And we arrive to the final segment of this topic. So, now I can adequately answer the question that I posed, weeks back: What will martial arts instructions look like, in the future?
Look at the youngest generations you can see in the world around you. What do you notice about their mentalities? What are the marketing geniuses of the world (take your pick of the advertisers and marketers online or on television) doing to reach them? Are you paying attention to subtle changes over time? That's one of the clues to how martial arts can continue to flourish, for certain.
Now, take a look at how our educational systems work, the world over? When you see how different cultures approach it, you get an idea about different angles of the furthering education within their several constructs. And once you see how the most effective systems work, you have a very telling narrative about key elements and their places within the whole. Just as telling are those parts which seem to be failing the people, such as financial and quality issues.
As for the actual dojo, dojang, kwoon or club business methodologies, one needs only look at the news to see how businesses are faring in any given society. That will always tell us what is not working, and what may yet be an option. Still, it beckons back to my earlier points about operating a school as a business.
In my opinion, we have two primary ways to go about the proliferation of true martial arts instruction:
The first one is back to the core method of qualified teachers teaching with direct interaction to pass down the actual art in question. This is the private or semi-private method, wherein the teacher is the actual teacher (and not the CEO, necessarily). That presupposes that he or she is qualified and willing.
The challenge comes when the teacher needs to eat and pay bills. It is not a new thing to have a commercially-viable school for that purpose. I am just saying that when the world (or your society) gets to a place where no one has money to give, what will happen to such schools? The private or semi-private instructor has the option of going with other options to build intrinsic value in the minds of the student, such as bartering or other such payment methods. I am also saying that this path may require freely giving this training to worthy causes or individuals.
Whether of not the teacher incorporates the technology of the day to facilitate that direct training with some level of counseling involved to create the deeper relationship that a teacher and student should have is dependent upon the circumstances. The important thing is the connection that is formulated and formalized between the two of them. Of course, this does not have to be one-to-one, only.
The second way, as I see it, is a systematic one. That could mean by governmental or corporate instigation. It is not a new one, if you think about it. The military in many countries trains fighters in various styles of fighting. In China, students learn one or other style of wushu or tai chi. Some corporations offer (in Japan, I think) compulsory group training in internal martial arts or basic fitness based on internal martial arts.
One of my own missions has always been to teach the youths of inner cities and impoverished areas, and I have taken a few steps along those lines. Community centers and local park centers also provide such opportunities. They are usually under-funded, but one of my goals is to eliminate the need for such red tape by creating sponsorship programs that shoulder whatever minimal costs they are. Of course, the real challenge in such ventures is that the competing programs may see it as a threat to their ability to make money with their own programs. Fair enough. I understand that. Still, it's worth the consideration.
In conclusion, I will say this:
As independent qualified instructors, some of us don't see a way to
further the mission without opening up a traditional (western
traditional) school. That relegates us back to the days of yore when it's either in your garage, the park, a laundry room or the living room. Wherever it takes you, the important thing is the task at hand. That said, I applaud you. If you use the web to teach, be sure to spend some of that time with the
students. This is not a call to socialize training, as the point is not
to create a social club. This is to facilitate appreciation and as a
mentoring apparatus.
If you are just starting off on this journey as a student, and you have found a good instructor with whom you feel that right connection, stay focused on the training from the personal perspective. The proliferation part will occur in its due season. As you progress, keep an eye on the world around you for the best ways to make that impact that you sought to have on your own life. Having a mission will keep you on the right track.
Don't fixate on the setting, as the environment will only serve (in the long run) to enhance your internalization of the training. In other words, you will likely look back and tell your students of your experiences as your instructor did for you. It adds to the magic of the journey. Finally, be consistent. Without this, you may as well youtube your way thru the martial arts. Trust me when I tell you the journey is much more fruitful with a direct connection to your teacher.
The future is up to us all.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Sunday, May 14, 2017
The Future of Martial Arts - Part 4
Up until the 1970's, martial arts were largely taught in closed door schools. It received a bump (in the U.S.) from veterans returning from deployments, then more so when the video age came about in the 1980's. I am oversimplifying, but stay with me. Once the movies could be made and taken home to practice by, the possibilities grew exponentially. Such tools made correspondence lessons more viable.
