Respect Your Parents and Elders

The title of this posting–“Respect Your Parents and Elders”–is the second commandment of the 10 commandments of Taekwondo.  The incident you are about to read will show why this commandment is very important for kids to learn today.

By now most of you may have already heard of the news about Karen Klein–a 68-year old bus monitor from New York–who was bullied by 7th graders while on her bus monitoring duty.  The video (shown below) has gone viral, and has been viewed over 3 million times by people all over the world.

WARNING, the language used by the kids in the video are pretty graphic.  If you have a head set,  use it so your young ones don’t hear and emulate such vulgar language.

For whatever reason, the kids in this video thought that harassing and bullying Karen Klein was fun.  Fortunately, the rest of the world didn’t see it that way.  An outpouring of support both morally and monetarily came in from various places through her facebook page as well as a fundraising site, which by now shows that her supporters have raised over $630,000 to send Mrs. Klein on vacation.  Note that the original goal was $5,000.

The disrespectful kids, along with their parents, have since apologized to Mrs. Klein.  I’m not sure how sincere those apologies are; regardless, these kids will be permanently marked as bullies because this video will forever exist on the Internet, serving as a reminder of the pains they’ve caused a fellow human being.

Bullying another person isn’t nice.  It goes against the tenet of courtesy–the first tenet of the 6 tenets of Taekwondo.  When you have “courtesy”, you treat people with respect, regardless of age or gender.

I hope the kids in the above video have learned their lesson, and parents who see this video remind their kids about respect, and how disrespecting others can negatively impact them and others around them.

Kids, please respect your parents and elders!  You will be better for it.