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[Shaolin-Drunk]

I am offended as a shaolin dough "customer"!

That is only pouring salt on the SD wound!

Is that how all of the SD schools think of us as consumers?!! But isn't enough you all come around with these "OPEN HAND" (And I mean that in a begging way,"send money even if you can't attend") seminars expecting us blind patrons to empty our pockets to learn a form that we will learn later down the road when we are finally considered worthy of being called a "student"??

C'mon, give me a break..

[Serpent]

Once again, meecer. Once again.

You're bloody priceless, mate.

[CaptinPickAxe]

I think Shaolin-Do is for form collectors and people who like to give money away. I learned jack-**** at shaolin-do. Wait...I take that back. I learn how to do the horse stance wrong, that Sin The' can kick the corner of a stone pillar full force and not break his leg, and that "you should bite out pressure points when grappling". ****e! Excuse me while I vomit.

The true colors of the Sifu's are showing. I think Judge Pen is the only respectable SDer. It makes me sick that people can exploit peoples weakness and lack of knowledge as a chance to suck the lining out of their pockets. Peh!

[David Jamieson]

From what I've seen, I don't know why anyone would want to collect sd forms LOL

I would rather collect cool forms if i was gonna collect forms.

in relation to rads comment regarding closed door and other students.

a closed door student is someone who is given a complete style in the hopes they willl be yet another link in the lineage and carry the art forward.

most people don't get this sort of training for a couple of reasons:

a) they don't want it

b) the teacher is picky

c) there is some funky cosmology tied to the lineage IE "there can be only 5"

d) they don't stick around long enough to get advanced training

e) the end of the road happened and there is nothing left to do but move on

f) any number of other reasons

As an aside, meecer, i would say that you take a remarkably elitist attitude towards your fellows. lol especially considering that your art ain't all that elite in the grand scheme of chinese martial arts.

in fact, i don't even think sd is chinese martial arts, never mind that it is not shaolin. but that is an argument that you and other sd-ers will never stop hearing no matter how much cotton you stick in your ears and sing at the top of your lungs "lalalalalalalalalalalalalala...I'm not listening!!! I"m NOT LISTENING!!!!!!"LALALALALALALAAL"


hahahahaha.

[themeecer]

Originally posted by The Willow Sword
man i wish that i could post this to the uhh "customers" at your school.

No need, I tell them this up front.

Does this tick you off? I don't care. They have not shown themselves ready to be students yet. I spend a lot of time turning them from customers into students, though. And for $30 a month, it really doesn't take that much to be a customer. Being a customer is not a bad thing ..... 80% of our students are 'customers.' A lot of the training at blackbelt and higher would run off most of our customers. For example, the first time they felt the sting of the 'rope' against their back in our weight jacket training class and they would hit the door. Our iron shin training would run off the remaining bit.

If my use of the word 'customer' bothers you, for one I've already said I don't care, secondly 'customer' doesn't mean we are raking in lots of cash from them. We've had customers that haven't paid a single cent to take classes. Our classes are ran like a family. I would stand in front of anyone who tried to hurt one of our own. I care about them deeply. I am not paid a single cent to teach classes and that doesn't bother me. I do it because I love the art and I love teaching others the art.

[CaptinPickAxe]

So, meec, are you trying to be an business man or a sifu?

[themeecer]

Neither, being a sensei.

I edited my above post .. as you can probably see. I am not in it for the money. I make no money from it.

[Radhnoti]

My teacher has asked disruptive and/or violent people to leave and not return. At least one made it to brown belt before he got really arrogant and showed his cruel streak. He never made black belt at our school, he was asked to leave...and supposedly no other shaolin-do teacher taught him without a recommendation from his old teacher. At the time, my teacher was only teaching for free...so I suppose I couldn't really call him a customer, but I understand themeecer's terminology very well. Everything up to black is not just teaching the basic curriculum, it's an evaluation.

CaptinPickAxe - "I mean as opposed to treating them as customers, they should treat them as potential students."

