Descartes in the classroom

Younger kids in the kung fu class will sometimes do just about anything to not do kung fu. The big one is "my shoe's untied." Anytime the group is touching its toes for whatever reason, little hands dart over shoe tops and next thing you know those hands are shooting up in the air. "Si jye, my shoe's untied. I'm gonna tie it so I don't trip." Then, because they're young enough that shoe tying is still a bit convoluted, they get three or five minutes' break from exercises while they loop the laces around. Maybe we should have everyone double-tie their laces at the start of class.

Mopsy is such an expert at the art of cute-fu that one feels guilty timing her out. Another youngster is getting too familiar with the time-out corner. Both are really intelligent for their age. Last week Mopsy, parking herself on the weight bench and refusing to move, debated the use of forms as a teaching tool. "Why do you call it a form?" she asked -- she's got a Cindy Brady sort of voice so it was like, "Why do yoo cuall it a fworm?"

"It's a form because it's a pattern of moves. You learn the form to learn how to do the moves," I said.

"But, that's not a pattorwn," said Mopsy. "A pattorwn is the same things wepeated. I'm not wepeating the same things in the fworm so it's not a pattorwn."

I honestly haven't dealt with the definition of patterns since maybe grade school, and I hadn't had any coffee yet, so I had to pause and think about that for a minute.

"Wow," I finally replied, "You're pretty smart. In fact, that was so smart that I know you're smart enough to learn this form properly." It's hard to argue with flattery I guess, so Mopsy got up and learned the form.

The week before that a youngster got timed out for 5 minutes and then refused to come out because he wanted to do his own thing. "You have to do things as a group," the instructor told him. "You can't just do what you want."

"Oh yeah?" the boy asked. "What about free will? What about my rights as a human being? I get to choose what I want!"

So there was a little talk with him and his mom after class about the rights of man vs. the dangers of a little kid running around wild when the older kids are swinging broadswords and spears.

He's been better lately.