GJEC
10-15-2011, 06:05 PM
Received this today via email.
Especially like the bit (my highlight) in red:
WE ARE NOT A BLACK BELT SCHOOL.
“We are Not a Black Belt School” is the perfect (and appropriate) backlash to the last two decades of crass commercialization and watering down / lowering of standards for the rank of “black belt,” in
general, in the “martial arts industry.”
It all started with the martial arts schools of the 1960’s and ‘70’s looking for ways to
sell lessons. They ended up being influenced by and modeling how dance lessons were being
sold --and we became an industry that sold untaught lessons in longer and longer courses (buy
6 months, buy 100 lessons, buy a year, buy 3 years, shoot, here’s a 10 year course!).
We named them after the belt colors people could earn by training for whatever period of time
they signed up for (bought). There was the Gold Belt Course, then The Purple Belt Course, and
so on. The big fat carrot? The Black Belt course or Club (of course, that wasn’t enough, as we’re
Americans! The “BBC” was followed by the Master Club, The Grandmaster Club, The
Leadership Course, etc.). The courses very often had little or nothing to do with actual talent or
education, but a whole lot to do with the process of packaging lessons for sale.
And truthfully, for some school owners and students, it worked. People joined and paid for these
courses, saw the training through, and “graduated” with some fine skills. However, in far (FAR)
too many cases, people started getting sent to collection agencies because they stopped paying
for long courses they were no longer attending (and often for good reasons) --and worst of all,
many schools felt pressure to graduate people up the ranks, despite the fact that students
didn’t have “black belt” levels of skill.
I mean, how can you sell the Black Belt Club to prospective members when nobody ever earns
a black belt? Will little Johnny’s Mom and Dad shell out $5,000 for a course where students
never graduate? Nope. And friends, there were --and still are (I’ve heard) --schools out there
marketing and selling $5,000 and even $10,000 black belt courses to kids.
It’s my guess that these schools would point out the benefits of being a black belt, but I know all
too well, from actually sitting in seminars and meetings by schools like this, that the real goal is
to “get that gross (income) up.” I’ve heard a leader of a big chain of schools declare that he
knew for a fact that students were not going to stick around, so their plan was to "get as much
money as they can, as fast as they can." For real.
The Black Belt Club and “We Are a Black Belt School” has become synonymous with billing companies, high-pressure sales, big contracts, “paid-in-fulls” (the Holy Grail of the strip-mall karate school, a “PIF” means the teacher scored payment in full for a long term course), bogus “membership upgrades,” and situations like I personally witnessed last year when I watched a 10 year old (?) third-degree black belt perform that I swear to you shouldn't have been wearing a green belt. I was shocked speechless --but simply smiled and played the good guest (I was, after all, a guest at this teacher’s school, and I know for a fact that he didn’t promote that young man out of purposeful negligence, but because of, well...some other factors that I am, at the moment, unable to intelligently and objectively express).
We are NOT a Black Belt School! I love it! It’s the Adbuster’s Black Spot campaign for the martial arts world. We owe a nod of thanks, by the way, to the Brazilians, for only graduating jiu jitsu black belts who are actually black belts --and for not allowing kids under the age of 18 (or is it 21?) to wear the rank.We are NOT a Black Belt School! The Rebel Yell of martial arts teachers taking the martial arts back from the hands of dance studio operators and other opportunists. We are (NOT) a Black Belt School! It was, for a short time in the 80's, a smart thing, maybe even a good thing. Today, it's an embarrasment.
Maybe, someday, the black belt will come, once again, to represent something valuable and honorable, instead of a sales gimmick and a tool for greed.
Gary
Especially like the bit (my highlight) in red:
WE ARE NOT A BLACK BELT SCHOOL.
“We are Not a Black Belt School” is the perfect (and appropriate) backlash to the last two decades of crass commercialization and watering down / lowering of standards for the rank of “black belt,” in
general, in the “martial arts industry.”
It all started with the martial arts schools of the 1960’s and ‘70’s looking for ways to
sell lessons. They ended up being influenced by and modeling how dance lessons were being
sold --and we became an industry that sold untaught lessons in longer and longer courses (buy
6 months, buy 100 lessons, buy a year, buy 3 years, shoot, here’s a 10 year course!).
We named them after the belt colors people could earn by training for whatever period of time
they signed up for (bought). There was the Gold Belt Course, then The Purple Belt Course, and
so on. The big fat carrot? The Black Belt course or Club (of course, that wasn’t enough, as we’re
Americans! The “BBC” was followed by the Master Club, The Grandmaster Club, The
Leadership Course, etc.). The courses very often had little or nothing to do with actual talent or
education, but a whole lot to do with the process of packaging lessons for sale.
And truthfully, for some school owners and students, it worked. People joined and paid for these
courses, saw the training through, and “graduated” with some fine skills. However, in far (FAR)
too many cases, people started getting sent to collection agencies because they stopped paying
for long courses they were no longer attending (and often for good reasons) --and worst of all,
many schools felt pressure to graduate people up the ranks, despite the fact that students
didn’t have “black belt” levels of skill.
I mean, how can you sell the Black Belt Club to prospective members when nobody ever earns
a black belt? Will little Johnny’s Mom and Dad shell out $5,000 for a course where students
never graduate? Nope. And friends, there were --and still are (I’ve heard) --schools out there
marketing and selling $5,000 and even $10,000 black belt courses to kids.
It’s my guess that these schools would point out the benefits of being a black belt, but I know all
too well, from actually sitting in seminars and meetings by schools like this, that the real goal is
to “get that gross (income) up.” I’ve heard a leader of a big chain of schools declare that he
knew for a fact that students were not going to stick around, so their plan was to "get as much
money as they can, as fast as they can." For real.
The Black Belt Club and “We Are a Black Belt School” has become synonymous with billing companies, high-pressure sales, big contracts, “paid-in-fulls” (the Holy Grail of the strip-mall karate school, a “PIF” means the teacher scored payment in full for a long term course), bogus “membership upgrades,” and situations like I personally witnessed last year when I watched a 10 year old (?) third-degree black belt perform that I swear to you shouldn't have been wearing a green belt. I was shocked speechless --but simply smiled and played the good guest (I was, after all, a guest at this teacher’s school, and I know for a fact that he didn’t promote that young man out of purposeful negligence, but because of, well...some other factors that I am, at the moment, unable to intelligently and objectively express).
We are NOT a Black Belt School! I love it! It’s the Adbuster’s Black Spot campaign for the martial arts world. We owe a nod of thanks, by the way, to the Brazilians, for only graduating jiu jitsu black belts who are actually black belts --and for not allowing kids under the age of 18 (or is it 21?) to wear the rank.We are NOT a Black Belt School! The Rebel Yell of martial arts teachers taking the martial arts back from the hands of dance studio operators and other opportunists. We are (NOT) a Black Belt School! It was, for a short time in the 80's, a smart thing, maybe even a good thing. Today, it's an embarrasment.
Maybe, someday, the black belt will come, once again, to represent something valuable and honorable, instead of a sales gimmick and a tool for greed.
Gary