During the 1990's the internet burst forth as a way to interact and learn, so a few industrious schools took the previous correspondence model to the next level by offering online courses. There are very few that do this with live interaction, which is probably due, in part, to the challenge of bandwidth and scheduling madness. The bulk of their revenue, I'd imagine, came from those sales of physical video or subscription to their downloads and streaming video content.
Even so, the amount of content across the world exploded onto YouTube, making the model almost obsolete. That was especially so in the case of virtual schools which did not have a live interactive element. There are a few that survived, including a couple that seem to have a good operational model in place.
While we are a few technological bounds from Matrix-level education, I think the realistic flow of technological growth would be more about the biological pre-dispositioning side than the plug-in type. After all, we are now awake to the idea of smart drugs that allow us to learn faster. By the time we get to the place where the brain can be force-fed information that the body can readily adapt and assimilate, we will probably have run through the gamut of apps and software that telecom companies and marketing companies can impose on us. In fact, the governments will have already taken the model to a place where we probably should NOT go to, but what are you going to do? We just have to wait for it to filter down to consumer level use.
As for martial arts lessons, I don't see it staying in the standard modus operandi where we go out to the brick and mortar on the school's weekly schedule. Life is too fluid, and each new generation seems less likely to want to adhere to a schedule set by someone else. Likewise, I don't see it being perpetuated in the realm of video playback in any format, in and of itself. It just loses the mentorship angle, which is too important to any real martial artist who can call himself such.
Let's address those before we go on:
Discipline is one of the key elements to learning martial arts or any other art. Keeping a schedule helps to build that discipline, of course. And it fosters the student's ability to create positive habits on his or her own time building the SELF discipline part of the equation. Time invested has the benefit of successful outcome. Life may be fluid, but even wildflowers keep a schedule. Somehow, this has to be ingrained in the mind of the student, even with the systematic resistance to the limitation. The future training model has to address that.
Video playback may seem like a way to further the mission, but while it provides a way of review or even explanation of technique concept, it pales in comparison to face-to-face interaction with a capable teacher. It does solve the problem of proximity (teacher may be too far away, or you may not be able to travel to the local school with regularity), and it works perfectly as a librarian tool and catalog, and beats the heck out of hieroglyphics, to be sure. Still, the limitations are in the lack of interactivity.
We have all seen the Sci-fi movies where the interactive Artificial Intelligence fails in the face of certain existential questions that were not or could not be programmed into it. Makes me laugh, every time, because I get it. Imagine going to a mentor who gets a critical error because of a question not foreseen during programming.
Onward: So the future (just my humble opinion) of martial arts training is not to be locked into either of those two variations, based on those factors. Where CAN it be heading to, in the near future? What model(s) might there be that would maintain the heart of the martial arts while addressing the changing times?
Who knows tech may come about in the next 100 years or so? Who can say if the world going into another war or governmental change won't effect how we are trying to perpetuate the martial arts, now? Will we be allowed to teach or share information online with students across the world in certain countries, let alone travel to them (war changes geography) to share or further knowledge?
I don't know that, but I do know this: Having gone the route of an autodidact, without a teacher for many years; and having trained substantially in the presence of teachers in Japanese, Chinese and Korean disciplines, I understand the difference in how I have been able to appreciate the information I have received. Add to this the time spent in the company of a multitude of other people's masters and students near my own level (some below and many above), and my perspective is broad. Couple that with time spent teaching students at different levels and of different mindsets, and I would say I am just a little more open minded about how we might proceed in the mission of proliferating martial arts.
That is not saying I am more or less awake than any other martial artist. It is simply saying that I know change is afoot. I think I can wrap up this topic in the next entry. For now, I think I have gone into near novel status with this post, so I will bid you a fond see ya' later until then.
As for martial arts lessons, I don't see it staying in the standard modus operandi where we go out to the brick and mortar on the school's weekly schedule. Life is too fluid, and each new generation seems less likely to want to adhere to a schedule set by someone else. Likewise, I don't see it being perpetuated in the realm of video playback in any format, in and of itself. It just loses the mentorship angle, which is too important to any real martial artist who can call himself such.
