Quote:
Ben White wrote:
In my state you cannot paint a house as a tradesperson if you are not qualified and registered with the master painters association. This is for the protection of the general public from people that are unskilled. The same goes for the Building industry as a whole along with various other trades. I have no issue at all with there being accountability from an Aikido organization for the people that represent it for exactly the same reason.
If someone wishes go out out and get an internet diploma for a set fee that means nothing and hang that on their dojo wall, prospective students have every right to be made well aware that is the case and that this so called qualification is actually fraudulent and should be treated as such. I have no problems of the same standards of recognition that exist in workplaces being maintained in a Dojo setting. There are more than just one parallel between doing a 4 year apprenticeship in a trade and earning a black belt in Aikido or any other recognised Martial Art.
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Even the mere fact that martial arts skill are mentioned as having parallels with any kind of profession or craftsmanship, is just making clearer and clearer that my worries have been right all along. Students are looking for dojos and dojos are looking for customers. And when the customers arrive the teachers do what every good, professional businessman should do: make things "easy" and say what the customer wants to hear in order for him to keep coming back. Not only there are teachers out there who do that by giving the wrong advice about training, nutrition, cross-training(what a bloody mess), weight lifting(even more pathetic) and so on, but also we have people out there now that they advice the beginners to follow those teachers if their...credentials are legitimate and also make sure that they will get such legitimate, recognized ranking promotions themselves in the future in order to make sure that the lame, photocopy (yet professional and recognized by other...photocopies) of a sensei species will never be extinct until we aikido's essence fades into oblivion and nothingness!!
As for teachers with recognition but no ability...I am not talking about a fraud internet recognition. I am talking about a legitimate (in paper) recognition that reflects no skill... Can it get any more "fraud" than that? Who is gonna protect the potential students by these dojos? Well I got my answer in this thread... Nobody! Instead, the majority will keep on advising and pushing them deeper and deeper into this "officially recognized" lie, breeding more generations of "officially recognized" incompetent teachers and then spend the rest of their time wondering what happened to the effectiveness of aikido and if it works or not, in this very forrum...
Pretty, bloody lame...!