BLOOMINGTON, IN — After viral coverage last week of a Shanghai municipal program that added Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a required subject from kindergarten through university, suburban American parents in 14 different Parent-Teacher Associations have independently drafted nearly identical petitions demanding their local school boards add BJJ to the district curriculum by next semester, sources confirmed Thursday.
An analysis of the petitions, conducted on a Thursday night by bored Bloomington Herald-Times reporter Aaron Millikan, found 87% shared language across all 14 documents. Every petition cites ‘the fundamentals.’ Zero cite jiu-jitsu pedagogy, instructor certification standards, age-appropriate modifications, injury-rate research, or curriculum integration requirements.
The movement is being led, in town after town, by men who share a specific archetype: early-to-mid-40s, one-stripe white belt credentialing, a closet containing more rashguards than work shirts, and a training hiatus that began somewhere between the birth of their second child and the collapse of their last seminar-tour enthusiasm.
‘My kid should know how to break an arm before he finishes third grade,’ said Derek Branson, 41, an IT project manager and spokesman for the Monroe County Parents for Grappling Education coalition. ‘It’s about discipline.’ Branson was photographed addressing the school board in a faded 2019 seminar-tour rashguard that he wore under an unbuttoned dress shirt.
Branson last trained at Rockford Combat Academy in the summer of 2021, where he achieved a one-stripe white belt and was asked not to return after landing full-force on a pregnant woman during a drilling partner mix-up. He has not attended a class in the 47 months since. During that stretch, according to credit-card records Branson voluntarily shared with reporters to establish his commitment, he has purchased $2,400 in merchandise across seven gyms and four instructional platforms he has not logged into.
The petitions themselves vary slightly in heading font but are structurally identical. Every one opens with the phrase ‘In an increasingly complex world…’ Every one closes with the line ‘The Shanghai model proves this works.’ None of the 14 documents contain a citation to the Shanghai model, a description of the Shanghai model, or an acknowledgement that the Shanghai model is taught by educators with verified black-belt credentials, is administered under a national governing body, and includes culturally integrated physical-education standards and mandatory age-appropriate modifications developed over four years of pilot programs.
What the petitions do contain: extensive quoted material from three separate martial-arts podcasts, identified by episode number; a five-paragraph section titled ‘Why Wrestling Is Not Enough’; and a glossary in which the term ‘guard’ is defined as ‘a defensive position’ and the term ‘the fundamentals’ appears 31 times without definition.
PTA meetings across three counties have now added a new demographic: fathers in rashguards explaining ‘cross-training’ to retired kindergarten teachers. In Hartford, Connecticut, a 63-year-old former second-grade teacher named Nora Peltz was cornered at the refreshments table for 19 minutes and delivered a lecture on the distinction between sport and self-defense jiu-jitsu. ‘I came in for the bake-sale sign-up,’ Peltz later told a neighbor. ‘I left with homework.’
At a special session in Ridgewood, New Jersey last Tuesday, a sitting school board member was subjected to a live, unsolicited demonstration of the Kimura trap during the public comment period. The demonstration required two folding chairs, a belt, and the board member’s one regrettable decision to make eye contact. She has since switched to a virtual-attendance platform. According to meeting minutes, the board chair attempted to reclaim the floor at the three-minute mark, at the four-minute mark, and at the six-minute mark, at which point the demonstrator explained that he was ‘just getting to the sweep.’
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a PTA co-chair named Brian Dwerski produced a 47-page proposal document titled ‘Discipline, Grit, and The Fundamentals,’ designed to serve as the new curriculum’s official name. The acronym is not addressed anywhere in the document. When asked about it on a follow-up call, Dwerski grew quiet for 11 seconds, then said ‘I’d have to get back to you on that,’ and did not.
The proposal’s citation section lists, as primary sources: four YouTube highlight compilations, one supplement company’s blog post, and a podcast episode titled ‘Why Your Son Is Soft, Part 2.’ A footnote refers the reader to a Google Drive folder that, when accessed, contains only a single JPEG of a man’s lower back labeled ‘belt whipping ceremony — photos 1 of 1.’
The Shanghai program, for context, employs 840 certified instructors across the municipal school system, uses a standardized curriculum reviewed annually by physicians and pedagogues, limits ground-fighting intensity by grade level, and has produced — over its first three years — a documented reduction in bullying incidents and a measurable increase in national wrestling federation registrations. District administrators file quarterly injury reports. Parents are required to attend a 90-minute orientation.
The Bloomington petition, as of press time, was being reviewed by the Monroe County Consolidated School Corporation’s legal counsel, who confirmed via email that ‘the document is technically a petition, in the same way that a burning car is technically a vehicle.’
Branson, asked what the curriculum would look like in practice, described a first-day lesson plan he had personally sketched on the back of a PayPal receipt. It involved ‘a 20-minute standing warmup, some really basic positional stuff, and then we just let them roll.’ Asked who would supervise the rolling, he paused, then offered to volunteer. Asked whether he had the credentials to do so, he clarified that he had ‘been around the sport for a really long time’ and had ‘watched every instructional in the folder at least once.’
Meanwhile, in Shanghai, a seven-year-old named Liu Wenhao earned his yellow-with-a-white-stripe belt on Wednesday in front of a panel of three certified instructors, his parents, and a school physician. At the bottom of the ceremony program, in 8-point font, was a printed reminder to parents that classroom modifications must be filed with the district by the 15th of the month. Liu’s father, asked how he felt about his son’s progress, said ‘he’s getting better.’ Then he returned to work.
Back in Monroe County, Branson spent the remainder of Thursday evening editing the opening paragraph of petition version 14.3, which now reads, ‘In an increasingly complex world, we believe our children deserve more than dodgeball.’ He saved the document, posted a screenshot of the first page to his account, and drove home in the rashguard.