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Old 11-19-2008, 04:57 PM   #72
Voitokas
 
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Re: Another harassment question

Quote:
Philip Burgess wrote: View Post
I think we really need to move on to the issues of does a unhappy student have the right to change the dojo if he or she is unhappy with the sensei and how the sensei runs things. Can students mutiny?
That is an interesting question, and one that probably deserves its own thread. How accountable is a teacher to that teacher's students and their perception of the sensei's teaching methods and personality?

And assumptions about sex and gender of teachers and students would also be a really interesting thread - it's something I think about often, not because I've seen victims or monsters or pitchfork-waving peasants; rather, because I think that I have seen signs of both female and male aikidoka sometimes discounting the value of a female teacher's aikido, or being more reluctant to work with a female rather than male aikidoka of unknown skill at a seminar.

While these two themes certainly inform the discussion of the main topic of this thread (more than I had thought at the beginning!), I'm not sure that they are the main points. From my reading, anyway, it seems like the main questions are: how can one gauge the impropriety of an instructor's behaviour; with whom does the responsibility for addressing this behaviour lie and how should it be done; how much and in what ways is it okay for one student to interpose themselves in another student's problems with a dojo, dojocho, or instructor, and finally, I guess, when do you leave a dojo where you feel uncomfortable if there is no alternative place to practise?

Those other threads would be good, too, though.... maybe I'll start one...

I am not an expert