I don't see any SDer saying anywhere that they don't treat customers as potential students. The two are not mutually exclusive. Most places are VERY good to their customers, offering them as much for their money as possible to encourage their return. But, make no mistake, in shaolin-do everything picks up after black and to get to black you have to meet some requirements. Sorry if that shatters your image of SD as some money raking scam, but that's been my experience.

[Ralphie]

IME at SD, I found the black belts to be just as poor as the lower belts. They were just more agressive, but did not nec. have the skill. There were a few tough guys that were black belts, though. However that was their nature, not nec. their training. So, and it may be at just the school I went to, besides being in a little better condition there was not a gaping skill difference between a yellow belt and a 2nd or 3rd degree black belt. By the time I was a blue belt there I was tooling some of the sneidly black belts. Also, and this may be because of teaching or the lower student seen as a $, but the upper belts had horrible basics. I know one SD guy who almost killed 2 guys at the annual SD black belt sparring sessions, because they never learned how to properly protect themselves. He went a little too hard, and sent both guys to the hospital, one each in consecutive years. Luckily, there was an emt on both occasions during the sparring matches. One guy had to be resuscitated, and the other guy had blood gushing out of his ears. He had to have a titanium plate put in his head.
I think that the guys back east are better, but as an old SD guy said to me recently "it's still SD, and they still struggle to make that **** work".

[Vash]

That ain't cool. I can say that, from experience, Black Belt, 1st degree and up, MUST have EXCELLENT control. Indeed, there is the "need" to show just how bad@$$ you be, but injuring a LOWER RANK is never called for.

But, maybe I'm biased. Been out for over a year now 'cuz some dude didn't have enough control. And this was in a style that claims to be karate

[Evad]

In a lot of ways I totally agree with what Ralphie and Vash just said. And I'm a little late in posting this but here it goes just for the record of my worthless two cents...

I'm going to try to explain our definition of a 'customer.' It is not the same thing as someone who shops at wal-mart.

First of all we do not treat our students like they are customers in the sense of thank you for your money here's a form, go spar unsupervised with your buddies, NEXT.....

We all fall into the three main catagoriesof masters, desciples, and students, but I would venture to describe a fourth catagory of student. And that would be the 'customers.' I'm sure everyone on this board has had one at some point.

You know the parents that drop off the kids at the day care karate school that are TOTALLY not interested in karate, they hit and miss class and don't care about anything you have to teach? We respect them just the same when they do show up to class, but they'll miss like three weeks out of a month, and then the parents come in for once and want to make an issue out of the fact that their kids don't have their belt yet, and don't know any karate, they want their money back blah blah blah

Or we've had the guy who is all gung ho about all the training and wants the hard core stuff, but then always has something wrong with him so he can't train with everyone. "My knee hurts.....I sprained my ankle......I have a headache.....etc for OH about 1yr and after all that time still doesn't know anything but wants his rank just the same. Goes to a different school and know it all.

Basically a customer is anyone that takes your time as an instructor away from someone who is sincerely interested in learning. We give them the same respect and interest as we do everyone, but they can disrupt the class by being selfish or uninterested. Sometimes they make four classes in five months and then complain about not getting enough material or getting left behind by the people they started with, or we're a biased dojo because they spent all this money and time and didn't learn anything.

A student though is a very precious thing to have and not to be taken lightly. We're responsible as teachers to provide a good example of what we teach, and part of that is acknowledging that as much as we'd like, we simply can't force ALL the students to be equal. Some will excel, others will quit, some will excel and quit go somewhere else.

'Customers' are shopping for something do, and expect to be treated as 'customers.' Students are searching for something bigger than themselves, are hungry for knowledge, and when they're ready, the teacher will appear.

As hard as it is to find a good credible style taught by a good credible teacher, it's 10,000 times that hard for a teacher to find a good student.

To be a good teacher, there has to be something there to teach. Not something that is searching for another 'thang' to add to their list of things they've done. We don't like people who come to the school to be customers, we want hard working sincere students. And we treat all prospects with equal care and attention. I'm positive all of our instructors appreciate our dedication, loyalty, and hard work.