Let's address those before we go on:
Discipline is one of the key elements to learning martial arts or any other art. Keeping a schedule helps to build that discipline, of course. And it fosters the student's ability to create positive habits on his or her own time building the SELF discipline part of the equation. Time invested has the benefit of successful outcome. Life may be fluid, but even wildflowers keep a schedule. Somehow, this has to be ingrained in the mind of the student, even with the systematic resistance to the limitation. The future training model has to address that.
Video playback may seem like a way to further the mission, but while it provides a way of review or even explanation of technique concept, it pales in comparison to face-to-face interaction with a capable teacher. It does solve the problem of proximity (teacher may be too far away, or you may not be able to travel to the local school with regularity), and it works perfectly as a librarian tool and catalog, and beats the heck out of hieroglyphics, to be sure. Still, the limitations are in the lack of interactivity.
We have all seen the Sci-fi movies where the interactive Artificial Intelligence fails in the face of certain existential questions that were not or could not be programmed into it. Makes me laugh, every time, because I get it. Imagine going to a mentor who gets a critical error because of a question not foreseen during programming.
Onward: So the future (just my humble opinion) of martial arts training is not to be locked into either of those two variations, based on those factors. Where CAN it be heading to, in the near future? What model(s) might there be that would maintain the heart of the martial arts while addressing the changing times?
Who knows tech may come about in the next 100 years or so? Who can say if the world going into another war or governmental change won't effect how we are trying to perpetuate the martial arts, now? Will we be allowed to teach or share information online with students across the world in certain countries, let alone travel to them (war changes geography) to share or further knowledge?
I don't know that, but I do know this: Having gone the route of an autodidact, without a teacher for many years; and having trained substantially in the presence of teachers in Japanese, Chinese and Korean disciplines, I understand the difference in how I have been able to appreciate the information I have received. Add to this the time spent in the company of a multitude of other people's masters and students near my own level (some below and many above), and my perspective is broad. Couple that with time spent teaching students at different levels and of different mindsets, and I would say I am just a little more open minded about how we might proceed in the mission of proliferating martial arts.
That is not saying I am more or less awake than any other martial artist. It is simply saying that I know change is afoot. I think I can wrap up this topic in the next entry. For now, I think I have gone into near novel status with this post, so I will bid you a fond see ya' later until then.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
The Future of Martial Arts - Part 3
Alright, then. (In my Carl de Billy Bob Thornton voice)
So we have explored the issue of age and of character as they relate to martial arts training. Now, let's jump into the universe of technology. After all, it changes the training, the thinking behind the application of techniques, and even creates opportunities to get ahead of impending or potential dangers.
Primitive implementations such as sticks, blades and fisticuffs vary per culture. The mindsets are different, and the advancement of their applications came about as times changed. They gained in effectiveness until they gave way to tools that negated their impact on warfare. Yet, the limbs that wield them are global. The minds that fashioned them and fine-tuned them continue to grow.
The idea of exponential effect increased our reach and power, bringing about faster and more devastating weaponry. This could take our discussion so far as to include weapons of mass destruction, but we will stay on topic by limiting ourselves to that of armed combat on a one-to-one basis. That is not saying that one man cannot destroy or absolutely defend himself against multiple opponents. It does, however, speak to the fact that only one person can only truly battle one person at a time, even as he faces multiples.
Anyway, in this day and age, we learn martial arts in a school that teaches us the basics by drilling in the techniques. We learn to string them together in the form of step-sparring or forms, which leads us deeper into understanding of the concepts that make them effective. Then we stretch that understanding so that we can use our tools or weapons while applying those concepts and techniques even more efficiently.
Here, we see that the technology is closely aligned with the concept to extend the martial artist's abilities into the realm of mastery. But technology gets a bit more complex as we look at the various styles and arts that are available to the average person. Therefore, it stands to reason that one of the things that changes (as far as technology goes) is the method of teaching and learning.
Since the advent of video technology, we have seen a magnitude of instructional videos come onto the market. Of course, there is validity to it as a reference source, and just as there are many who have studied them to improve on skills and understanding, there are those who proclaim themselves to be learned based on the gleaned knowledge. I am not here to judge, one way or the other. In fact, as a young man, it was my desire to have a library of instructional martial arts books that would rival the Smithsonian collection. When video came along, I expanded my library (imaginary, though it was) to include them all.
