Standards vs. Standardization
One Approach to Excellence
Our group is committed to high technical, ethical, and procedural standards, yet averse to standardization. The former is based on the slow, carefully evolving principles rooted in best practices, while the latter might instead be construed as indicating a mandated, top-down, rule-bound inflexibility.
Guided Choice Over Dictated Rules
Our approach is based on "guided choice"—through years of training with recommended bodily-kinesthetic and biomechanical principles, the individual comes to feel on their own that the criteria shaping the standards are both personally "owned" and communally "shared." These principles are not superimposed by some ruling technical cohort issuing dicta from above—accepted but unfelt.
Instead, we strive to present students with best practices in a non-dogmatic, open, and considerate way, encouraging trial-and-error experimentation. This is the Socratic Method given life. In this way, there is "buy-in" and investment on the part of the students, as the blend of mimetic and transformational teaching and learning styles involves them in the epistemology—the "making of meaning"—to a satisfyingly large degree. Students come to feel that the best practice is their practice, that the karate they are led toward but choose on their own is truly theirs—which is quite true.
Teaching by Example
The teacher leads by example, embodying best-practice karate through their body, language, and training methods. The message conveyed is "Come, join me in the journey" rather than "Do what I say." There is a world of difference between "do this" and "try this." The first commands; the second invites.
Standards are realized and transmitted through transactions of invitation, experimentation, clarification, and acceptance—in other words, mutuality. The best teachers are, to a degree, vulnerable; they do not profess to know all the answers. They, too, seek. The best teachers give students the room to discover on their own through controlled experimentation while asking essential questions and requiring reflection and feedback. This assists students in clarifying their thinking while deepening their investigation of the "mysteries."
The Dojo Experience
It is the dojo experience—the critical enculturating mass—and the confidence of the teacher (rather than pedantry or arrogance) in their work and teaching that creates capable cadres or "schools" of individualized but like-minded adult practitioners. This approach is valuable, as it upholds standards without superimposing rules or regulations on students, thereby supporting responsible self-discovery rather than hindering it.
We seek to establish norms, teach norms, but only enforce norms when absolutely necessary for the good of the order. Institutional discipline must, of course, exist. For the student to be open and willing to take instruction, the teacher must express humility, care, and warmth, in addition to being adept. Firmness and consideration must be present in equal measure. In this way, standards are transmitted, and lineages survive into the next generation.
Leadership and Trust
"When the master governs, the people are hardly aware that she exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don't trust the people, you make them untrustworthy. The master doesn't talk; he acts. When his work is done, the people say, 'Amazing—we did it all by ourselves!'"
— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17
Written by JT sensei
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