In my last post there was a collection of thoughts on various topics in Karate-Do by Chosin Chibana. One of these topics was his feelings on Karate-Do and money:
“A true Okinawan martial artist makes his living away from the martial arts. They should not concern themselves with the making of money out of teaching the martial arts. A martial person must make their living away from the martial arts so as not to contaminate it through the influence of ‘making money’ in order to ‘make a living.’ This is the Okinawan way.”
I wanted to start my disection of Sensei Chibana’s essay with this topic because I feel very strongly about it. Having personally seen the contamination of money in our art, I wanted to discuss the pitfalls of it and ways we can avoid it. Let me start this off with a story about an instructor who taught for money.
Story
There was once an instructor named Fred. Fred was very loyal to his teacher. Fred owned and operated his own personal school. After a while Fred realized it was expensive to run his own school and started teaching at other locations and using the money he was given at these other locations to pay for his own school. Fred had many loyal students at both his school and these other locations. These students had nothing to do with paying Fred, they paid the places that Fred taught at and then those locations wrote Fred a check monthly for his services. Fred, needing to keep making money to fund his own school and pay his teacher’s organization began charging people a “new member’s fee” and using that fee to pay his teacher’s fee for being part of his organization.
One day Fred stopped receiving pay for his services at these other locations. The students, still having nothing to do with paying Fred directly, were not sure why Fred was not teaching anymore, but remained loyal and worked on their own together hoping Fred would return and again teach them his style. After six months of waiting, the students then learned why Fred had not returned. Fred, still needing to keep his own school running, decided it was not worth his trouble to teach at that location without knowing he would be paid. His students slowly moved on to new teachers and other styles.
The sad part of this story is that it is true. The worse part is, no one did anything devious or inherently bad – except let money come between them and Karate-Do. The organization needed a fee to pay for its own expenses, like the main Hombo (head dojo) in Okinawa, the promotion certificates, and travel costs to teach at their local branches. The instructor was just trying to be a Karate instructor, but he needed to make money too. The students could not be blamed at all. How can we avoid situations like this?
My Instructor
One of the things I respect most about my instructor, Richard Hooven, is that he does not teach Karate for the money. We have had to move multiple times because the price of renting the dojo went up and we were not going to charge more to our students. There has been months when people could not pay – so he just told them to help with what they could around the dojo and not to worry about it. It was a place that there were often more parents and family gathering to relax than there were actual students in the class. It was what I grew to see as true Karate and as Bushi Matsumura described it – the essence of Bu. Bu, the concept we study as Budoka (Those Who Study the Way of the Martial Arts), is meant to make a community prosper. It is not about the teacher, but rather the students he/she influences.
When you decide it is your time to begin teaching on your own. You need to recognize that you are doing it to help your students and the community they live in. If you have the mentality that, “Karate is something I love, wouldn’t it be neat to make it my job too?” – then I ask you to consider what happens when no one will pay you to teach? Do you adapt your Karate to suit the person paying you? What if they just want a high cardio workout and ask you to stop mentioning philosophy? Do you? You may have to if it is your job. In a capitalist world, the consumer is always right. This is why it is so important not to make Karate a product you are selling. You teach it because you love to teach it and you charge nothing more than it costs to keep the school open. If your students can not afford to do that, you need to cut your costs – not increase your prices or find new students. If your students can’t pay the rent, find a new place to practice Karate. If gi’s and sparring equipment are too expensive, workout in shorts and a t-shirt and practice yakusoku kumite instead of free sparring.
Fees
Now let’s talk about fees. Fred used to charge testing fees. By the time a student got to black belt, Fred had charged them about $400 in testing fees. This was with an understanding between the other locations that he taught at, that students paid one fee to the location and Fred was paid one time by the facility. The belts themselves only cost about $4. Why then would Fred charge so much? He was testing students during the time he was paid to teach, so there was no extra time spent. It was again to help pay for his school, may his organizational fees, and the left over money paid his travel cost for seminars and such.
I do not believe in testing fees. I ask that my students cover the costs of their test. This normally amounts to buying a black belt, $6-$10, and printing their certificates, $3-$5. Normally, by the time someone is testing for a black belt in front of me, they have been a close friend of mine for a few years and I am happy to pay for their belt and certificate as a gift in recognition of their hard work over the past years. I do it in the same manner one of my Sensei bought me a book (Autumn Lightning – excellent book) at my Shodan test and it spawned my research on Karate. It is something you do because your students become your friends, not a means to finance your business ventures.
Someone once commented that they thought the rank system corrupted Karate. I say that people, who take advantage of their students willingness to pay, corrupted the rank system. I am advocating a push to do as Sensei Chibana advised and keep Karate and money separate. I will do it, who will join me?
OSU,
Have I said lately how much I love you guys?
This is, I think, just the right attitude!
Our little piece of the Kyokushin pie split off from a larger organization when it became all about the money. For Shihan, who is the head of our organization (American Kyokushin Karate Association or something, we don’t even have a website,) it has never been about the money.
I’ll tell you a little story about a very poor boy who was taking classes under Shihan a good, eh, 29 years ago.
The dojo, which was called “School of the Red Dragon,” was on the base out in Mare Island, in Vallejo, California. It was for military personnel and their families only, but Shihan was able to fudge that a little bit.
