What makes an organisation ledgit?
Written by General Seo on Jan 28th, 2011 | Filed under: Link Popularity
There’s so many questions about Mc dojo’s these days i thought i would ask in your opinion what makes an organisation ledgit? Is it because it links back to the founder/ Koryu origins? Is it because the organisation has been long established in that your aware of its popularity etc? Is it based on the reputation of individuals who founded it? Is it because of records or documents? If so what about the western organisations and registered blackbelts given out by theses organisations? Do they carry any weight or none at all? Who is really a registered black belt?
That is a good question…… to me a good organization is one in which the officials have good credentials that came form legitimate sources. Then the organization needs to operate in a legitimate way. in other words if they hand out ranks, and titles, then they are not a good organization.
That being said, there are many organizations out there that have questionable people running them. Then there are organizations that have legitimate officials, but somewhere along the way they sold out in order to make money.
Rather than naming bad organizations, I’ll just say that I was a member of two organizations that i felt were legitimate when I joined them. A few years later, they were doing things they should not have done. So, I resigned from them.
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First you need to define "organization". This can be two things. One is the system (Kempo-Tae Kwon Do, etc.) or the representative structure-the Tae Kwon Do Federation. All of the things you mentioned make an organization legitimate. However, the main factor in legitimacy is recognition by ones peers. Does the community it represents (martial arts) accept it as a true form. For example, when the Gracie brothers introduced their martial art form it was not recognized as a true form until it competed with others. The same is true of Bruce Lee.
Dr. Tommy Skelton
6th Dan-Sho Kon Ryu
Truth to back up claims…that’s pretty much it.
And honesty about whether or not it was devised or passed on.
There is nothing wrong with a person devising an effective fighting art. But they need to be truthful and not make false claims of lineage. If their art works, great! That’s all they need to make it legit, not stories or bold claims that can’t be backed up or verified.
Another thing I would watch out for when selecting a good school is to make certain that the instructor is actually training their students and showing mutual respect for them as opposed to behaving grandiosely and abusing them.
Most true and legit traditional schools will make available to those interested, information about their history and lineage. If you go into a place and request some info about it and don’t get a direct answer, you are talking to a person who has something to hide. The person you’re talking to may not be interested in truly helping you, just want your money, and want to use you as a walking advertisement. Be aware of behavioral indicators.
Also, beware of places which tell you that you can be a black belt in a certain amount of time. That’s what is known a belt factory. True martial arts schools don’t put emphasis on rank as much as they emphasize training and making you better. One person won’t progress the same as another.
But the bottom line is truthfulness, the way the training is done, and how effective it proves to be.
Hope this helps.
Legitimacy is always subjective. Some find the legitimacy of WTF taekwondo in doubt, due to the sport nature of it’s style of taekwondo. Is it legitimate? Well, its students go on to the Olympics, they have a responsible hierarchy to manage all of the students in every corner of the world. So I’d say this organization is legitimate, in my opinion.
Let’s walk over to ATA (american taekwondo federation). Well, they’re a huge organization making millions, and are moving into Latin America, Canada, and last I hear, Europe. I’d say that is successful, no doubt. But their schools are regarded as nothing more than the epitome of McDojang. Still, is the organization legitimate? If you’re a kid, it’s an excellent organization. Its legitimacy has been questioned by other organizations popularly considered legitimate (WTF and KTA). Because of it’s multilevel martketing style of self-growth, and the business practices of keeping students, etc, is legal, if not moral. Still – it’s legitimate from a legal standpoint. But from a technical standpoint, no – I would not say no it isn’t.
Legitimacy as far as a school’s lineage to it’s founder is also subjective. Take Aikido, for example. Most in the world of Aikido don’t regard Tomiki-style Aikido as legitimate. And yet, ALL styles of Aikido, due to it’s rather young age, can trace it’s lineage to the same person. What makes Tomiki Aikido not legitimate? The answer is subjective: those who practice it say it’s very legitimate. The others may not think so. Just because a school’s lineage can be definitively traced does not necessarily mean the school is legitimate. It is up to the student to determine for him or herself whether the school’s teachings are legitimately teaching in the style of it’s original founders. A catch-22, no doubt.
It is for these reasons that I do not rely on "legitimacy" as a requisite for my instruction. Others have their own reasons for requiring legitimacy, and this is what makes legitimacy subjective.
As to the legitimacy of one who wears a black belt… again, this is subjective. Some black belts will get laughed into oblivion if they bring their techniques into a new school. Others won’t.
Therefore, to answer your question YOU are the one who makes it legitimate.
Recognition of lineages make organizations legit because they have to uphold the lineage.
The whole McDojo thing is based on really horrible technique by its practitioners, high fees, contracts and promises that you will become a blackbelt in X amount of time, 8 year olds with blackbelts, people getting blackbelts in a year or two, rediculously large amounts of colorful belts and patches, focus on tournaments and trophies not on technique and self-defense/practicality, "supplemental" training in "self-defense" for the students that take classes at the martial art school, emphasis on flashy techniques and things that would get you hurt or killed in real life, etc, etc. I could go on.
The instructors should have some kind of credential and should have been training for a really long time too. As for Koryu and the like, understand this, just because someone decides to teach a martial art that happens to be built up from or out of some other arts doesn’t make it illigitimate. Remember, at some point in time even the Koryu and the like were created themselves from someone’s desire to make a fighting method that better suited them and then taught it to others who then took it and tweeked it for them and so on. Results are what count in the real world.
Just check out the instructor thats what counts