Ask your teacher

[johnwang]

I have seen so many threads in other forums that people ask some basic questions (such as how to generate punching power, ...), instead of giving that person some meaningful suggestion, someone may just say. "Go to ask your teacher." It's a correct suggestion and there is no question about that. But if every question will be ended with "ask your teacher" then there is no need for any online discussion. Everytime a question is asked, the forum can automatically generate an E-mail and send to that person such as, "Ask your teacher for your question." The thread is then deleted.

If someone asks a question on the internet as simple as "How to generate punching power?" What will be your answer?

- Go to ask your teacher.
- Go to **** yourself.
- How long have you trained? How old are you? Are you male or female? How much do you weight? Are you democrate or republican? ...
- If you send me $20, I'll send you my advice.
- You should try this and that ...

What's the value of any forum that does not encourage people to ask questions? Do you think some people may be afraid to get into legal issue by giving advice on the internet? What's your opinion on this?

[WongYing]

John, good points , however after a while I think those that have been here for a while, get tired of the same old questions from newbies. As you quite rightly say forums are here for discussion and sharing of information.

Maybe it might be worthwhile if the MOD's here are up to it, doing a Frequently asked questions page, that covers all the various types of general questions as you outlined in your post.

Could be done in categories, Fist and Hand skills, Kicking skills, stance methods, throwing skills, Lin Gung training skills. Might make a very nice resource in general. Anyone could post thier own view or perspective if they so choose.

[wiesiek]

mistery is sexy and easy to sell
if
you only mistery is: do it 10. 000 times
and then rep.
you not going to make lot of bucks from sellin` it
BUT
of course, sending $20 my account will be nice
even if only 1% of active net users will do it

[wiesiek]

Wong
goin`follow you,
it will be "on line e-book", or" IMA Wikipedia"
so
on Goods sake
how we will be able to make money on the new MAs books of ours??!!

on serious side
internet forums are for honest and free exchange of info/knowledge
this is what my stupid old fashioned minds tels me

[Juan]

I have seen so many threads in other forums that people ask some basic questions (such as how to generate punching power, ...), instead of giving that person some meaningful suggestion, someone may just say. "Go to ask your teacher." It's a correct suggestion and there is no question about that. But if every question will be ended with "ask your teacher" then there is no need for any online discussion. Everytime a question is asked, the forum can automatically generate an E-mail and send to that person such as, "Ask your teacher for your question." The thread is then deleted.

If someone asks a question on the internet as simple as "How to generate punching power?" What will be your answer?

- Go to ask your teacher.
- Go to **** yourself.
- How long have you trained? How old are you? Are you male or female? How much do you weight? Are you democrate or republican? ...
- If you send me $20, I'll send you my advice.
- You should try this and that ...

What's the value of any forum that does not encourage people to ask questions? Do you think some people may be afraid to get into legal issue by giving advice on the internet? What's your opinion on this?

I totally agree. This is a martial arts forum and things of that nature should be discussed. Even repeat threads may be useful as someone may have gained new insight into a techinique that they can share with others.

[dragontigerpalm]

I have seen so many threads in other forums that people ask some basic questions (such as how to generate punching power, ...), instead of giving that person some meaningful suggestion, someone may just say. "Go to ask your teacher." It's a correct suggestion and there is no question about that. But if every question will be ended with "ask your teacher" then there is no need for any online discussion. Everytime a question is asked, the forum can automatically generate an E-mail and send to that person such as, "Ask your teacher for your question." The thread is then deleted.

If someone asks a question on the internet as simple as "How to generate punching power?" What will be your answer?

- Go to ask your teacher.
- Go to **** yourself.
- How long have you trained? How old are you? Are you male or female? How much do you weight? Are you democrate or republican? ...
- If you send me $20, I'll send you my advice.
- You should try this and that ...

What's the value of any forum that does not encourage people to ask questions? Do you think some people may be afraid to get into legal issue by giving advice on the internet? What's your opinion on this?

I totally agree. This is a martial arts forum and things of that nature should be discussed. Even repeat threads may be useful as someone may have gained new insight into a techinique that they can share with others.

+1 and well stated

[Chris McKinley]

John,

Excellent question. While being reluctant to answer repeat questions from noobs is a real frustration, it's not enough to explain the phenomenon. Much of it is simply cultural. In fact, often the student does not even bother to ask for the information in the first place. They just think to themselves, "I'll ask my teacher what I should think about this."

Sadly, people who begin a study of CMA in the West often buy into the entire package, including the cultural beliefs that the individual matters little, it's the style/system/teacher that's important, and that the student should show unwavering loyalty and gratitude to the teacher for having pity on the otherwise worthless students by deigning to teach them. Even when these beliefs aren't being explicitly expressed, the attitude they generate is almost always present, and eventually it seeps into the beliefs of the students also. One sees the very same phenomenon in university culture among those who spend more than just a few years steeped in that culture.

As the student absorbs more and more of these beliefs and attitudes, a learned helplessness occurs and the student no longer defaults to thinking for himself, reactively turning to the teacher for the answer to all martial questions and, just as importantly, opinions. Through this mechanism, the teacher's beliefs are propagated through generations of students, each learning to assume that the teacher has all final answers on everything that has to do with combat. Through this dependency, the teacher's opinions begin to take on an undeserved status of infallibility. The fact that no one questions his opinions furthers that likelihood.

