Lately I have had a number of conversations that have built up to this blog. As a conscientious practitioner and teacher I am very concerned with how parents choose martial arts schools and teachers for their children. Then someone shared this video …
b. Parents have chosen this guy to teach their children
c. Someone gave this guy permission to teachSome of you might say, but that isn’t in my town. I know for a fact that this type of stuff does happen in Fayetteville. I have seen it. I watched an ATA Instructor fall down while teaching a kick. Master McGuire said he was one of my Taiji students and had never met me. I watched a tournament here in town, and was basically disgusted with the instructors and quality of martial arts that was on display. You can see the resulting blog post here. http://taijirich.blogspot.com/2010/10/master-martins-magical-martial-tai-chi.html
So, how does a parent ensure that their children aren’t being taught by a numbskull? This is harder, most often, parents don’t know martial arts. I addressed picking your teacher in this post http://fsmap.blogspot.com/2012/09/who-is-your-teacher.html
There I talked about student fit, and I stand behind my statements there, but the longer I think about this, the more I get frustrated. In fact too often without intense scrutiny, teachers pass off false lineages. We had an instructor here for a while that claimed direct permission from the Yang Family to teach....except they don’t do that unless you have studied directly with them for years.
I also get frustrated with the teachers that have legitimate lineages, but teach totally ineffective moves/techniques. I get so frustrated in fact, that I can definitely understand how the “Dojo Wars” of years past got started.What is the answer? How can we as artists and teachers help fix this problem?
Rich on Google+
