OK, this topic is going to sound soooo politically incorrect. But, here goes anyway, "Are old-school Chinese masters especially 'cagey' and perhaps even deceitful in their teaching methods?" This question was voiced to me by an old friend and, in spite of it's "incorrectness", probably should be addressed openly and frankly. We had been talking about our experiences with some older generation Cantonese masters whose teaching practices and presentation of their art did not align well with our Western concepts of ethics. Now before I go on, let me say that I know of a great many non-Asian martial-arts instructors guilty of far worse. Some are bullies, lies, cheats and outright frauds. So I don't intend this as an anti-Asian rant. Heaven forbid. It's just that we noticed that certain kinds of negative practices and attitudes seemed peculiar to these gentlemen from the Hong Kong area.
Here are some examples:
These guys did not teach equally to all students regardless of ethnicity. And even within the same group, there was blatant favoritism and playing one potential top student off against another usually for the master's benefit (either getting money, more branch schools and students, advertising or other labor in return).
Teaching would begin at a fast pace, but as the years went by, advanced knowledge would be held back jealously and then grudgingly doled out dop by drop at exorbitant prices... I mean many thousands of dollars just to learn a few movements of a "secret" advanced form.
Intentionally teaching or publishing instructional material with deliberate errors and omissions. For example, one of these men published a book on a famous martial form or set, paying to use another well known master's name as the main author (to slyly stay in the background) and then deliberately altered a couple of sequences to, as he told us, "make idiots" of all those who didn't learn the correct version from him.
This same Master also came into possession of some very rare old film footage of the last Great-Grandmaster of this art, now long deceased. He used cut and altered sequences of the footage to promote his versions of the art, then destroyed the original film!
Now if this where just one unethical individual, I would not be bringing up this issue. But, in numerous conversations, I've heard similar stories involving other individuals coming from the same milieu. And, then on the other hand, I've met individuals from the same region who are not at all like this. I like to think that I was just unlucky in my experiences, and that I've heard so many stories like this just because bad news and gossip travels faster than good news. Any thoughts?
Here are some examples:
These guys did not teach equally to all students regardless of ethnicity. And even within the same group, there was blatant favoritism and playing one potential top student off against another usually for the master's benefit (either getting money, more branch schools and students, advertising or other labor in return).
Teaching would begin at a fast pace, but as the years went by, advanced knowledge would be held back jealously and then grudgingly doled out dop by drop at exorbitant prices... I mean many thousands of dollars just to learn a few movements of a "secret" advanced form.
Intentionally teaching or publishing instructional material with deliberate errors and omissions. For example, one of these men published a book on a famous martial form or set, paying to use another well known master's name as the main author (to slyly stay in the background) and then deliberately altered a couple of sequences to, as he told us, "make idiots" of all those who didn't learn the correct version from him.
This same Master also came into possession of some very rare old film footage of the last Great-Grandmaster of this art, now long deceased. He used cut and altered sequences of the footage to promote his versions of the art, then destroyed the original film!
Now if this where just one unethical individual, I would not be bringing up this issue. But, in numerous conversations, I've heard similar stories involving other individuals coming from the same milieu. And, then on the other hand, I've met individuals from the same region who are not at all like this. I like to think that I was just unlucky in my experiences, and that I've heard so many stories like this just because bad news and gossip travels faster than good news. Any thoughts?