Even with such a medium of mass information transfer as the internet provides, a surprisingly small volume of new information is considered, evaluated and absorbed by many if not most posters because of the "Ask your teacher" cultural belief and practice. Even though it is never explicitly mentioned, students must understand that if they truly wish to think for themselves as the new default setting, they will face cultural backlash for doing so and for bucking the system. Some of this backlash will be from the teacher, but the belief/practice is so pervasive that most of it will come from fellow students and practitioners.

[Bhassler]

I would throw two factors into the "cultural phenomena" category:
1) Cultural elements that are native to one culture and are basically taken as given in their home often carry a greater weight in a new culture. For example, I read an article that suggested that American Aikidoka were more violent than their Japanese counterparts based on the fact that Americans more often cited fighting as an element of Aikido, never considering that in a culture where Samurai were a prominent historical presence and armed and unarmed close quarter combat are strong cultural influences that the fighting aspects of Aikido would be taken as a given, whereas in America close quarter combat has never been a significant part of our cultural identity, having always relied upon guns to do most of our killing. Similarly, the natural cultural disposition towards ethnocentrism on a micro and macro scale (My kung fu is the best!) combined with a more culturally regimented social structure becomes interpreted in our culture as a mandate for loyalty outside the norm in the west, whereas that same loyalty in the originating cultures would be applied to fighting, cooking, sewing, employment, etc.

2) Fighting is simple. Even the esoteric stuff is really not that difficult, but the breakdown comes with the fact that very few people have the tools to accurately describe to another person (or even themselves) what's going on beneath the surface. So vague terms are applied and take on a mysterious quality due to imprecision. In short, people know what they're doing well enough to use it and occasionally they get lucky and manage to convey it to a student (who also gets lucky and just guesses at the right interpretation), but they don't really understand it to the level they can put it in language-- or looked at another way, they understand martial art but not communication.

The flip side of this coin would be the people (and there are several of them on this board) who mistakenly believe that because they cannot describe it or haven't had it described to them in words they understand that it must not exist. One side believes because they don't know the words that it is indescribable, and the other side thinks that since they don't know the words it doesn't exist. The issue is further clouded by the fact that people by their nature will TRY to put it in words, and some of the people who have invested the most work in doing so cannot agree on terminology well enough to have a decent conversation.

[Chris McKinley]

Very salient points, Brian. The "Ask your teacher" thing also ensures that, instead of hashing out the miscommunication to find commonality of interpretation, a given teacher's way of describing something gets parroted mindlessly down the generations, with no motivation to attempt to clarify the description with objective terminology.

[johnwang]

If your teacher is a SC guy and you ask him how to do a spin back kick, he may not be able give you a good answer. In Chinese sometime we said, "It may be better to visit your old frield then to look for a new teacher". Your "old" friend will help you whatever that he can. Your "new" teacher may only show you something if you have paid him enough money.

[Chris McKinley]

Not sure exactly what that means in context, John. In today's environment, if your teacher can't show you how to do something to your satisfaction, you can fairly easily find someone who can. Are you going to have to pay them? Probably, but you will be paying what everyone else pays as a standard fee for instruction. Gone are the days where a teacher can extort unreasonable amounts of money from a student without providing good information just because that teacher doesn't like the way someone looks. IOW, it's not the overwhelming seller's market that it used to be.

If a given teacher wants to pull some unethical, perhaps even illegal, shenanigans with unwitting students by asking them to pay a lot more than they should for information and then maybe not even give that information, the student can just tell him to piss in the wind and walk down the street to a place that does do business ethically. No need to talk to old friends.

[H2O]

I've never gotten the 'ask your teacher' thing either. If you don't want to answer a question for the hundredths time, don't. I don't see a need to post a spiteful, smart ass reply though. We were all over enthusiastic beginners who had no idea what was going on at one time or another.

[C.J.Wang]

I feel that it's impossible for a teacher who is an expert in throwing, hitting, kicking, locking, and ground fighting; he or she is always going to excel in a certain area and be weaker in others. So to me, it's necessary to seek outside sources of instruction when your teacher isn't familiar with the skill you want to learn.

[johnwang]

If you don't want to answer a question for the hundredths time, don't.

It could be worse. Someone could response as:

- Encouraging someone to try out something on their own is very irresponsible.
- Your suggestion could get him killed in the street.
- Don't take advice from people on the internet.
- ...

The worst one that I have seen so far is:

- Your opinion is shit.

There will be nothing that you can do after that unless you want to "argue" with that person for the next 300 posts. May be you don't mind to argue but it's beyond the subject of the original discussion any way.

[chimerical tortoise]

If I have a concern like "what happens if someone has a knife" and I don't know anyone that could answer that (imho very honestly, my sifu does not claim to teach you defense against a knife), at the very least I can ask for directions on where I might look into that inquiry. At the best I might find someone that I can meet with irl and learn more than just knowing that certain methods exist.

But otherwise at a certain extent we can get nowhere when talking online, because what we are doing is body movement and not writing essays. 文無第一，武無第二。

The difficulty is you don't see the person asking the question. I could very well be a tentacled bird with twenty different eyeballs mostly on my posterior plumage asking you how to punch properly, and it would be hard no matter how skilled you are to gauge what you can say to help out. I think that on this, people should be more curious and say what they think or want to know more about, (i.e. do you have tentacles for limbs and eyeballs on your posterior? ah, well don't punch like that then because that method is used for people with arms and legs and facial eyeballs.) because the only risk is cracked ego and miscommunication.

Obviously I'm still silly, because I still believe that everyone is trying to learn about the same things, just with differences of self-delusion (or chosen ways of interpreting) that make things difficult; I'm also young and poor in skill so it's not like my opinion is worth that much.