Quote:
Originally posted by Shaolin-Do
I could care less what happened to them in the past. People are in different places at different times in their lives, and make poor choices often times. We hope that these people learn from their mistakes, and a good majority of them do. IMO it would be better to meet the person and see what they are about. I have enough confidence in my compitence to martial arts to be able to tell wheather or not its hogwash.
"Could be a good tool for potential students"
You mean researching people who come to you wanting to learn?
An invasion of privacy IMO. As I said before, people make mistakes. Its your duty as a teacher to help point them in the right direction.
I didn't mean researching students, I was talking about researching someone you would potentially study with. These things are open records, and there are reasons they are open records. I could care less if someone had a public intoxication charge 10 years ago. What I'm talking about are those people who are violent felons or whatever. Are you so confident in your abilities that you can tell the good people from the bad people? People put on a show all the time to hide their past. And their past shouldn't always be a deciding factor, but to be honest, if I know someone has been a persistent felon, and the person I'm thinking of was in trouble as little as a year ago and is back teaching, I don't think I would want to study with them. I certainly wouldn't want my kids going to them.