Ethics in presenting self-defence advice

[Flying Crane]

Personally, I think a teacher has a moral responsibility to teach material that he has reasonable belief is effective and sound. His reasonable belief could be established in many different ways, so I don't think it is worth arguing about what does or does not create "reasonable belief". What does it for one does not necessarily do it for another.

However, not everything works equally well for everyone, or rather, not everyone is equally capable of using the same material equally well. What is effective self defense material for one person might be useless for another. This is not necessarily the fault of the teacher. The student needs to take some responsibility to decide if they feel confident in what they are learning, and go elsewhere if that confidence is lacking. Likewise, the student needs to accept responsibility to train in a manner, under the teachers guidance, that will develop the knowledge into useable skills. But ultimately what one does with knowledge is up to them and them alone.

If a student is attacked on the street and is unable to defend himself, I don't think you can hold the instructor liable. That would be like holding your college or university liable if you are unable to find a job after earning your degree. there are far too many factors at play in the real world to be able to place blame on the university, or the martial arts instructor and claim that they failed the student.

If a teacher is teaching material that he himself has no confidence in, that is a problem. Hopefully a student can see thru the charlatan and will go elsewhere. Unfortunately, there is a certain level of caveat emptor. Nothing can be done about that.

 

[RoninPimp]

The MA's and SD should be studied as a science. If an instructer or someone SELLING BOOKS or DVD's makes a claim of a technique being effective, then they should present their evidence for reaching such a conclusion. Hearsay and analogy prove nothing in court or in the scientific world.

 

[kickcatcher]

Ok, so let me ask you this... in the grand scheme of things... what does it matter?

Suppose for a moment that you are a pretty good fighter. (I dont know you so Ill take that on supposition) and some clown named, I dunno, ashida Kim, is teaching idiots his deadly ninja arts.

Does it matter to you if he teaches them total crap? That's just that many people who will never be better than you, that you don't have to worry about when the crap hits the fan, right? I would think the only time it would matter to you is if you got suckered in by kim and subsequently got your *** kicked trying his moves...

I'm not so self-centred as to be pleased that others are learning rubbish. I don't need to think I'm better than someone for my own validation. Maybe others in the martial arts are not like me; maybe you are one of those in it for ego reasons and need to find a small pond so that you can be the biggest fish in your pond. I have a moral conscience, do you?

 

[Flatlander]

The MA's and SD should be studied as a science. If an instructer or someone SELLING BOOKS or DVD's makes a claim of a technique being effective, then they should present their evidence for reaching such a conclusion. Hearsay and analogy prove nothing in court or in the scientific world.

I don't know if I necessarily agree that they need to present their evidence for reaching their conclusion. I would expect that someone's credibility in terms of what they teach, irrespective of the medium, will be a product of their reputation.

In some circumstances reputation and credibility are a function of lineage, in other circumstances endorsements or reviews from other respected members of the community are sufficient to lend credibility.

The point is, should the onus be on the teacher or the student? I'd say the student. Listen, by and large, books, videos, seminars, whatever - the imparting or sharing of knowledge is done for profit, pure and simple. So, with a profit motive at work, the consumer needs to take the responsibility to do their own due diligence and choose to spend their money wisely.

Look at it this way, when asking whether or not a taught technique should be validated before it is taught, is it appropriate to suggest that your testing of it should be sufficient to satisfy my requirements? Hell no, and for two reasons.

1) Everyone has individual strengths, weaknesses, aptitudes, and capabilities. What works for you may not work for me. What doesn't work for you may work for me.

2) At some point in the chain, we're again taking someone else's word for things without taking responsibility for ourselves.

So, not only should the teacher test it, but so too should the student. The teacher should have tested it long before they taught it - they should have tested it when they learned it - as a student.

What's the moral here? Everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves. Suggesting that the onus is on the teacher is trying to shift responsibility, and I don't buy it.

 

[still learning]

Hello, Is it possible to training daily for real life attacks? Adrenaline flowing and our minds going ????. The other person yelling foul langauges at us $%)&%^%$*X in there most anger voices!!!! Calling us all kinds of things.