So this boy was a very devoted student. He worked hard. He practiced every day. He was a tiny slip of a thing, and he had to wear kid’s clothes even as a teenager. He got a gi and his white belt, but he couldn’t really afford to buy a new belt after that… so he would dye his belt each time he ranked up. He had a mint green belt. Then he had a dishwater brown belt.
Finally, the day came that he was to try for his shodan. He had been taken around to different schools before then, because at the time you had to do 50 pre-testing fights before you could test for your shodan. I suppose it was a part of shodan testing, really.
Then he went up for rank. He did his kata fine. He fought 5 colored belts and won. Then it was time for him to fight 5 black belts. There was only one black belt present who was not a judge. He fought that black belt twice, and won each time. Then the judges had a meeting, and they decided that the boy would fight his own Sensei for the last three matches.
He did his best. He was still a tiny slip of a thing, but he fought like a dragon. He was a full contact fighter, and though his Sensei wiped the walls with him, he kept coming back for more.
At the end of ranking, it was announced that he had passed. He had to bow up and down the line of black belts accepting their congratulations. When he reached Hanshi Buck he was asked, “Where is your black belt?”, and he had to confess that he did not own a black belt. The boy’s sensei took off his own belt and tied it around the boy’s waist. The boy was quite honored to have his sensei donate his belt for his ranking.
Of course, the boy gave his sensei (now Shihan White) back his belt after the ranking was over.
The next class, the boy showed up with a badly dyed brownish-grey belt.
Shihan strode up to him with a bag in his hand and a thunderous glare, and said, “What is that supposed to be? I never want to see you wearing that thing in this class again! Take it off,” and the boy did, but then he didn’t have a belt, and wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
“But sensei,” he said, “I don’t have a black belt to wear besides this!”
“Oh, well in that case, I guess you can wear this,” Shihan replied, and out of the bag he pulled a gorgeous new black belt with his name and one stripe embroidered on it in gold.
That boy was Michael S. Dunn II, who grew up to be a wonderful man. You know him better from my blog as “Sensei.”
So one day he met an impetuous woman, aged 30 years.
They got to know each other a bit. She ended up getting very sick, and he ended up taking her out to coffee a few times, just to get her out of the house when she went stir crazy. Her medications made her far too dizzy to be able to drive, so he would come over and take her some place, even in the middle of the night.
She eventually healed, and found out that he used to do some kind of martial art. She didn’t know a whole lot about what he’d done, and didn’t recognize the style. She herself had only done a couple months of Shorin-Ryu when she was a kid. But something drove her to challenge him, just for fun. Grappling!
He decided to take her up on it, and they fought for a good two hours. He could have taken her down in seconds, but she didn’t know it. As for him, he’d seen something in her that he wanted to test. Would she push? Would she endure? Did she have heart, and fighting spirit?
He won, of course, as he could have right from the start. But he’d also found something he didn’t even know he was looking for- a student of his own. She came to him and asked him to teach her about a month later. He accepted.
She couldn’t pay him anything, and he never asked her to. He didn’t have a dojo, and she didn’t care. They sparred in horse pastures. In parks. In kitchens. In Wendy’s. In the car. In the basement. Wherever they could. He told her stories about his Shihan, with whom he’d had a major falling out over a Sharpei 20 years before he met her. He explained theory. He taught her Pinan 1. He gave her things to practice every day. She called him Sensei, and he called her Kohai, and they were quite content.
Of course, I am the girl.
That is how I came to be a part of the world of martial arts, and I didn’t hear about McDojos with their long, expensive contracts and “black belt programs” until much later. I didn’t know about organizations and all their issues with each other until later, either. Neither one of us care about the politics- we just want to practice and train. It is all about the love of the art, it is all about living the martial way, and paying forward that love and philosophy to someone else, when the time comes.
Some day, I hope to become a sensei myself. It will never be a venture for profit. Someone with a lot of heart, spirit, passion and drive will come along who is unable to pay dues. And that will be okay. I will tell them, “it’s not about the money, and it never has been, for me. If a student is dedicated enough and wants it badly enough, a way will be found. Just bring your gi and show up for class.” Just as Shihan said to me when I told him I couldn’t pay for classes, barely keeping myself and my horse going on SSDI, and asked if I could just sit and watch, and maybe learn a bit that way, somehow.
On and Giri are not about money. They are about loyalty, honor, the debt that can never be repaid between student and teacher, and a love for the martial arts. They are about the student one day becoming the teacher, keeping alive the spirit and teachings of their instructors long pas the end of their days. They are about preserving the purity and heart of the style, and giving future generations all the joys that were gifted to them.
OSU!
Great post, Sensei Kruczek, and thank you very much for the story, Ev!
Great article, Sensei. That would be a very frustrating situation as a student.
I’m often of two minds on the subject of payment. First, I think there’s a disconnect between the Eastern and Western cultural viewpoints of a dojo: the art side and the business side. That’s probably too long an explanation for a comment, though.
Speaking as an individual student, it’s a question of value. I pay a pretty penny for my training, but in no way would I ever consider my school a McDojo. However, I _have_ seen and heard of schools with those problems. Also, there are many places where there are few (if any) other options, particularly when you get into rural areas.
The real shame of having to charge, though, is having to turn away (or lose) students who could potentially be great karateka (or could get a lot out of the discipline and focus) because they can’t afford it. You get some leeway in these situations if you’re teaching in a community center or the local Y, but if the dojo is a formally incorporated business with leases and contracts, it’s a lot more difficult to make concessions.
Take care,
Mike