Senseis
I am a professional Aikido instructor. I also have a large bleded family (eight kids between us). As you are probably aware no one goes into this to get rich. If your Sensei was only in it for the money he'd be doing something else.
That said there are some issues that might be raised by your posting. I have had my own dojo now for about 14 years. When we first opened we had the usual group of committed, excited studens who helped me open the school. Those days were the honey moon so to speak.
A few years later I was going through a divorce which placed an immense stress on me personally. In fact I woke up each morning for a couple of months and the first thing I did was throw up. I was in tremendous anguish and didn't find that I had much support. I found out one day that one of my students had been complaining that my classes didn't seem to be as inspiring as they had been earlier. I was pretty angry actually. There were a lot of days that I didn't feel like I could get up in front of a group of students at all. Sometimes mere moments before I had to get om the mat I had been engaged in some major domestic issue and had a lot of upset going on. But every night I had to set that aside and get out there and do my best. Admittedly I wsa not as focused at that point in time. But it often was quite an acheivement to be able to hold it together and teach at all. Nor were my students more than superficially aware of what was going on with me. But I realized that to some exetent there was a "what have you done for me lately" kind of attitude on the part of some students. I was going through a bad patch and they were ready to jump ship. No one asked me how I was doing they just judged me from their own needs. Think about it.
The focus on money is an important issue that needs to be better dealt wit in the Aikido community. I know that at times I have had various students who believed that same thing about me. But picture this. Your contribution to training involves your monthly dues, the work you put into the dojo itself, and the effort you put into your training (which has direct pay back to you). In my case I have a lease that entitles me to pay $1400 every month for 5 years at a time. My yellow pages alone cost me $4500 / year. I pay a couple thousand to have brochures at a string of local Safeways. There are many other expenses as I am sure you can imagine.Then there is the pile of bills that are waiting for the money to come in from the dojo so I can actually support my family. The pressure we are talking about is substantial I can tell you. I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to put the school on a better financial footing. The exetent I succeed directly benefits the students because they continue to have the opportunity to train with a professional instructor. I can put far more effort into my training than the typical teacher who is only teaching part time and has some other job to support himself (herself). That comes down directly to the students when I instruct.
Aikido people seem to have some sort of perverse pride in the the fact that they run their dojos in an unprofessional manner. It's as if the fact that they are always marginal as businesses makes them more spiritual. But unlike the Japan of O-Senseis day when there were an array of Aikido sugar daddies who supported him and built the dojos, and fed him etc.there isn't any support network for American teachers of Aikido. The dojo needs to function well in order to enable me to devote myself to my own training and the responsibilities of instructing my students.
I have written extensively about this so that you can see that the issues you have raised have a totally differnt perspective than the one from which you as a relative newcomer to Aikido can have. When you have trained for twenty or thirty yaers you will know that during those years you have had periods of tremendous growth, great excitement, total focu. But you will also know that there have been plateaus when you weren't sure if anything was happening at all. You will get frustrated with hundreds of different issues that come up and will almost (but not quite)quit. You won't quit because there isn't anything else you have ever done that is like Aikido and you can't iamgine your life without the practice. So you will keep going on and at some point later you'll be having another peak experience and it will be worth all the strain.
If the teacher is a good one stick with him. If what he is doing doesn't speak to you find a teacher who does.Go for it!
[Edited by George Ledyard on 06-23-2000 at 07:21 PM]
George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Defensive Tactics Options
Bellevue, WA