Why should kids learn BJJ?

When I was a kid in the 1970's and 1980's, BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) was not well known by many people outside of Brazil.  It wouldn't really be until November 1993 that many in America would even be introduced to it thanks to the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  In my small town, all we had access to was karate or taekwondo depending on which of the two places you choose to try.  Mainstream movies staring Jean Claude Van Damme and of course the Karate Kid movies had some of the kids in the neighborhood running around doing crane kicks or roundhouse kicks.  It was fun but real fighting or self defense it was not.  I witnessed several fights in school over the years and got into several myself and they were never even close to what it looked like in the movies.  They were always ugly and sad and that makes sense to me now because whenever two people think fighting is their only solution instead of talking and kindness then ugliness usually follows.

Fights from when I was young.
As I think back thru all the fights I saw in school (grade school to High School) they were almost always one of two types of fights.  Fight one stemmed from bullying or an unequal amount of power between the two.  This is where the bully or the person with more social status would basically punch the other one or two times and that would be it as long as the other kid didn't do much about it.  The dominance was re-asserted and the bullying usually continued a bit as the school year went on.

Fight type two was usually between equals or when the bullied kid decided to fight back and then ugly chaos ensued.  It would be a whirlwind of a few wild punches and occasionally a kick if one of them had any karate training or watched some karate on TV.  The result would be if one of the punches connected then usually the fight was over or they would end up "wrestling" as the kids would call it.  Someone would endup in a headlock and either get their head squeezed or by that time a teacher would see the commotion and break it up.

Part two coming up...