Quote:
Originally Posted by meguro
I've been following this thread with some interest and was wondering what, besides the perception that a 16 year old sandan is a joke, is the big difference between McDojo and Real Dojo if there are no objective tests? I will not go into techical skills and demonstrations of strength and agility, because such measures are often style/school dependent. What I'm asking is, what if fake "krotty" produced the same positive effects on character, discipline, health, self-esteem, etc. that real karate is supposed to engender?
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the biggest and most dangerous difference IMO is misinformation. it affects the dojo on all levels.
take for instance the promise of a black belt within months to a brand new student with no experience. it cheapens everything the concept stands for. if people continually hear things like that or see a bunch of black belts that havent hit puberty then it could become ill informed common knowledge that black belts arent really that special. people will stop associating the black belts with years of diligent training and service to their style. just read any of Dents posts in this thread to get a better idea of this concept.
or how about what the dojo tells people? first example being the MMA "statistic" that is something along the lines of - 90% of fights go to the ground - which is a false statement intended to lend credence to brazillian jiujitsu being the "strongest" martial art. such definitive statements are foolish to make in regards to fighting but because the MMA community espouses this belief so frequently that the general public accepts it as true. even my Japanese sensei has heard this before and is baffled by it because all his real fights have ended with him in a standing position.
or touching on MMA again, people believe that muay thai is the strongest striking art or that it "has the strongest kicks". again, that doesnt make sense but people accept it as true.
not to mention when an average teacher opens his own school and teaches students on the basis of having "invented his own style". i remember when i wanted to create my own martial art..... i was 9.... when i finally started Judo in high school it only took me a couple weeks of real training to realize that was a foolish concept.
have you ever read a martial arts magazine? they are practically tabloids that obliterate everything we attempt to bestow on people. i was reading one at some point and an ad caught my eye. it was a story about martial artist A, his friend martial artist B, and a mysterious guy, which the story stresses is lanky and not a particularly well endowed specimen, that friend B brought to sparr with the guy A. the story entails a first hand account of a confused martial artist A who cant seem to land a hit on this mysterious guy his friend brought and who is getting pummeled by the mysterious guy, much to the friend Bs delight who is laughing at how many times the mysterious guy is hitting martial artist A. come to find out after the sparring session is over that the mysterious guy landed 4 times as many hits as martial artist A thought he recieved because the mysterious guy IS ACTUALLY A SPEED MASTER!!! AND FOR ONLY THREE EASY PAYMENTS OF 29.95 YOU CAN GET A DVD WITH A DETAILED TRAINING REGIMENT TO INCREASE YOUR SPEED TO NEAR SUPERHUMAN PROPORTIONS!!!! ACT NOW AND YOU CAN GET THE SPEED MASTERS BOOK WITH FACTS ABOUT TRAINING ONLY KNOWN TO HIM!!!!!!!
i could go on and on but i have to go now so ill let you mull over these points for a while.