When I matured, I realized that I would not have been able to study them all well enough to master much of it, at all. Even more importantly, I could not HOPE to afford all the videos that caught my attention as I planned for martial arts supremacy. I have videos that I collected much later in my life, and at a much higher level in my training that I still have not viewed. The fact is that I may never get around to it.
I bear this all in mind whenever I come across a younger martial artist who thinks they need to have all such knowledge that is available. It comes from the older me and the elders who spoke it into my understanding when I tell them it is better to study what you are learning, instead of digging higher. Did you catch that? Digging higher.. That's like taking your shovel and just shoveling the dirt that has already been displaced from the ground, hoping to get deeper. Not going to happen.
Again, there is a place for it. Knowledge is out there to be gained. But the right approach to learning information is to avoid the temptation to gain it all, yet understand very little of what you aspire to learn. The term the older masters often used to describe this is "Mile Wide, Inch Deep."
With this as the basis of my discussion of this subject, let us prepare go more into the speculative side of the matter. In my next entry, we will get to what I hope is the point of this discussion. After all, when we look at where we have been and where it is, currently, some things are evident about the future of martial arts. Right?
So we have explored the issue of age and of character as they relate to martial arts training. Now, let's jump into the universe of technology. After all, it changes the training, the thinking behind the application of techniques, and even creates opportunities to get ahead of impending or potential dangers.
Primitive implementations such as sticks, blades and fisticuffs vary per culture. The mindsets are different, and the advancement of their applications came about as times changed. They gained in effectiveness until they gave way to tools that negated their impact on warfare. Yet, the limbs that wield them are global. The minds that fashioned them and fine-tuned them continue to grow.
The idea of exponential effect increased our reach and power, bringing about faster and more devastating weaponry. This could take our discussion so far as to include weapons of mass destruction, but we will stay on topic by limiting ourselves to that of armed combat on a one-to-one basis. That is not saying that one man cannot destroy or absolutely defend himself against multiple opponents. It does, however, speak to the fact that only one person can only truly battle one person at a time, even as he faces multiples.
Anyway, in this day and age, we learn martial arts in a school that teaches us the basics by drilling in the techniques. We learn to string them together in the form of step-sparring or forms, which leads us deeper into understanding of the concepts that make them effective. Then we stretch that understanding so that we can use our tools or weapons while applying those concepts and techniques even more efficiently.
Here, we see that the technology is closely aligned with the concept to extend the martial artist's abilities into the realm of mastery. But technology gets a bit more complex as we look at the various styles and arts that are available to the average person. Therefore, it stands to reason that one of the things that changes (as far as technology goes) is the method of teaching and learning.
Since the advent of video technology, we have seen a magnitude of instructional videos come onto the market. Of course, there is validity to it as a reference source, and just as there are many who have studied them to improve on skills and understanding, there are those who proclaim themselves to be learned based on the gleaned knowledge. I am not here to judge, one way or the other. In fact, as a young man, it was my desire to have a library of instructional martial arts books that would rival the Smithsonian collection. When video came along, I expanded my library (imaginary, though it was) to include them all.
When I matured, I realized that I would not have been able to study them all well enough to master much of it, at all. Even more importantly, I could not HOPE to afford all the videos that caught my attention as I planned for martial arts supremacy. I have videos that I collected much later in my life, and at a much higher level in my training that I still have not viewed. The fact is that I may never get around to it.
I bear this all in mind whenever I come across a younger martial artist who thinks they need to have all such knowledge that is available. It comes from the older me and the elders who spoke it into my understanding when I tell them it is better to study what you are learning, instead of digging higher. Did you catch that? Digging higher.. That's like taking your shovel and just shoveling the dirt that has already been displaced from the ground, hoping to get deeper. Not going to happen.
Again, there is a place for it. Knowledge is out there to be gained. But the right approach to learning information is to avoid the temptation to gain it all, yet understand very little of what you aspire to learn. The term the older masters often used to describe this is "Mile Wide, Inch Deep."
With this as the basis of my discussion of this subject, let us prepare go more into the speculative side of the matter. In my next entry, we will get to what I hope is the point of this discussion. After all, when we look at where we have been and where it is, currently, some things are evident about the future of martial arts. Right?
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