I don't know that 'due diligence' applies in this situation. This is ultimately a consumer choice. Is no martial arts better than this experience? I don't know that. That seems a bit extreme.
in my opinion, yes, zero training would be better than this.
as a third dan, this kid might actually believe he can defend himself. Everything about his training experience has told him so, and he has been validated by his rank. That misplaced trust might get him killed someday.
this kind of false sense of security could be deadly.
I see this merely as people being graded far too fast.
no doubt! and in the extreme!
That's an assumption on my part, but the boy looks awfully young. Like I say, pretend these are lower-ranked kyu (or gup, I guess), and this ain't such a bad showing.
But I can't pretend that, because the teacher gave him a bloody third dan, for crying out loud. It was a bad showing for anything higher than yellow, maybe one step above yellow if yer feeling reaaaallly generous and it's a "kiddie" rank instead of an adult rank. Anything more than that, and it was a bad showing. It is what it is, and the teacher gave a third dan for it. There is no way to pretend it was something other than that, and no way to justify it.
I can't make exceptions for the fact that he is young, either. It was a third dan, for crying out loud, the kid should never have been allowed to test for that kind of rank to begin with. And trying to make a distinction between "kiddie" ranking vs. "adult" ranking isn't an excuse either, because it's being presented as a third dan (it wasn't even clear that they were doing this, it actually looked like it was just a regular third dan without any conditions on it, I'm just wracking my brains trying to figure out how this could be justified). Why would a "kiddie" third dan even exist, much less be the equivalent of an adult yellow belt? What good does that do anyone? It just sets the kid up for being fooled, and someday that kid is going to have a really really hard lesson thrown in his face.
the only justice that could be done here is to take the belt back and give the kid a yellow. there is just no two ways around it. This was a disservice in the extreme, and that instructor ought to be ashamed of himself.
Since he belongs to an organization, ATA, what the hell kind of oversight do they have? What does the parent org. think of this kind of thing? Do they encourage this? Does this freakshow come from the top? Is this the standard of the ATA? Good god, there is absolutely nothing about this situation that ought to be acceptable.
I've seen lots of discussions here in the threads where people lament the degredation of TKD. I never would have expected it to actually hit this level of absolute garbage. If this is becoming the norm in TKD, then the art is truly in trouble. I commend those out there who strive to keep TKD a viable and effective martial art, but it must be a terrible uphill battle.
I am just stunned by this display.