Wrestling with Public Education

Which do you suppose is worse from the perspective of a talented teenaged male athlete: beating a girl, or getting beaten by a girl?

Let me admit right up front that I’m not a big fan of wrestling; and even less so of compulsory public schools with their expensive public school sports programs.

Wrestling involves an intense, physically violent, aggressive, combative, in-your-face confrontation of raw strength and stamina at close quarters with the sweaty body of an equally motivated opponent. Kids can get hurt wrestling. Wrestling is fighting; body to body, hand to hand combat; violence. I hate violence.

And, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to support the elite sporting opportunities of a tiny privileged minority of athletically inclined public school kids. The private sector would do much better and fairer for all concerned.

All bias aside, though, I’ll try to stay logical and objective with this one.

An Iowa high school wrestler recently became the first girl to win a state tournament match when her male opponent balked and forfeited the match at the prospect of competing with her. He cited religious objections, but I think he had plenty of other good reasons. Any gentleman would have forfeited that match.

To her credit this girl is obviously one of those exceedingly rare females who can compete with boys her size in a physically demanding contact sport. The fact that she made it to the state tournament at all says that she is good at wrestling and has probably beaten many boys already at lesser contests along the way. After all, boys are probably her only source of competition. So I sympathize with her for wanting to participate, and understand her right to be treated equally at public school.

But since when has it become appropriate behavior for boys to be fighting physically in organized blood sporting contests with girls? Is there no longer any appreciation at all of the differences in sex between boys and girls in public school sports programs? If wrestling is OK should girls be boxing with the boys next?

Good boys should be taught never to strike, use force upon, or manhandle girls under any circumstances. This poor lad had absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by fighting a girl and trying to pin her to the floor. There is something unseemly about high school boys and girls aggressively pawing and grappling with each other in a public wrestling match.

If the boy wins such a contest, he’s automatically a cad. There is no honor or glory in beating up a girl, even if she asked for it. If he loses, he suffers the eternal humiliation and ridicule of his peers having been beaten by a girl in a state wide contest of masculinity. No teenaged boy should be forced to consider that horrible choice.

All ended quickly here when the girl was eliminated from the tournament by losing her first match with a real opponent. So she really didn’t win anything, but managed to spoil a young man’s chance to participate at a high level in a sporting activity which is traditionally and rightly meant for the testing of men.

That’s just another of the many problems with public education: differences and individuality among human beings is hardly recognized much less celebrated in a collective.