There's another red flag. There's no reason why it should take all that long to get your KKW cert. The KKW is far from perfect, but they generally do an excellent job of processing certificates. After all, that's a chunk of cash.
Non-Compete Agreement Required for BB Testing?
- Thread starter Gwai Lo Dan
- Start date
There's another red flag. There's no reason why it should take all that long to get your KKW cert. The KKW is far from perfect, but they generally do an excellent job of processing certificates. After all, that's a chunk of cash.
As I told you, I had various reasons to leave. But believe it or not, in my city there aren't many better options. If there is something important I can tell you I've learned from my current taekwondo instructor is how instructors can be dishonest in many levels - and he's far from being the only one like that.
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That seems like an odd complaint - it's not like Koreans don't do that. Unless he's referring to people turning around and opening their own school down the street from their teacher and trying to get a bunch of his students to come with, which I have seen and is a pretty dickish thing to do.
My personal reaction to the comments on this thread was one of outrage mixed with deep sadness. Achieving a black belt used to signify a singular achievement in the martial arts world. I recall it being an occasion of celebration and being welcomed into a unique brotherhood. We were expected to continue on in our training, to teach, and to model what was the best of the martial arts tenets. The pervasive commercialization of the arts seems to have devalued the original ideals of study to the point of non-existence. If the current value in achieving a black belt has devolved to the commercial marketability of a skill and a certification form, I question whether the belt system is currently viable. I sincerely hope this represents the minority of experiences for those achieving black belt. If not, I truly grieve for the martial arts world.
Earl Weiss
Senior Master
Perhaps, perhaps not. How many stories have we seen on this BBS about instructors pulling all sorts of shenanigans. Students leave when they "Wake Up" yet in many cases with little other choice for a school they stop training.
If students then leave the instructor and set up shop nearby and many choose to leave the first guy then perhaps there is a good reason for that.
Seems very reasonable. By the time I could no longer put up with the problems related to my instructor's ways I was just a few months from black belt examination, so I decided to stay (and I'll be there until I get the KKW certificate). But there were a few students who simply decided to leave. Two of them, later, asked me to train privately with them, but while they never thought about going back to that instructor again.
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Non-compete clauses aren't entirely unusual. It only makes sense, that if an instructor at a school wants to break away and form his own school, independent of the old school, then he should have the decency to relocate a fair distance away. I certainly concur, that a school owner should guard against potential poaching.
In all of my time in the martial arts, I have seen some highly talented folks get lured away by rival schools, and in turn, open up their own schools just down the road from their old school. Many times, these people would actually be financed by the rival school's chief instructor, since they had intimate knowledge of the old school's operations, and really knew how to hit the old school where it hurt the most.
While most of the students would remain at the old school, there would still be a significant number who would flock to the new school, creating a big headache for everyone involved.
The old school owner loses 20% of his income, and replacing the lost students might not be nearly as feasible, because of the new presence in town.
The new school owner has to deal with the fact that many of the poached students might still be under contract with the old school, and might find themselves short of $$$ if they have to pay for two schools' tuition at the same time. Furthermore, this kind of thing reflects really badly on the new school owner...
Regarding the OP's situation:
Opening up a branch school under the old school's umbrella isn't necessarily a bad idea at all. If anything, you can still use the old school's resources, enlist the old instructor's help at times, etc. This isn't unreasonable, especially since a freshly minted 1st dan is going to need some help in getting his school started. Even if that 1st dan has an excellent working knowledge of school operations, there are going to be many things that he doesn't know about, that he might be unprepared to handle without more experienced help.
There definitely are unethical teachers who do crazy stuff, and perhaps should get their karmic one-uppance or whatever.
But generally speaking, intentionally trying to undermine the business of the person that worked hard to train you and build you up and make you able to start your own school? Yeah, that's not cool, at all. Not only is it stabbing your teacher in the back, it makes you look like a bad guy.
Agreed. We're not affiliated, business-wise, with GM's school, but it's still a big help to be able to pick his brain about stuff that comes up. There are a million things involved in running a school, and always some problem to deal with.
