“It is never a crime to let a student know what you think of something even though you may not know 100%”
In Peter Boghossian’s How to Have Impossible Conversations, he talks about a social observation called the “Toilet Effect”. Several people were approached on the street and asked,”Do you know how a toilet works?” (Boghossian 36) I know, what a strange question. Who doesn’t know how a toilet works?
Literally every potty trained person that was asked this question responded, “Yes, you simply pull the lever.” Now, a follow up question was asked, “Do you know the fluid mechanics and Physics behind how the toilet flushes the water?” You can imagine very few people aside from maybe some engineers or physicists could answer this question. The lesson here, my friends, is that people will always be confident in what they know even if what they know is very basic.
Now let’s apply this to martial arts. Enough Potty Talk!
If you were to ask an orange belt and a 3rd Dan, “Do you know how a low block works?” You will likely get completely different answers to this question. The orange belt will gladly explain to you the basic steps to do a low block properly. The 3rd Dan, would hopefully go into a more theoretical explanation, maybe going over different energies and vectors that the technique can have, or perhaps different applications or Bunkai as the Japanese will call it.
Neither explanation is wrong!
This just tells us one thing that we all already knew: Colored Belt ranks are different steps in learning while Black Belt ranks are different steps in understanding.
As a Black Belt student, it becomes very easy to become immersed in the theory that comes behind each and every technique, and there is an endless amount of agnosticism, thinking but not knowing with 100% certainty. It is incredibly important to have this student mindset as it is necessary for growth, but we must not let that come in the way of our ability to provide instruction!
It is never a crime to let a student know what you think of something even though you may not know 100%. You may not know completely how the toilet works as a system, but surely you know or have an idea of how some components or mechanisms work. In all likelihood the student will be incredibly open to what you have to say. After all, they are sitting in your “lecture hall”… Or are they? If they are a very junior student it might be more like a Daycare!
What I’m trying to say here, is you would never go to teach a preschooler multivector calculus or complex analysis. They really need and want to know how to count, add or subtract… That’s it. But how many high level math professors would truly struggle with teaching a 4 year old how to count?
More than you think!
When you are teaching a true beginner martial arts, don’t worry about all the theory and philosophy behind everything. They just want to block, kick, and punch.
They Don’t care so much about the fluid mechanics; They just want to know how to flush!
Sources
Boghossian, Peter G., and James A. Lindsay. How to Have Impossible Conversations: a Very Practical Guide. Hachette Go, 2020.
