What constitutes a good martial arts teacher?

[jonathan.bluestein]

My attempt at answering this question:

http://cookdingskitchen.blogspot.co.il/ ... acher.html

[middleway]

thanks for the article. It is very traditional arts focused and misses some points that i deem vital. It order of preference :

1) Good students (the MOST Important thing)
2) Honesty (No bullshit, no big claims)
3) Trustworthy ( The student should feel safe when training with the coach.)
3) No Pedestals (Never placing themselves higher than their students... we are all just humans ... no amount of martial arts will change that.)
4) Putting their students before their 'art'. ( by this i mean no training system, no tradition, no lineage, should be place higher in importance than a person, be them a newby or a long term practitioner.)

thanks again for your thoughts.

Chris

[Fa Xing]

thanks for the article. It is very traditional arts focused and misses some points that i deem vital. It order of preference :

1) Good students (the MOST Important thing)
2) Honesty (No bullshit, no big claims)
3) Trustworthy ( The student should feel safe when training with the coach.)
3) No Pedestals (Never placing themselves higher than their students... we are all just humans ... no amount of martial arts will change that.)
4) Putting their students before their 'art'. ( by this i mean no training system, no tradition, no lineage, should be place higher in importance than a person, be them a newby or a long term practitioner.)

thanks again for your thoughts.

Chris

This honestly describes Tim Cartmell exactly!

I would also add the knowledge and ability to teach (pedagogy), I have met many teachers and coaches who couldn't teach someone to use a spoon, even more so teach martial arts and combative ability.

I would also add easy-going and understanding, I had one teacher who knew how to teach but if something came up in your life, he was the utter definition of an asshole and made you feel like shit.

[wiesiek]

so ,
I feel like:
end of the thread

[mrtoes]

I agree with Middleway's take on it. Some of the original points, such as "must discuss lineage publicly and have been with main teacher for 4-5 years" don't matter to me (but then I don't really care about lineage - at all!) and in fact would discount some of the best teachers I have ever met.

What's a "good student" Chris? And why would a good teacher imbue them with these qualities? I assume you mean a student that is making progress but it wasn't clear...

Matthew

[Orpheus]

Out of curiosity, are you responsible for the formatting? Why are there words and clauses that have a larger font and are in bold? I assume it is for emphasis, but it is confusing and makes it harder to read, especially when the emphasis doesn't make sense.

[Bao]

Out of curiosity, are you responsible for the formatting? Why are there words and clauses that have a larger font and are in bold? I assume it is for emphasis, but it is confusing and makes it harder to read, especially when the emphasis doesn't make sense.

JB is not even the owner of the blog, it's up to the admin to format the texts.
Free blog = ready to use designs that someone else made. It has a few years on the neck. Slightly out dated.

[charles]

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and the right to express it. But, I gotta say, in my opinion, your article is way off the mark on many levels, not the least of which is to quote Gandhi - a renowned pacifist - without crediting him, in the context of teaching martial arts. Surely, you can see the irony - or inappropriateness - of that.

In my opinion, your article does a disservice to novice students in their search for a good teacher, the opposite to what you believe you are accomplishing.

[Orpheus]

Out of curiosity, are you responsible for the formatting? Why are there words and clauses that have a larger font and are in bold? I assume it is for emphasis, but it is confusing and makes it harder to read, especially when the emphasis doesn't make sense.

JB is not even the owner of the blog, it's up to the admin to format the texts.
Free blog = ready to use designs that someone else made. It has a few years on the neck. Slightly out dated.

I didn't see other articles with similar formatting on the blog. I thought maybe the writer submitted formatting tags with the article. If it is outside JB's control, then can't really hold that on him.

[jonathan.bluestein]

Thanks for the feedback folks. In writing that one should 'set a personal example' I meant to suggest some of the things Middleway mentioned. I have addressed Honesty through that quote by Confucius.

As for lineage - even in MMA, this should be noted. Without even minor show of respect to one's martial ancestors, the whole thing turns to a 'me me me' festival quite quickly. Which it does among many teachers, unfortunately.

Formatting - the large letters in bold were my doing. But there are several other formatting issues that come with the territory, as this blogging platform is old. The articles are much more visually appealing in their original MS word format.

.... your article is way off the mark on many levels, not the least of which is to quote Gandhi - a renowned pacifist - without crediting him, in the context of teaching martial arts. Surely, you can see the irony - or inappropriateness - of that....

WHAT?

I was not aware I was quoting anyone! I did quote Confucius once in that article, but Gandhi? Yes, that would have been ironic. I imagine I somehow wrote something that Gandhi also happened to have said? What was it in your opinion?

[Pandrews1982]

Well a few points.

I agree lot with what Chris said. Although I teach I don't like to use honorifics such as Sifu if someone has to use a Chinese term for my position I prefer Laoshi simply teacher. But i much prefer the western terms "instructor" or "coach".

I'm also no-one's parent in class and I don't want to be, each person has responsibility for themselves.

