CBS’s 'SEAL Team' to Feel-Good School Administrators: Sometimes Fighting is Right
The real world doesn’t care about your feelings.
10.19.2017
9
On Wednesday’s episode of CBS’s SEAL Team, main character and SEAL team head Jason (played by David Boreanaz) confronts his son’s politically correct principal about the occasional necessity for righteous violence. In a meeting Jason and wife Alana have with the school administrator and his son’s counselor, a conflict of philosophy emerges:
Principal: As your son Michael may have told you, we like to view our disciplinary matters as just one more opportunity for learning.
Jason: Right. Teachable moments.
Principal: That's not language we use anymore, but that's essentially the idea. Look--who knows what the world has in store for our young people once they venture beyond our walls. We can't anticipate every situation they're likely to face, so what we try to do is give them the tools to make the best decision, no matter the circumstance.
Jason: And Michael didn't make the best decision given the circumstance.
Mr. Fazzano: Fighting's never the right decision.
Jason: I'm sorry, who are you? What do you do again?
Alana: Jason. Yeah. You remember Mr. Fazzano. Michael's guidance counselor.
Mr. Fazzano: Please, call me Keith.
Jason: I'm sorry, but you were telling us how it's not right to fight.
Mr. Fazzano: You disagree.
Jason: Well, it sounds to me like the world that you're preparing your students for is a world where, if you ask really nice, the bad guys will leave you alone. Is that what you see?
The principal and counselor's position represents an increasingly prevalent idea in schools, which is that violence is never the answer, that fighting is always wrong. It also reflects our educational system's growing desire to protect students from any harsh realities of life. In the real world, of course, there are challenges. And as lead character Jason knows, sometimes those challenges call for a fight. As a SEAL leader, Jason knows that fighting is sometimes the right, and righteous, choice. At times violence is necessary to defend yourself or others.
At a time when feel-good, PC platitudes dominate the culture, and as America’s public schools increasingly fail to prepare youth for a world that doesn’t care about fairness or their feelings, Tuesday's SEAL Team offered a little illumination of reality and common sense.
Posts
