Photo by Philipp Maas, used under Creative Commons licence.

Today’s blog is all about a difficult and painful subject If you live in a city, I’m sure you hear about it much more often than you would like to.

I am personally passionate about working with children to stop then carrying – let alone using – knives on the street.

How can we change the mindset of our children? How can we stop them from being aggressive towards each other?  I’m aware of gangs and rivalries between areas – but what is it that makes children believe that because they live in a certain area code, that they have to fight another person in another area code, or even mug them or take their mobile phone from them?

Where did this way of thinking come from?

When I was younger, I could travel from South London to East London to Peckham to Camberwell without a worry. There was no area code to me. So where did this way of thinking come from?

However it started, it goes very deep and this troubles me. I asked one of the children one time, when the kids were hanging about at Panther Taekwondo.  

I said to him, “What’s this thing about area codes? Why do you protect your area so much?”

He said “yeah, well, we look after Northolt. It’s our place.” So I said, “OK – you’re protecting Northolt.  From who?”

And he answered, “yeah, from them guys up in Ruislip.”

So I said, “Is Northolt paying you to do this? Why do you have to do this?” And he couldn’t answer.

I realised it wasn’t something he’d really thought about. (If he had, it might not have seemed such a good idea). It’s just something that’s been embedded in them.

I believe that through martial arts, divisions can be broken down

If there’s one thing that I’d love to do, it’s change that mindset. I believe that through martial arts, these divided ways of thinking can be broken down. My classes are for children (and of course for adults) from many different backgrounds and cultures. Everyone learns respect. Then everyone shows it to everyone else, and suddenly you’ve got the beginning of real changes in attitudes that can carry forward into all areas of young people’s lives.