Commercial budo – Martial snobbery
Commercial budo – Martial snobbery
I admit it… I want to earn a living teaching martial arts. To many people in the martial arts circles I will now be branded as something quite close to the devil. Ever since I became aware of e-budo and started posting here I’ve seen quite a number people rant about ‘commercial ‘ teachers. Some almost go as far as to mention that if you make a living teaching MA you are evil itself.
Why should we not make a living teaching? Look around you, nearly everything that someone else does for you or teaches, you will need to pay. Face it; we live in a time where in most cases time equals money. We spend years and years learning our arts and in most cases when we start teaching we will continue to learn. Some of us spend money going to seminars and courses, yet try to make a living or even break-even with the costs you make……. Evil evil evil…
Now lots of people will start to say that you can’t compare MA to normal work. We do MA to learn self-defence, gain spiritual enlightenment and other reason. But thou shalt not make money teaching!
Why should we not compare teaching martial arts to normal work? If you compare the time we spent training and learning to the time people spent learning for their A-levels (just an example). People put lots of time in the study for their A-levels yet about 90% of these people will never put in as much time as we put in our studies of the martial arts we study. When people do finally pass the exams for their A-levels they will start earning quite a decent living (okay that may be an understatement).
So let’s examine what we do:
1. spend lots of time training and studying our art
2. over the years spend quite a big amount of money on our studies
3. end up spending lots of time teaching others
And for this we should not make a decent living, if not decent even get rich?
Now the first of you who are going to reply to this are going to state that they don’t mind people earning a living with their art, as long as you don’t sell out.
Let’s take a look at the selling out. Billy Blanks is a sell-out, at least that what I hear lots of people say. He created the great thing that is Tae-bo. Why is he selling out, is he selling out at all? From what I’ve seen and heard the only thing he is promoting is something that is fun to do and will get you, and keep you fit. As far as I know he hasn’t claimed that Tae-bo will teach you an ancient martial art or will make you good enough to defend yourself on the streets.
Selling out? No he combined his knowledge and his feel for marketing and created a product that earned him lots of money. Good for him.
The thing that I am wary of is the people who teach, but actually shouldn’t. These people teach the ancient art of !!!!!!ido. Well known by most of the martial art practitioners these people do not make money teaching the art, they make money (and lots of it) by teaching something that sells and they call it martial arts. Yes these people are bad.
Go rant about these people (we do these lots of times in Baffling/Bad budo) but please do not compare these charlatans with honest teachers you are teaching out of love for what they do. These true teachers should be allowed to make money and even become rich if they are able too.
So in the end I dare to call anyone a snob, if he without exception says that people earning money in the arts are evil incarnate.
Rogier van der Peijl
REAL SCOTSMEN WEAR KILTS because sheep can hear a zipper at 500 yards!
Originally posted by Cady Goldfield
Ah, what a cutie, Rogier. I'll bet a lot of ladies in Netherlands are mourning because you are out of circulation now!