The way I see it there are two states of mind that I need to have for my karate training.  I would guess that many others use something sort of the same mindsets.

At the start of learning something new or perfecting something I need to be mindful of what I a doing. I need to watch and listen to my teacher and absorb what is being said. I need to be able to practice what I was taught effectively paying close attention to the details of the task sat hand. Being mindful helps me to be careful in how I am training my muscle memory. Trying to change your muscle memory after even a short amount of time  can be enough to drive some batty.

 The mindful part of training can make or break you in someways. It is so important in making a persons basics a strong foundation to their karate training. You can practice for years and years, but all of that practice can be a waste of time if what you are doing is incorrect. Incorrect practice just reinforces sloppy bad techniques that not even you mother likes. If feel we must be mindful in our techniques and our practice.

Mushin, or ”without mind”. This the other half of the puzzle for to me. You need your Mushin to take over when you need it in a real life or death situation, while you are playing kata at a testing/grading or tournament or anywhere that you need to get specific job done and you need your training to take over. The last thing you want is to be looking like you are thinking all you are in front of judges or being thinking too much as someone tries to end your life for enough money to their next hit of crack.

Part of the way I see the mushin is that it is a state of mind where you need your training to take over from (hopefully) years of mindful training to save your life.

Hopefully I will write on this more later, since I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I could say about this.

IF anyone actually reads this and they disagree or or agree, let me know! I am no expert on this (or anything else for that matter), but I like to always learn and hear no ideas.

Who is responsible for a student learning?

A recent discussion on a chemistry related email list about teaching chemistry at the college level got me thinking more about the student teacher relationship in karate and outside of karate.

When it comes to a students learning who’s responsible for the student being successful in doing so? A good student can be completely destroyed, both physically and mentally, by a bad teacher. But on the other hand a teacher can only do so much to help a student that doesn’t want to put in the time to learn correctly.

One of the things the chemistry list talked about in regards to teaching  is how in todays world it seems like everything is pushed onto the teachers making it their fault if a student doesn’t learn well (or at all). It’s almost as if the students are freed of all responsibility. And I have to say I have seen this same kind of thing happen within the dojos I have trained in.  I must agree with almost all of the chemistry teachers on the list that this outlook of making everything the teachers fault is  highly flawed.

Teachers and students have a relationship between them. From what I have seen throughout my life the best relationships are the ones that are a two way street with communication, compromise and hard work on both sides.
If a teacher comes into the dojo/class room and does nothing but scream, yell and make their students feel less than human and then expect them to know what they are talking about and to do well on tests. This doesn’t help the student learn anything and is not a good relationship on any level. It also goes the other way. Teachers can beat their heads against a wall trying to motivate a student to work. At the end of the day it is up to to the student to TRY. If a student is not willing to try, what a teacher can do to have that student learn is great reduced and made insanely harder.

This whole thing is a two way street to learning. The student needs to put effort in and the teacher needs to put effort in. If a teacher leaves a student to work by him/her self with specific directions and then the student doesn’t do the work, how can that be the teachers fault? If, in the case of what the chemistry teachers were talking about, the teacher assigns  home work problems for the student to do in order to better understand the material,  and the student doesn’t do them who’s fault is that?

On the other hand there are teachers out there that have no right teaching their subject. There are many, many ways these teachers can make it hard for a student: bad communication, no desire to teach, abusive to students, only explains things half way so you are left lost trying to apply the information later, giving tests that have things that you never learned about in class on them, lack of effort in their teaching, etc. Hopefully you get the picture. :P

None of these things help students learn and none of them are what a good relationship is about.

With that said, having a bad teacher doesn’t give the student the right to give up. There are, in many ways, options to overcoming a bad teachers to be able to learn. Become a self learner. Read books, watch videos, get online and research,  or switch teachers. Almost everyone has the options to learn in other ways. Now for learning in the dojo some of these options are not always good ones. Unlike some of the subjects you find in school, such as math, chemistry, biology, grammar etc, The martial arts are not an easy thing to learn from a book. But for someone that really does want to learn there are still options such as finding a new school, speaking with the teacher, going to other classes with different teachers (if your school has multiply teachers). The point is there are ways to get around a bad teacher and learning is still (at the very least) partly the student’s responsible.

In the same way that the student can’t  give up learning because they have a bad teacher the teacher can’t give up on a student. They still need to try. But I feel things change just a little bit with teachers. Teachers shouldn’t give up on students that don’t care, however teachers shouldn’t let these students get in the way of the student that do want to try and do want to learn. It is not fair to the students that are trying.

So, who is responsible for a student learning? It has to be both the student and the teacher. It is a two way street. The student needs to try, and to do the work they are given.  The teacher needs to  always be trying to teacher better and be giving an effort to teaching and not giving up on students.

It’s a two way street people. Stop blaming the teacher when your kid, or you screws around and doesn’t learn.  As long as the teacher is trying (and is a half way decent teacher to start) it is not completely their fault.

*Ramble off*

For me it is a strange feeling to look back and remember all of the people that I have had contact with through my time training at the same dojo. Most of these people are, to the best of my knowledge, are no longer in the martial arts. The fact that all of these 100’s, (maybe 1000’s?) of people are no longer training has to make me stop and wonder why I am one of the few that is still training?

It is interesting to think about all of the people that were a head of me in rank, even just by one place in the hierarchy.  How they taught me so much and help drag me along to higher ranks and better understanding. Somehow, though, I am still here training, wearing a black belt, and they are no longer training and only a very small part of them every got to their first degree black belt. Why am I one of the ones that stuck around?

Looking back I remember coming up the ranks and seeing all of these high ranks working out hard and thinking about how good and strong they looked.  I “knew” they would get their black belts someday, they were too good not to get them. Well, they never made it, but some how I did?

One person sticks out in my head over all of the others. I will call him LL cool J just so I can use it for my tags :P  LL cool j was a a younger guy that, seemed (from my lower rank view point) to be amazing at everything he touched. He moved up the ranks fast, went to, and won, tournaments like he needed them to keep breathing, and was a star  it seemed to me. Although LL cool J was good, maybe great, he never got past brown belt. I often wonder if he was as good as I thought he was. Really, I’m not sure I want to know. It’s nice being able to look back and remember him being the almost perfect student, out of a group of ( what seemed to me at the time) great karateka.

It is strange to look back and wonder why I am one of the ones that  is still standing. I never considered myself to be great, or the perfect student.  But some how I have surpassed ( in at least rank, skill could be argued I guess) all of the people I once thought were the “best” of the school.

I don’t really need an answer to why I am still here training and they aren’t. Life just takes me places and I am just along for the ride. But it is odd to think about all of the people that have come before you.

Hopefully this is not as random and disjointed as it seems to me right now, but I thought I would send it out there just in case someone would even enjoy it a little bit.