bushidomartialarts said:
i find that, with colored belts, it varies so much by student and by teacher that standardization even within the same governing body is nigh impossible.
it only gets worse with black belt ranks, as politics and a sense of entitlement start to creep in.
A certificate is only worth something if the organization maintains the integrity of its standards. Whether it does or not, the proof is in the person's performance across a range of settings.
As an instructor, I wait to see the person perform before I rule on accepting or not accepting their certification; however, my decision includes talking to the person about previous experience, time in rank, testing requirements, etc., and explaining that s/he will have to meet out testing standards before testing again, whether the certification is accepted or not.
These two quotes put the matter in exactly the right perspective, I believe (not exclusively; there are a
lot of good posts so far on this thread!) So far as lineage is concerned---it's nice to have a credible MA lineage, but the fact that one of your grandparents was a Nobel Prize winner in physics doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll ever be able to solve a simple problem in elementary algebra! To me, lineage is primarily of interest as (part of) an explanation of why someone does something a certain way. My TKD goes back to Gm. Byung Jick Ro and the Song Moo Kwan, which was particularly strongly influenced by Shotokan karate and never really dissociated itself from its karate origins; so my view of a lot of things---the bunkai for TKD hyungs, close-quarter combat with heavy emphasis on hand techs, etc.---is to some extence a reflection of lineage-derived attitudes. This doesn't make me right, of course, and it doesn't mean that my analysis or performance of poomsae, or my CQ fighting ability, or anything else, are going to be outstanding, simply because my SMK instructional lineage and my teacher are outstanding. It's simply a particular instance of the general fact that someone's thinking and approach to things often comes, to some extent at least, from who their teachers were. By itself, though, lineage is not a guaratee of anything.
And as far as certifications go... the `MA organization' model has gone a long way towards doing itself in, due to greed, favoritism, shady business practices and endless quarreling, and this has brought the certifications associated with MA orgs into question as well. The `remote-viewing' aspect of certification is particularly troubling: with a lot of MA orgs, you will get their certification without anyone from `headquarters' ever seeing you, as long as your school or instructor is in good standing with them. Such certification are in effect local---you're getting them strictly on your instructor's say-so---though the pretense is maintained that a kind of global quality control is in place.
When you get down it, it looks like the only thing you can go by is the individual's performance, just as Kacey is saying. Since neither lineage nor organizational cert is a guarantee of very much, what else is left?!