People come to my class and I choose to teach them, not the other way around. In fact we used to do interviews with prospective students which included standing in san ti for some period until they were uncomfortable and making them take a beng quan to the abdomen with a certain amount of force and then having them also do the same to you. A lot of people never came back but it wasn't about collecting students it was about getting "good students".

Lineage - utter crap I really don't like how Jonathan has written this section with statements such as utterly disgraceful or no right to be a teacher. Who says? you? I don't give out my lineage to new students, fuck that, if they want to train under someone who has a known famous lineage fine they can go find them I don't care if they train with me or not. If someone wants to train under someone who has been to China and trained directly with a Chinese "master" then they can go sling it too, it means shit, I can take a 1 month holiday to China bum about in the park and say I've done that, or shell out a load of cash to go to a training retreat with someone in China and learn jack shit.

The reason my full lineages are not represented on the xing yi wikipedia chart is partly for the above reasons, I don't want them there and partly because my teacher is a private person who doesn't want hassle and two of his teachers in Beijing don't want any attention either - these guys have ZERO presence openly on the internet, they maybe don't even own a computer or smart phone. If after training with me for some time and the student shows interest and dedication they ask about lineage I can recite 2 of our three lineages, the third is still a mystery to me, I haven't asked and don't need to know to be able to practice my art and teach myself.

Quality isn't bestowed by association it is developed through forging your own art in practice and sweat and blood and tears, it's not about writing books or making nice charts its about doing the f**king work. You don't even have to be the best at what you do, you just have to embody it and understand it so that you can pass that on. It's not even about forms and techniques and applications, it's about giving the student the essence from which they can continue to learn by themselves.

A lot of teachers don't pass this ability to learn for yourself on. Some students seem to need to be told everything, shown everything and need everything just so. It's a messy business fighting and complex too. Giving the student the ability to see for themselves what works for them and how to develop themselves is IMO one of the true talents of a great teacher in any field.

[Pandrews1982]

Gandhi - Be the change you wish to see in the world

[Bhassler]

"I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully."
– Mohandas Gandhi (Young India, 11-10-1928, p342)

[Bao]

I didn't see other articles with similar formatting on the blog. I thought maybe the writer submitted formatting tags with the article. If it is outside JB's control, then can't really hold that on him.

Haven't used Blogspot, but I guess it's like any other plattform a question about how you copy and paste stuff into the blog. If it's already formatted, it can screw up things. But no, still can't blame JB. Bold is usually fine. [shameful self-promotion]I do it myself sometimes, just go down to the signature and visit my pretty Tai Chi Wordpress blog and you can see how it looks there. [/shameful self-promotion]

Gandhi - Be the change you wish to see in the world

By doing nothing?

"I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. ...

I have always thought that "non-violence" thingie.
Ghandi gave the advice to the jews of ww2 Holocaust to resist peacefully, non-violently demonstrate against the oppression.
But...Well... at least he did something, wrote Hitler a letter to kindly ask him to end the persecutions of the jews, and ended the letter with: "I remain your sincere friend."

[Bao]

In my opinion, your article does a disservice to novice students in their search for a good teacher, the opposite to what you believe you are accomplishing.

I agree very much.

The article is about an ideal that is not completely true to the reality of martial arts. Some things are IMHO just wrong. You won't gain any money in that kind of serious attitude, acting like the students is the most important, or that teaching them anything essential is important.

"Setting a personal example"
Wrong. You need to give the students the feeling that you are the kind of master that no one can be like. You need to be an unreachable ideal, not an "example".

"It is to be expected that any man calling himself a teacher have had at least 4-5 consecutive years studying with his main teacher."
Wrong. You need to give students a short teaching course. Maybe a few days or at most ten days. Then you can CHARGE these students for this course and put them on doing your job without paying them one cent. The younger and less experience, the more you can use them. 4-5 years is too long. Then they can go away and start their own class.

"The dishonest are unfit to be teachers."
Wrong. Honesty is wrong. You don't want to teach simple hands on stuff, things that they can use right away. As a teacher, you need to make the students dress up, pay extra for uniforms, belts and getting diplomas. You must drag out the learning process by teaching forms, forms, forms and a whole lot of other solo work. Never let your student know that martial arts are based on simple ready-to-use principles. You need to make everything hard, strange and put in a spark of mystical glare and speak in riddles. The better you can learn to be a lying lier, the more followers you will have, the longer they will stay and the more money you will earn.

a good teacher should allow the student to politely and appropriately pose questions concerning the art and the teachings in a multitude of ways. Inquisitive minds are to be encouraged.
Wrong. Students should not be allowed to ask anything. This will encourage them to actually "think" and thus to break away from the group, which means that you will loose a fee. You need to develop a sense of hierarchy. If they ask something they must ask the instructor with the rank closest to themselves. And you as a teacher need to encourage all of your instructors to laugh at all questions asked as if they were stupid.

No offence Jonathan, a very well written text as always. But no one can earn a living on teaching martial arts by following your advice.