Then be ready for an all out attack? Knowing it is anything goes and life and death fight is about to begin?

How many of us train in this sitution? When we are got off guard by the confrontation that quickly esclates upward!

Training in class is one thing (safe place). Outside in many times ,a place you will not be familar? Who knows who may jump in on there side?

ARE you ready? to fight back? and have the mindset to go all out?

Can you fight against a street attacker? and defends against his attacks...not one two steps style of fighting! His fist flying at you fast and furious.....Got insurance on you life?

UFC is very close to real street fights, only NO biting,groin strikes,eye gouging,thoat strikes and breaking bones...also no weapons can be use of anykind. ON the streets they can grab anything. (and NO referees)

Does your art prepare you for this? .................Aloha

 

[Cryozombie]

maybe you are one of those in it for ego reasons and need to find a small pond so that you can be the biggest fish in your pond. I have a moral conscience, do you?

No, my point was that rather I am unconcerned with the actions of others at large, when they dont really affect me.

 

[Cujo]

I think that anytime you train someone you must take some responsibility for what you train. I teach in-service police defensive tactics to leo's. I won't teach at the basic academy because I think that some of what they teach is crap. This isn't all their fault tho. By the time new techniques are "field tested " and found to be effective it just takes to long to get them written into the training. When we train, we train hard, but I always tell the officers, that if today is the last time you practice what we have worked on here, then, just forget what you have learned because when it comes time to use the techniques you will just resort to what you already know. As you train, so will you fight. When I was getting my certification for police defensive tactics instructor, my instructor told me that if you train cops long enough, one or more will be killed in the line of duty. Make sure that you can look in the mirror and tell yourself that you taught them well, cause you WILL ask yourself that question.
Pax
Cujo:asian:

 

[MSUTKD]

Cujo

Do you think personal fitness for anyone in self defense is important? How do you think an overweight cop would do "on the street"? I know that being out of shape in the military (real combat) would get you or the guy that has to push you killed quickly. IMHO any person who really wanted to be good at self defense should be at the gym.

ron

 

[Cujo]

Ron
I agree completly. Alot of cops are out of shape and that puts you at a big disadvatage in a street confrontation, or any confrontation for that matter.
Pax
Cujo

 

[Edmund BlackAdder]

Dear forum members,

Do you believe that there is a moral obligation on those teaching/presenting self-defence advice to take reasonable steps to ensure that what they are teaching works within the relevant context?

Yes

If you agree that they should take reasonable steps, what do you deem “reasonable”? –(for example pressure testing, real life experience, statistical studies… or just gut feeling, etc).

They should have learned from a reliable source or sources firstly.
They should understand the situations where it will and will not work.
If possible, it should be tested in real use. They themselves do not need to do the test.

A boxing coach can train a championship fighter. The coach does not have to be a fighter themselves however. In the same way, a martial arts instructor can pass on a valid technique without themselves having ever had to use it to save their own **** in a tumble.

 

[MartialIntent]

A boxing coach can train a championship fighter. The coach does not have to be a fighter themselves however. In the same way, a martial arts instructor can pass on a valid technique without themselves having ever had to use it to save their own **** in a tumble.

This arguement is transparently without merit. Any previous boxing coaches I've trained under have been boxers themselves in their younger years. A no-brainer if you've *any* desire not to get beaten to a pulp in the ring. Relevant practical [read, first-hand] experience being the question to be asked of anyone occupying an instructor's role, surely?

Same for soccer - never has a team's manager been appointed on the basis of their soccer-manual writing prowess [of course you and I can refer to that as "football" - seeing as you're from the UK too, right? I'm sure you're a big fan, eh mate? Hmmmm....]

I'd give you a rep point for effort but well... I see you got that well in hand already. Cor blimey mate, what's the weather like in the ole UK? Seen the queen lately?

 

[bydand]

A boxing coach can train a championship fighter. The coach does not have to be a fighter themselves however. In the same way, a martial arts instructor can pass on a valid technique without themselves having ever had to use it to save their own **** in a tumble.

Mind if I use this quote? Very valid point!

 

[kickcatcher]

The boxing coach analogy is a 50:50 with me. I can't think of any coaches I've ever met who weren't previously in the ring though.

