John stated: I say when you are the teacher of your school, with no teacher of your own, simply move beyond rank and just call yourself the master of the school. If you feel like you deserve to be grandmaster, then do it. You'll be judged by others, expect that, but let history be the real judge. If your school branches out and before you're dead you have several masters passing on your teachings, then you really are/were the grandmaster. If your school ends when your dead.... who cares..... you're dead.
I say: Funny John, but you make a lot of sense, the common type. I think that's how it had been done, more or less way back when. I read once that back in the old Okinawan days the teacher of a school, just a school, was essentially the 'shihan' or 'master instructor' of that school, then there were the 'yudansha' ( the advanced students) and the rest, I guess,the beginners. It was just plain and simple. I'm going to try to find that article again to refresh but that was the core of it. So, I guess, if someone goes out and 'successfully' starts their own school or chain of schools, independant of anyone else, then who would be higher in their school and/or organization but them? Tony Annesi wrote a nice article about that in a karate mag back in the 80's. And to paraphrase John Evans, 'time will either promote you or expose you'. I'm not saying this is how I do things, I'm just saying I thought it was a very interesting post by John and he does make logical sense out of the whole freak'n mess, lol.