The point is for me personally I don't expect anyone back to our school until they get their black belt/sash, because I know that at that point they are most likely going to be there again next week to learn, they understand that the journey never ends. Before black belt/sash it's my responsibility as a teacher to lead by example and make the journey something worthwhile so that they will be back next week until they get their black belt/sash. I always try to make it worth their time to be at class, cause they may quit at any moment, heck they may even find some nasty things said about our style on a forum or something....who knows.....

[John Dufresne]

I can personally understand the points being made. I had quite a few large schools over the years and frankly, I got burned out teaching students that were not interested in learning- My teacher told me along time ago that "there is no such thing as a bad teacher, only bad students"; I didnt get his point at the time. As the years went by I understand more of what he meant. As a student we are incharge of what we learn and who we learn it from.
Humility gains Knowlege
Knowlege gains Wisdom
and Wisdom gains Understanding.

It is impossable to force feed students. It kills me when a student want to convince me how much he wants to learn. They spend so much time each class explaining to me of their intention to gain knowlege. Today in my life, I choose to teach a few-not the masses- its much easier on me and my students can digest more- however I expect alot in return. If I teach something they are required to digest it by practise and time.
If they do not -its obvious, and the information stops. When I had to pay my rent , phone bill, elect. ect... it become easy for us as teachers to compromise our standard. to except a student just because be pays the bills- I found myself becomming everything I hated. That is why I personally have retracted to a smaller class, with very little overhead. Students that are a joy to work with and they honor me by their development.

Sincerely
Sifu John Dufresne

[David Jamieson]

Instead of being their sensei, be their Sifu. It might make a difference in their training.

It would certainly make a huge difference in "his" perspective.
So much so he would likely leave the sd corporation for corporate incorporation of incorporated martial arts incorporated.

[Judge Pen]

Ralphie and I have discuseed in PMs the differences in our experiences training in SD. I respect where he is coming from. While 'customer' isn't the term I would chosen, I think Evad explained how it was meant to be taken admirable.

When I started in SD, there were 35 white belts in my group. (that's a large number considering the area I grew up; there were only 96 people in my graduating high school class and I lived in the county seat). 3 and 1/2 years later two of us tested for black. I was singled out early as a good student that was going to make it if I kept up with my practice. I hear you guys say, 'well that's just natural ability and not the SD training.' It was some natural ability, sure, but I wasn't the most physically gifted person in my group and I never will be. At the time I was a c o cky aggressve kid who worked hard. I didn't shy away from hard training or aggressive sparring. In fact, I was too aggressive and my teacher made a point to teach my humility and CONTROL. That was the biggest thing he impressed upon me as a martial artist.

My teacher wasn't "in the business." He was independently wealthy in the natural gas business. He only charged $20 a month and taught one night a week. He invited me and another student to train with him personally one other night a week. He built me up and broke me down at the same time. He made me a better person and a better martial artist.

My current teachers are also excellent. They force me to grow and get better. They know my strengths and weaknesses and tailor my training to the maximum benefit. If the former SD students here have had bad experiences with their instruction, then I feel sorry for them. I am only the sum effort of my teachers, and all the natural ability in the world wouldn't have made me who I am today.

The moral of this story: Whether its SD or any other art, you will only be as good as your teachers. We all know that some students will come and some will go and only a very small % of them will get what you are teaching. You teach for thoses students, but its the transitional students that allow you to keep your doors open.

[Bluesman]

Sifu John,
You have made an observation that escapes most schools. To have a large school you have to cater to what most want which is not what most instructors want. It is more of a commitment then the majority of the population will give. So you have to lower your standards or have smaller classes. Of course a good teacher can inspire the students to achieve to their potential but most have what they think is a life and will only devote a set amount of time to practice. Make class too hard and you will lose some students, too easy and you cheat others.
I had a small club in the mid/late '80s and offered to teach for free a class on Saturdays that would involve conditioning and going over the basics. Out of my 23 students only one showed up. The others did not want to give up their Saturday mornings.
I did not care for English class untill I met this one English teacher that made it fun. I even studied!!! If you are giving the majority of students what they want, lose weight, get a cardio work out, socializing etc. then you are giving to them what they expect. Maybe the best instructors give what the students expect and then push them further by making it fun.