Reality Training for Children: 21st Century Martial Arts

This is the last part of the reality training for children articles published in 2006. It deals with adults and children training together. As before, the article was written for adults and is NOT an excerpt from my unpublished work,  "When Parents Aren't Around: A Young Person's Guide to Self Protection". However, it does highlight training methods illustrated in the book. 

Picture the scene: you are an eager adult martial arts student with a firm interest in realistic combat methods for today’s civilian and, having found a club that seems to tick all your criteria boxes, you are suddenly paired with a child training partner. You are a no-nonsense type of person and a veteran of many different martial arts classes. The belts, rituals and exotic movements no longer impress you. In fact, you would rather steer away from clubs that promote these attributes. This club seems to do just that. You have looked long and hard for this class, given up your valuable time, paid your training fee and so far the lesson has progressed well. Then,

Reality Training for Children Part 3: How?

The third part of my series of articles on teaching realistic self protection to children in 2006. This particular article gets to the real core of the issue. It reflects the importance I place on fully understanding objectives and promoting flatter hierarchies in martial arts and combatives teaching. Once again, this series was written for adults and is not taken from the manuscript for my unpublished book "When Parents Aren't Around: A Young Person's Guide to Self Protection".

How do we teach children to be efficient students of realistic self-protection and martial arts? It's a tough question and if training children is to be seen as an allegory for teaching fundamentals then it is not surprising that this very element is where the martial arts education industry is at its weakest. I see teaching children as a path to retraining ourselves about base principles and commonsense. In short, the premise I set for myself when I first founded CCMA (Clubb Chimera Martial Arts) was if I cannot deliver a system that can be applied by those in our society who need it the most, then I am not really teaching self-protection. In my previous two articles I discussed both why we should teach children, which addressed the intention factor, and what we should teach children, which addressed the knowledge factor. Now we come to the "How" component of this teaching habit, which addresses skill. I would argue that intention and knowledge are elements that are easier to retain than skill. Skill is developed and worthwhile skills need continuous development.

Children are generally taught in most martial arts classes using the ancient "donkey training method" - the "old carrot and stick" theory. Depending on the particular martial arts class, instructors either lean towards regimented discipline that involves the threat of punishment or reward their students with various bribes. The punishments can be a variety of things from being made to do press-ups to the threat of being excluded from a class. The bribes come in all shapes and sizes from material rewards to special games. These methods work well in the martial arts community, a subculture that is built up around the aspiration and awe of hierarchy.

I am not completely discounting these methods, but I challenge that the results they yield are pretty limited if this is a student's only source of motivation. In the short term the "donkey training method" shifts a student's intentions from his original mission, a mission to learn how to deal with a physical and violent confrontation in real life. This has now been replaced by a desire to avoid being punished and/or to claim a reward. What the "donkey training method" teaches in the long term is a wish to please a teacher, a grading examiner, a competition judge or some other well-placed individual rather than learning something for its real purpose. Sadly even the long term benefits are ultimately short term ones as time moves on and the novelty of having a certain grade or winning a particular trophy wears off.

Reality Training for Children Part 2: What?

The second part of my four-part article that was originally published in 2006 in a mainstream martial arts magazine. As before, this series was written for adults (parents and martial arts/self protection instructors) in mind and is not taken from the book this blog is promoting. It is posted to demonstrate the approach I have developed in teaching children realistic self protection/self defence principles. 

Previously I discussed the social barriers that often stand in the way of teaching children realistic self-protection. In this article we look at what I believe we should be teaching children in the context of realistic self-protection, but first let us look at how these barriers, if we let them, severely impede our honest intentions. It should be noted that these barriers are often reinforced by sound arguments and therefore should be seriously considered before anyone approaches realistic self-protection training for children and teenagers.

Reality Training for Children Part 1: Why?

 

Note: This published article was written for adults in 2006, and is intended to explain some of the principles that underlie the writing of my book. It is not contained in the manuscript for "When Parents Aren't Around". 

"Why": the dreaded single syllable word that a child can use repeatedly to raise an adult's temperature and stretch his comfortable and established philosophies of logic, reason and beliefs to breaking point. I have seen many an adult reduced to a blubbering mess or a ranting dictator, as he tries to explain and justify his answers, while a six year old sits calmly with only the smallest traces of a mischievous grin on his face asking again and again "Why?" The innocence and naivety of a child's questioning is the perfect foil for an adult, who has a natural instinctive responsibility to educate youngsters. However, the irritation goes further, as this insistent inquiring, that will not be abated clichéd answers tried and tested on other adults, often leads the interviewee to question their own inner core. "Why" is tough because it addresses the non-tangible area of intention. "Why" cuts through accepted so-called "truths" and gets right to the fundamentals of your answer. Therefore seeing as "Why" is perhaps one of the most powerful weapons a child can use in a debate with an elder, it seems appropriate that we discuss the "whys" of teaching children honest and realistic self-protection before we approach the "whats" and "hows".