Steal my knowledge please...but give back a bit
There is an ancient Chinese saying when it comes to teaching students the martial arts. It is said that you are not taught ones style of fighting as much as you steal their knowledge.
Back then the instructors were normally dignitaries that had retired, retired mayors and politicians or military personnel that had come back from war and were no longer serving. They were old men that had hard lives serving the royalty and they were not willing to take the guff from students.
The understanding was that students were their to train and learn. And the masters were there to teach. But students had to think of it as the harder they worked the more that the instructor would offer. It was not uncommon for an instructor to have four different students, all had been training for the same amount of time and only one of them was taught the whole style of Karate that the instructor had to offer. The reason was simple, the student proved that they would learn more and pass on the system to other worthy students with out change because they worked for it.
The students would have a period of time were they had to work before they even got to learn the basic stances of the style. The masters had them cleaning the floors outside the homes or monasteries with brooms and doing work in the fields, in the case of Chinese masters they had them learn the religious aspects of their training prior to seeing a form or kick thrown and most of the students had to give up all their lives possessions and often leave the homes they grew up in to learn in places like Wu mountain or Shaolin monastery.
In Okinawa many of the students were selected by the instructors because they worked with them in the army or service of the emperor. The students still had to work hard in their jobs and most of the time for less than others would be getting for their service, but with the knowledge that they would be learning more and have a better job at the end.
Now we have students that come in and pay money and do little for the clubs they think they own because they pay the rent. The truth is that if they don’t do more than just show up…eventually they wont have anywhere to show up to! What I think we need to see more of is the instructors giving a basic class and set of skill development to the masses but selecting several students that prove they deserve more and giving them more. If a student goes out of their way to show they want the knowledge they are training for then they get more back.
I see to many clubs with three or four students killing themselves to advertise, run tournaments and work hard to develop a nice base of students for the instructor and others that do about as much as they would if they were at a gym! The funny thing is that if every senior did 1 hour of work every month then the majority of the seniors who are killing themselves right now could do so much more to bring in more students.
If a senior who is spending 6 hours a week doing things for an organization and gets 6 things done that week had help, and 1 of those items was taken off their plate, they could focus more on other things, or simply train. The other student has only spent 1 hour…the benefits are huge, especially if 4 people step up and take over basic things that have to be done.
My point is that if everyone pitched in one hour once a month, and the average dojo has 20 students, that’s 20 hours of work that the students are doing, in place of one senior doing 6 hours. Think on it, we would be able to have clubs run like corporations and we would have massive clubs with great training, the instructors would all relax into just training and the value of the work we see would be immeasurable.
I believe that all students, paying full price or getting family discounts should give back. My tactic, seeing as I don’t have a club of my own, is to use my classes to stimulate giving. I don’t care if its giving back to the organization or giving back to the society we live in. If you train with me in a seminar, I am not getting paid for it! But I ask that you take the money you would be paying for my class and you donate it to a cause, take a hour of your own time and do some kind of work that will help others. I want you to remember that with out volunteers and hard work we would never get half the things done we want in this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment