Question: I've heard a lot about your Tai Chi Youth prison programs. But what good does it do to teach prisoners to fight? Answer: That's the point. We are not teaching prisoners to fight. Yes, many, or most prisoners enroll in our classes looking for better ways to hurt or beat up other people. However, Tai Chi Youth teaches students to communicate with each other. Inmates learn how to help and benefit one another. Monthly performances by each student are critiqued and evaluated by each student. This technique was created by our founder Master Zhen Shen-Lang and is still not utilized in any other martial arts school that we know of. At first students are 'nice' to each other so that other students/inmates will be 'nice' to them. Eventually, they learn to see the reward of just helping another person. Unfortunately, this concept of compassion or parenting is absent from our American prison system. This is why prison rehabilitation does not work. Inmates come out meaner and more violent than when they went in. Our prisons are a breeding and training ground for crime, violence, and racial prejudice. Tai Chi Youth is one of the only programs that seeks to work against the prison system and actually rehabilitate and improve the lives of inmates. # Founder Zhen Shen-Lang QUESTION: With Tai Chi Youth's reputation and benefits, do you have prisons lined up to get your programs? ANSWER: Unfortunately not yet. Despite our success in Utah rehabilitation centers and prisons, even the Governor of Utah, Mike Leavit, explained to Master Zhen, "People don't want to rehabilitate criminals, they want to punish them." He further explained that even education was viewed as a privilege or luxury for criminals. This attitude of making criminals suffer teaches them to do the same to others. When many criminals are released, they are not less violent than when they were incarcerated. Educating criminals in intimidation, prejudice, violence, and ways of making people suffer, also is a detriment to the community. These are not useful skills we teach in our prisons. The American public needs to treat criminals with the same compassion they would treat their own children. The jail sentence of any criminal is like 'grounding' your child or making them stay in their room. A prisoner loses contact with their families, their loved ones, their friends, their pets, their toys and possessions, their books, their TV, their music, their home, their yard, their neighborhood, their job...Any further punishment is inhuman and creates inhuman humans. That is why there is an 80% or more return rate of prisoners back to prison. We teach them how to be prisoners--nothing else. UTAH MAXIMUM SECURITY Tai Chi Youth began in the prisons, rehab centers, and elementary schools of Utah. Master Zhen Shen-Lang created these curriculums from his Shaolin Chi Mantis curriculums to focus more on Tai Chi while still utilizing all of the concepts and wisdoms of Shaolin Kung Fu. Master Zhen had been teaching his Shaolin Chi Mantis programs for several years before developing his first "Tai Chi Youth Program" to be taught at the Salt Lake City YWCA. Prior to this, Zhen Shen-Lang had allowed children to attend his Shaolin Chi Mantis classes 'IF' they were also attended by one of their parents. Shen-Lang had a lot of kids requesting enrollment, without being able to get their parents to attend. This led to a separate class being formed and advertised by the YWCA called "Tai Chi Youth." Shen-Lang created an entirely new curriculum for these classes based upon his experience with kids in previous classes. Each semester he would experiment with new games and exercises that he would invent from Kung Fu concepts. Tug of wars, tumbling, races, Push Hands...were tested and evolved into our current curriculums. # Although Zhen Shifu taught these classes, he often enlisted the aid of his best students to help him. By keeping the classes moving at a fast pace and preorganizing all lessons, Master Zhen was able to maintain authority and control. Yet, for more detailed instruction and to help with student mistakes, additional instructors or assistant instructors were vitally needed. This also led to Zhen Shen-Lang's creation of a new curriculum that would produce instructors quicker than his traditional Shaolin Chi Mantis program. Master Zhen realized that he was limited in the services he could offer and sought to enlarge the scope of teaching youths by founding Tai Chi Youth, Inc. a nonprofit education organization. With added public support, corporate donations, contributed goods, and government services, Tai Chi Youth has grown tremendously each year since 1996 when it was first incorporated in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 3. In December 1999, Master Zhen moved his home office and family to the Los Angeles area where we are currently negotiating for a NEW SCHOOL location that can provide more services and more programs to more youths and youths-at-risk than ever before. Tai Chi Youth has been limited by having to utilize gymnasiums and churches for classes. Seeking to better serve the community and more students in safer and better furnished locations, funding is being sought to establish our first storefront location. Help support Tai Chi Youth's current NEW SCHOOL FUNDRAISER to establish our first school in California. With the instructors we will create, many other schools can be established throughout the United States. For more information, see these TCY web pages also: ABOUT TAI CHI YOUTH page 1 NEW SCHOOL FUNDRAISER