Why my Mum never needed to learn Martial Arts
Published: Sun, 12/02/18
A few years ago when my mother was in her mid eighties she showed me some very minor scratches on her elbows. She had tripped over an uneven paving stone in the street and fallen face first onto the pavement. She also told me that, as she found herself falling, she knew that she did not want to break her wrists by putting her hands straight out to stop herself. So, she had slapped her hands flat onto the pavement and spread the impact onto her forearms. As a result, the only injury she incurred was a couple of very minor scratches near her elbows. No broken wrists so it must have worked. I was particularly impressed because, in the space between losing her balance and hitting the floor, my mother had invented the front break fall and executed the technique successfully. Throughout her life my mother never showed the slightest interest in learning martial arts. However, with her gift of improvisation, I guess she never needed to.
I have been involved in Martial arts for about 45 years now. I have been teaching for about 25 years. It has become clear to me is that teaching martial arts is not just a matter of getting other people to copy me. ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ is a part of teaching . If someone can imitate something they have been shown then some transmission of knowledge has been achieved. Indeed exam based teaching involves a process something like, teacher teaches, student learns, student takes exam which asks them to reveal the knowledge the teacher taught, exam is marked, grade awarded, education completed. This form of teaching is popular because results are easily measured, quantified and compared. Parents can boast about how many ‘A’ grade A levels their child was awarded. Even people who know nothing about martial arts are impressed when someone passes a black belt grading.
The problem with exam based teaching is that students, teachers and examiners all find themselves in a closed loop of self-verification. Teachers and examiners design the syllabus, students learn from teachers. Students are assessed by examiners. The graduates who get the best grades often go on to become teachers themselves. These new teachers will want their students should do equally well in the same exams which they excelled in, and so the process continues. But, what happens when the student is confronted with an unfamiliar challenge? A complaint is that ‘martial arts don’t work in the real world’. There are highly educated people living at home with their parents, unemployed or doing menial jobs, who can’t seem to find any use for their impressive exam results in the real world. It is worth remembering too that the people who built the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries did not really know much about
engineering in the modern sense, so they just worked it out as they went along.
Knowledge is useful, without it you will keep reinventing the wheel. So, the second part of teaching is encouraging students to use their knowledge in practical ways. At this point the teacher has to be willing to relinquish a degree of control and allow students to experiment, and indeed play, with the subject. This is why young children can learn a great deal through play and having fun. Impose formal structures of knowledge and examination and many young learners quickly lose interest. When I taught GSE Religious Education I had students say to me, ‘I will learn what I have to pass the exam. But then I will forget it all as quickly as I can because all I want from this is another pass grade, the course content was of no value to them at all.’ I didn’t stay in school teaching for long after that.
Knowledge has little value unless we use it. We can only really use knowledge if we own the method by which we use it. In martial arts terms that would mean working out our own training routine and maintaining our own practice. I like to train in various styles which helps me find out what works and I pick up ideas for training and teaching. Braver (and younger) people than me will work as doormen or in similar situations and test out their skills there. Work with your knowledge you can achieve another level of learning. There is a point where you don’t need more knowledge from the outside. You need to learn from working with what you already know. This level on learning enables you to see the principles which underlie the knowledge you were originally given second hand. Sometimes you will actually realise that knowledge which was passed on to you does not actually work according to real principles and needs to be modified
or discarded. Too many teachers pass on knowledge in the closed loop of their particular discipline and have no idea what really works and what does not. Once you have grasped principles you can test knowledge for yourself, work out your own methods of training and see practical application for your expertise whenever you need it. In fact, once you can work with principle you are not trapped in any particular discipline and you can solve problems as they confront you. In the story I started with; my mother identified the principle of falling safely, which is; spread the impact over as wide an area as possible, worked out a way of applying this principle, and successfully tested her method, all in a second or so.
On the 15th of December there is a day seminar which Alex Fell-Bowers is going to help me teach. The theme is Principles of Self-defence. Of course, if you are as smart as my old Mum, we won’t be teaching you anything you can’t work out for yourself. For the rest of us, see http://www.beverleystav.uk/sd151218.html
regards
Graham