Still looking for more feedback on this. Let me put it another way. Imagine you get to be on the ground floor of a brand new martial arts organization that wishes to preserve and teach the old ways, help bring in the new, and promote the Martial Arts to the public as a whole. What ideas and or suggestions would you make? I'm just really trying to get a sense of what some of the members of the internet's premier Martial Arts Forum would do :asian:
I think that any formal attempts to organize such a thing are almost guaranteed to miss the target. I tend to agree with XS, money takes over and all else suffers.
I will outline what I think any "affiliation" should look like.
First, on the level of the individual school, it should be small enough that there is a real relationship developed between teacher and student. This doesn't have to be intimate in any way, like a father/child relationship, nothing like that. But the teacher needs to work directly with every student, so that the student recieves quality teaching and isn't just a face lost in the crowd. The teacher needs to actually know the student, what he has learned, what he needs to improve in, what he is already skilled in. The relationship should be close enough that the teacher has a good sense of this at any given time. If the class is too big, and this kind of relationship is not developed, then the students are probably not getting the best instruction that they could.
Second, I don't believe in empire building. I do believe that there is nothing wrong with schools that create offspring schools teaching the same art. As students grow to a level to become teachers, if they wish to do so, they should begin guiding their own students. There will always be a relationship between the new teacher and his old school and his teacher. This is natural. But I don't like seeing five or six schools that are all "Master Jack's Karate", and the impression is that Master Jack is teaching everyone, when in reality he is just the administrator and the business owner, and he hasn't taught anyone in 10 years. In this case, nobody is Master Jack's student. Rather, they are the student of Sensei John, Sensei Fred, and Sensei Julie, who were students of Master Jack back in the days when Master Jack still got off his lazy butt and did some real teaching and training once in a while. Keep it real, keep it honest, be up front about the student/teacher relationship.
Third, I think any larger organization, one that is inclusive of multiple styles, should be entirely informal. They should be made up of regional schools where the teachers know each other, and RESPECT AND TRUST AND SUPPORT each other. So if I am teaching kung fu, and someone walks in my door and says he wants to study Shotokan, then I say "well, go on over to Jeff's school on the other side of town, he teaches Shotokan, he is a friend of mine and he's great, he'll give you the best and everything you need in Shotokan." And if someone walks into Jeff's school asking for Kung Fu, Jeff sends them to me, with the same positive recommendation. And maybe once every few months we all get together and have an informal competition; judge each other's forms, maybe discuss the forms a bit so the students from other schools get educated a little bit about what they are watching and what the form should demonstrate and why the demonstration was good or poor; let our students spar a bit; and then go get pizza and beer together when its over. So we all get to know each other, the students get to test themselves against each other, but we keep it real and keep it informal, and make it a learning experience and a chance to make new friends and make old friendships stronger.
There should be no formal administration, nor ranking among the affiliation. This is an entirely informal relationship, people should get rank from someone they have studied with, and no other. If the organization becomes big and formal with administrators, then it will just get in the way of a good thing.
I guess I'm an idealist. This kind of arrangement will probably never happen.
