Quote:
Philip Burgess wrote:
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?
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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...