an odd experience

[DaveB]

All that pre-judgement would bar you from grading in my imaginary character driven school.

[mal103]

Taught again at the club in question last night and some interesting things came out.

First the young lad is not their anymore. Once he saw the hesitation he moved to the next Shotokan club down the street as it were and put the same request in to them. and from what the instructor told me the kid was granted a test.

He also was not keen on the whole "if you test you are part of the club" feeling he got. He just wanted to pay and get graded and leave to train on his own again.

Apparently it was not a financial issue as the guy drives a SUV that is as big as my house and apparently throws money about like nuts. Even offered to pay double for the testing fees.

He did not like the idea of waiting to test and that our Dan ranks are done by our national instructor out of Ottawa and he would have to wait at the least if Granted permission to apply to test.

In the end I feel that we did the right thing, we are not a belt factory with gradings done every Friday! We put alot of stalk in our Dan rankings and we feel that while each individual is graded against themselves, we want those grading under our name to be solid members of the club.

Even if he is technically good then he seems to have failed on the rest of the concept, willing to pay money and not wanting to wait until someone says he is good enough...

The concern here is that someone can turn up at a "lesser" Dojo and walk away with a Black belt. What happens several years from now when he turns up and says he's ready for 5th Dan grading, some systems don't do anything more technically, some say they should be able to teach, also being a good all round person etc etc etc. How can the grading club know them? They could be a thug, thief or generally nasty person, not someone that should be graded.