Ever wonder what it’s like to fight for something? I do. But where I went to school we weren’t allowed to fight, scuffle, or shove. If we did at any time we were expelled instantly.

Violence is, after all, the recourse of the weak minded. What rang in our ears instead was talk of the high road of diplomacy.

Mature persons solved their conflicts with words, not with fists. I have come to understand that this practice of banning physical fights has become common in many schools, and while I applaud its aim it generated myriad unfortunate side effects.

I remember in middle school wishing they let us fight, not because I loved violence or because I honestly thought I could win one — I was the shortest kid in my class of 400 — but because the fight in the schoolyard is often the fetal stirring of the human will.

We were told that if we had a problem we could not work out verbally, that we should get a teacher; to appeal to the structure of authority in place to solve our problems for us instead of exercising an ability to change our own circumstances.

In place of genuine tolerance, one born from a mutual respect for our fellow men, came a devaluing of our language and ourselves and our virtues. Before long students realized that while there was zero tolerance for physical abuse, verbal abuse remained.

Since no self-respecting student would run to the office for being verbally abused, it ran rampant. No subject defied condemnation, not race, religion, sex or sexual orientation.

What was learned in all of this was that after a while, even the worst words would bear little meaning. One’s ears can only be appalled at bad language or insults for so long, and our ears — so filled with abusing swearwords and insults — ceased to feel the pangs of verbal abuse to such a degree that it nearly became a form of communication all its own.

Swearwords poured from our mouths as paraplegic descriptors of our adolescent world; but worse than the degeneracy of our language came a dependency on authority. Vindication by the administration replaced personal conviction. Students were no longer forced to uphold their own ethics.

They were not allowed to choose how many insults were too many, and most importantly, they lost the ability to hold something so dear they were willing to fight and bleed for it.

The message that came back from the administration was simple: Words aren’t worth violence.

In many ways that axiom is true, but I fear it often makes mice of men and scoundrels of honest boys. The truth is, fighting can be good or bad — like anything in the world we live in — and to assume that we ought never be allowed to do so is a recipe for a disillusioned adulthood.

Is it any wonder that weak protests replace powerful demonstrations? Are we surprised to find more and more men and women lacking the personal strength to define themselves and what they believe in?

Maybe it is better to let their nose bleed that day on the playground, while their tears made mud of the summer dust on their cheeks; later cradling them in welcome arms, than let them be raised to let their life and their freedom be stolen, little by little, by a helplessness they were taught to embrace.

Maybe a broken nose is worth a lesson learned, and maybe if we stood up for ourselves in those infantile ways we would not find ourselves now so lacking at large in self respect; so unable to resist abuse, so willing to complain for change and so unwilling to fight for it.