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G DiPierro · 06-15-2007, 03:57 PM

In any human endeavor, there is always some room for delusion. In games like chess and go, you could delude yourself into thinking you are a good player because you always beat your little brother, but any play at a sanctioned event against officially ranked players should clear that up. Although Kano's idea was a martial art where skill could be quantified as objectively through competition as it is in go, the reality falls a little short. Rank in these competitive arts is usually not based exclusively on competitive results, as it is in board games. Yet the fact that there is a competitive element goes a long way to dispel widespread delusions of grandeur in such arts.

In aikido, there is much more room for mass delusion. The only reason rank in aikido ever manages to approximate anyone's actual relative skill level is because that the leaders of the art know that they must make it seem like the ranking system is a good representation of skill level and accomplishment in aikido in order to get the students to buy into it. Rank is a huge source of political, financial, and other kinds of power for them, and if they were to award it completely based on arbitrary political preferences then too many people would lose respect for it. A lot of thought and effort goes into maintaining the illusion that rank represents skill and achievement in aikido, including all of the ways that dojos and organizations place a great deal of importance on rank, which I mentioned earlier. Although instructors do use their discretion to occasionally hold back an under-performing student or (less frequently) quickly advance an over-performing one to keep people close to where they should be, the primary means of ensuring that rank often approximates actual skill level is the requirement for training a certain number of days in order to qualify to test.

For students of equal ability, training the same number of days will, all other things being equal, usually result in them reaching similar levels of skill, at least close enough to call them the same rank. However, all students are not equal (nor are all teachers, although that's another discussion). For average students, the practice of awarding rank by practice days will result in them being more or less ranked where they should be by an objective measure of skill, but above-average students will tend to be under-ranked while below-average students will tend to be over-ranked.* (see below) This gives the above-average students a disincentive to remain in arts in like aikido, leaving it populated mostly by average and below-average students. While the (even slightly) above-average students who do stay and play the political game will not face as much competition for the higher ranks and accompanying leadership roles when they reach that point, the target audience for the art tends to become the below-average student, who can advance in ways that would be impossible in an art with objective standards of skill. This is one factor in the art becoming increasingly watered-down over time and also one of the reasons why it has such a poor reputation in many martial arts circles.

* To get an idea of how many people would end up properly ranked according to skill using only the training days requirement, let us assume that the gap between each rank as an objective measure of skill is equivalent to one standard deviation in a normal distribution. Only just over 1/3 of all people would have a skill level within half a rank of what their training days qualify them for. Although nearly 70% (two standard deviations) of people who have the days for shodan would be, nominally speaking, properly ranked at level, many of them would be either almost at the nidan level or only barely above the 1-kyu level (by an objective measure of skill). Almost 16% would be at the 2-dan level or above, with an equal number at 1-kyu or below. 2% each would be at 3-dan and 2-kyu, and one person in one thousand would be at the 4-dan level or above and another at the 3-kyu level or below. This does not take into account differences in the requirements of different organizations, but assumes a normal distribution of students within one organization.

06-15-2007, 03:57 PM	#46
G DiPierro Location: Ohio Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 365 Offline	Re: It's not a democracy, I know. In any human endeavor, there is always some room for delusion. In games like chess and go, you could delude yourself into thinking you are a good player because you always beat your little brother, but any play at a sanctioned event against officially ranked players should clear that up. Although Kano's idea was a martial art where skill could be quantified as objectively through competition as it is in go, the reality falls a little short. Rank in these competitive arts is usually not based exclusively on competitive results, as it is in board games. Yet the fact that there is a competitive element goes a long way to dispel widespread delusions of grandeur in such arts. In aikido, there is much more room for mass delusion. The only reason rank in aikido ever manages to approximate anyone's actual relative skill level is because that the leaders of the art know that they must make it seem like the ranking system is a good representation of skill level and accomplishment in aikido in order to get the students to buy into it. Rank is a huge source of political, financial, and other kinds of power for them, and if they were to award it completely based on arbitrary political preferences then too many people would lose respect for it. A lot of thought and effort goes into maintaining the illusion that rank represents skill and achievement in aikido, including all of the ways that dojos and organizations place a great deal of importance on rank, which I mentioned earlier. Although instructors do use their discretion to occasionally hold back an under-performing student or (less frequently) quickly advance an over-performing one to keep people close to where they should be, the primary means of ensuring that rank often approximates actual skill level is the requirement for training a certain number of days in order to qualify to test. For students of equal ability, training the same number of days will, all other things being equal, usually result in them reaching similar levels of skill, at least close enough to call them the same rank. However, all students are not equal (nor are all teachers, although that's another discussion). For average students, the practice of awarding rank by practice days will result in them being more or less ranked where they should be by an objective measure of skill, but above-average students will tend to be under-ranked while below-average students will tend to be over-ranked.* (see below) This gives the above-average students a disincentive to remain in arts in like aikido, leaving it populated mostly by average and below-average students. While the (even slightly) above-average students who do stay and play the political game will not face as much competition for the higher ranks and accompanying leadership roles when they reach that point, the target audience for the art tends to become the below-average student, who can advance in ways that would be impossible in an art with objective standards of skill. This is one factor in the art becoming increasingly watered-down over time and also one of the reasons why it has such a poor reputation in many martial arts circles. * To get an idea of how many people would end up properly ranked according to skill using only the training days requirement, let us assume that the gap between each rank as an objective measure of skill is equivalent to one standard deviation in a normal distribution. Only just over 1/3 of all people would have a skill level within half a rank of what their training days qualify them for. Although nearly 70% (two standard deviations) of people who have the days for shodan would be, nominally speaking, properly ranked at level, many of them would be either almost at the nidan level or only barely above the 1-kyu level (by an objective measure of skill). Almost 16% would be at the 2-dan level or above, with an equal number at 1-kyu or below. 2% each would be at 3-dan and 2-kyu, and one person in one thousand would be at the 4-dan level or above and another at the 3-kyu level or below. This does not take into account differences in the requirements of different organizations, but assumes a normal distribution of students within one organization.