who kicked him in the solar plexus? Knocked the wind right out of him, and he might have lost his lunch where he went down. The bully threw--or telegraphed--a punch, and your student popped him right in the nose? Might be bloodied, might even be broken, but I doubt there's a concussion.

The age of the persons involved might be a factor, such as still being in school. There may be instances of adult bullying, but if it's at work, then use the laws that protect you in the workplace to have the bully dealt with. Even jerks don't want to lose their jobs.

[Wastelander]

For the purposes of this discussion, the student and bully are around 13 years old and all of the bullying was verbal/emotional with occasional physical provocation (pushing, knocking hat off, tripping, etc.).

[MasterPain]

For the sake of pleasing the kid's parents you have to give the standard "tell your teachers" speech.

But there is honne and there is tatemae.

[JusticeZero]

Knocking someone out is dangerous. It likely means that your student has gone too far. The bully came at your student, who kicked him in the solar plexus? Knocked the wind right out of him, and he might have lost his lunch where he went down. The bully threw--or telegraphed--a punch, and your student popped him right in the nose? Might be bloodied, might even be broken, but I doubt there's a concussion.

There is also the issue of what tools a given art teaches to have available. Not everyone teaches to "pop them in the nose".

Mine avoids punching range like the plague, because hanging out in punching range, in the context of where it was developed, is an open invitation to be stabbed by a blade you never knew they had until after you realized that your socks were getting really wet for some reason. "popping them in the nose" simply isn't a response that gets practiced.

Dodging to the side, and using the momentum to power a spin kick might be a more probable response. If the attacker were to move in a way that put their head into such a kick, a knockout is actually not unlikely.

We have a couple of takedown/throws, too. Ours tend to have a very high probability of slamming the attacker down in such a way that the back of their skull takes the brunt of the impact with the ground.

There's also the more nasty form of the application of the head, which usually is closer to wrestling techniques, unless you then take the head that you stuck into the opponent's chest and jump upward into their chin while they're folded forward.

So no, I don't think I would be astonished to discover that a knockout might happen in a scuffle. We don't monkey dance around, we learn to disable and run. Which is what I tried to communicate to the people I was teaching before - don't be there, failing that, run, failing that, disable and run, over or through threats if necessary.

But that example isn't even unique. What if the kid is learning Judo or Aikido? The bully gives him trouble, and the kid throws him. The bully doesn't know how to breakfall and goes "splat" onto his back instead and spends the next few minutes trying to get his ability to breathe back. That can be an effective knockout, and the kid was using a "peaceful" technique.

TKD? As noted, a head kick can be a knockout quite a bit more easily than a punch.

Grappling? He choked the bully out?

It is what it is, and i'm not about to punish some kid for defending himself as best he knew how and SUCCEEDING rather than getting into an ineffective social dominance slap fight.