McDojos.

[smktkd]

uhhhm, k? lol

[The Hammer]

Coco:

 

I don't know your teacher so I will not make any judgements on him. The important thing here is that you are convinced that he is a good teacher for you and that he is willing to be more demanding with you once he has seen your commitment to the arts.

 

It is difficult to make a living by teaching the arts. Sometimes teachers have to cope with "less tha ideal" students. They pay for classes and they have a right to learn.

 

Most oriental teachers who have come to the USA have had to modify their teaching approach. The way things are done in their home countries will, in many cases, not work here.

 

There is a lot of information around that will help you determine if your teacher has the right knowledge. If that is so, and you trust him as a person and as a teacher, stick with him.

[AngelaG]

It is not the students that make the McDojo, it is the instructor.

 

If you came to my dojo expecting easy gradings, half-hearted training, getting away with bad technique etc. they would soon be made to realise that they were not welcome. The dojo is run as a business but my instructor won't compromise his principles for money. In return for our dedication and hard work we get good training, cheap lessons and reasonable grading fees.

 

Certain people want a McDojo, in that case they will go and find a McDojo, but again they are finding a place where the instructor has made it so, they do not go there and gradually infect a hardworking, dedicated atmosphere with McDojoness.

 

People should stick to their principles. Money is not the be all and end all.

[Coco]

Seems like most of you are forgetting this is just my opinion. If you dont agree, or dont like it, you have the right to, but dont tell me im WRONG. Opinions can never be wrong, that is the reason there are opinions and facts.

 

Angela - I understand what you are saying. In my case, it is a McDojo for everyone BUT me. I let my teacher know I want to learn and perfect my technique. If im not ready for a test, my teacher will fail me, if I mess up a kata, he will make me run laps, if I dont open my wide stand big enough, ill be doing 50 sqats. If im doing a kick wrong, he will correct me. Is this how he treats all the other kids? No. It is because I let him know I care, and that I dont want a McDojo. ALSO, if the instructor sucks, but all the students really want to learn the art and push themselves, practice everyday and learn as much as they can, I dont think it will be considered a McDojo, since all the students would be very good. I will have to disagree with you on that one.

 

Luckyboxer - Are you saying that in your school if your cat stand is 0.2 degrees off, you will fail a test? Also -

 

"If students dont want to work as hard i can see having them take longer then normal to learn the curriculum, but to just pass them through because they kinda have the gest of it, seems really bad :/"

 

They dont kind of have an idea for it, they know everything that must be learned, and they know it correctly. No, they dont work out all day, or do pushups and situps, some people are only 10 years old, and you must be forgetting that some people actually have a life. Karate is not everything for some people, the point you are making is that you must be perfect or it will not be acceptable. We are on the 21st century, noone will come attack us with wooden armor we need to break. For alot of us, karate is just another sport, and for myself, I have no intentions to dedicate my full life to it.

 

Seven star - Im the one who feels sorry for you, your brain is too full of katas and cannot process the word " OPINION "

[Drunken Monkey]

i think killing small children for personal entertrainment is a legitimate past time.

 

i think hilter was an ok bloke.

 

i think drinking and driving is not a bad thing.

 

i think people with i.q less than 100 should be executed.

 

these are opinions.

 

all of them are wrong.

 

great, you go and copy things you see on the internet and your teacher corrects you.

 

that at least implies that he does at least know what things should look like.....

 

if the place is a mcdojo, the best thing you can do is to leave.

 

staying in there, even if he seems to be teaching like a regular good sensei should in the first palce , staying is still lining his pockets.

 

i'm pretty sure hilter was a nice bloke to some people.

 

doesn't excuse the things he did though, does it?

[Coco]

Um... your not really making sense, but anyways, my teacher is a 4th dan on shito ryu so yeah he knows like all the katas and stuff, and hes qualified by the world shitoryu federation or whatever. My dojo isnt a McDojo.

[Drunken Monkey]

your words.

Seems like most of you are forgetting this is just my opinion. If you dont agree, or dont like it, you have the right to, but dont tell me im WRONG. Opinions can never be wrong, that is the reason there are opinions and facts.

 

like others have said, you have listed things you say are signs of a mcdojo

 

and well, you even go to mention that your club seems to tick all of them boxes.

[Fish]

But isn't it true that instructors will usually be a bit more lenient with children than with adults, and with beginners than more advanced students? For example, in our school, you might get away with not quite perfect stances when you test for your yellow or orange belt, but by the time you get to brown, you're expected to know them properly and execute them perfectly. It's a learning process for all of us, and takes a long time to execute perfect technique. Of course, a good instructor will try to get the lower grades to execute the technique correctly, and will show them how it should be done, and will encourage them to work hard to get it right, but surely s/he will not have the same expectations of a lower grade than a higher one? I'm still a newbie (just about to test for orange), but I'm just beginning to realise that a lot of things that look easy (e.g. pinan nidan) contain subtleties that need to be worked on correctly.

 

What I'm trying to say is that some sensei's might appear to be overly lenient, but that might be because they're working with young kids or lower grades. It's more worrying if there are many supposedly higher grades executing bad technique!

[Shorinryu Sensei]

If I expected perfect techniques out of ANY of my students, regardless of the rank they are testing for, then no one would make it past white belt. I haven't seen anybody, including myself, that can do a kata perfectly, and I've been working on some of them for nearly 30 years now. In my opinion, there is no such thing as perfection of a kata.

 

As Fish just mentioned, the lower the belt being tested for, the more leniency I give to the person being tested. The higher they go up the belt chain, the more i expect from them. I will be testing my senior student for his sandan in the middle of next month, and I know he will make mistakes. I hope they will be tiny, relatively minor ones, but I have total confidence that he will pass. At this point, he is already where I want him to be with his knowledge and skills. I expect him to do a very fine job, but I do not expect him to be perfect.

 

The past head of our system, the late Sensei Yuichi Kuda once told me that he didn't like people videotaping his kata because of the mistakes he made in them. To have the top person in the system say that just reinforces that there is no such thing as perfection in a kata, an no two people can do a kata exactly alike. To untrained eyes, they may appear the same, but to an experienced eye, you can see subtle differances.

 

Coco, you sensei has you run laps if you make a mistake on a kata and other physical penalties if you mess up something? Son, that is WRONG! That is not being a good teacher, but rather an overbearing, power hungry person. Since you choose to defend his methods, even after numerous times admitting that he is running a McDojo, then you get what you are paying for. You are also, I suspect, being brainwashed by this guy.

 

It's unfortunate that I don't live in your vicinity so that I could sit in on some of his classes and see this sort of behavior for myself. I'd gladly drive a hundred miles or so to see that sort of a class for myself.

[Coco]

Fish - Exactly.

 

Shorinryu Sensei - You dont understand, its not as punishment. Maybe after a bit of sitting down while other people perform kata I might get cold, so a few pushups, laps and squats will allow to perform kata better, faster, stronger.

 

As these people have said, I debut there is such thing as perfect on a kata. My teacher does work the adults classes harder though, my classes are weaker because we got 10-15 year olds - Fish's post is basically whats happening.