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Old 07-04-2012, 08:42 PM   #23
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Shouldn't we be responsible?

Quote:
Chris Knight wrote: View Post
Don't teachers have a duty of care to inform students that basically they aren't studying an art with a martial context and that the lessons learned, some of which may be portrayed as "useful" body movements on the "street TM", may just lead the student down the proverbial "delusional lane."
Well, no, they don't -- but I think you're really talking about a moral obligation, and not a legal obligation such as duty of care. As for whether they have a moral obligation, would you really expect that some knucklehead who promotes his martial art as being useful for "street self-defense" would feel such an obligation? As far as I'm concerned, if you even use the term "street self-defense" with a straight face, you should just get the forehead tattoo that says "BUFFOON". That goes whether you're a fraud trying to sell people on "street self-defense" or a fool trying to find it/buy it.

Since you used the phrase "duty of care", you're no doubt also aware of other concepts like a patient refusing care and acting against medical advice. When that happens, what do you do? You don't tackle them and force them to do the sensible thing, you try to help them and if your help's not wanted, you step back and let them do what they're going to do. People frequently don't want to do the thing that will help them, you know, and they frequently don't want to hear the unvarnished truth. People walk around with their ideas and their agendas, looking for confirmation of what they want to believe and frequently ignoring explicit information to the contrary.
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