But boxing also has a key difference to self-defence. In boxing YOU CAN TRAIN BY DOING YOUR TARGET ACTIVITY (boxing) - whereas in self-defence you cannot. A boxer spars, their instructor will push them in sparring to get as close to the real thing (boxing) as possible. Then they go in the ring for the first time, in a sense this is still training. They get better over time as they gain in EXPERIENCE OF THE TARGET ACTIVITY.

In the sense that people who have been in lots of SD situations tend to know more about the subject than those who haven't, regardless of having martial arts experience. Obviously that experience and knowldege has to be contextualized - a bouncer generally deals with drunk people causing trouble - a traffic warden with sober people being abusive, etc. But the basic truth remains that people who have real experience are generally better qualified.

 

[bydand]

Real experence IS a nice bonus in an instructor, but, not the be-all-end-all in judging if the technique being presented is valid or not. I wouldn't train with someone who has personally had to use every technique in real life SD encounters. I used to go to school in Detroit, MI; not really in the top 10,000 on anybodys list of vacation destinations, for one simple reason; you can get yourself killed there. Granted, that can happen anywhere, and not all of the Motor City is an armpit, but my point is, even somebody living there dosen't get into SD situations all the time. So if an Instructor, Sensei, Master, Whatever has had to use every technique he/she teaches they are either an Idiot who has zero situational awareness and can't see something brewing that would be better to cross the street and avoid; They are a Bully who has to prove what does really work and goes out looking for trouble, OR they are lying. None of which I would care to train under.

Somebody that has "faced the Dragon" in a couple of SD situations will have an awareness of what could/should work and if they pass that to a student, who then becomes an instructor themself and had not had to use it in a SD situation, does that mean the technique will not work anymore? Hardly, it just means that instructor hasn't had to validify the technique by their own expereance.

 

[kickcatcher]

I think discerning self-defencers should differentiate between what could work and what is likely to work. Tiggling an attacker could work, but that doesn't make it a credible SD technique.

If we agree that some methods/training is better than others, then we recognise that it is possible for training to be bad/ineffective.

The question becomes should those peddling the bad/ineffective training be responsible for what they teach - or like some have suggested, should it be the student's fault that Sifu "X" is talking out of his posterior and calling is "self-defence"?

 

[Andrew Green]

I think it would be safe to say that almost all boxing coaches boxed at some point. They might not neccessarily have a competitive record, and if they do it doesn't have to be a good one.

Some guys got the brains for fighting, some guys got the bodys, some got both.

 

[Andrew Green]

The question becomes should those peddling the bad/ineffective training be responsible for what they teach - or like some have suggested, should it be the student's fault that Sifu "X" is talking out of his posterior and calling is "self-defence"?

I think most people that are talking out of there posterior are fairly easy to spot. Anyone that was at all serious about there training would be able to pick this up. However there are a good number of people that don't actually want to train, just do a little fantasy work and think they are warriors for hire, ready to drop a dozen evil doers with a piece of chewing gum and a pencil sharpener. They get what they are looking for.

People that are serious about anything tend to not just look at one source and assume it is true. Only people that have a image in there heads that they want to fit into, but don't want to do the work will. They'll find others trying to live that image and group up with them, following the biggest talker.

 

[kickcatcher]

I think most people that are talking out of there posterior are fairly easy to spot. Anyone that was at all serious about there training would be able to pick this up. However there are a good number of people that don't actually want to train, just do a little fantasy work and think they are warriors for hire, ready to drop a dozen evil doers with a piece of chewing gum and a pencil sharpener. They get what they are looking for.

People that are serious about anything tend to not just look at one source and assume it is true. Only people that have a image in there heads that they want to fit into, but don't want to do the work will. They'll find others trying to live that image and group up with them, following the biggest talker.

To be fair, I don’t think that’s actually the case. My take on things is more that quite a lot of so-called self-defence training we see in martial arts, even the mainstream ‘norm’, is dubious, but that these teachers have lots of students, many of whom believe in what’s being taught simply because the instructor is a blackbelt or whatever. Yes there is an element of wanting to believe, but I think many martial artists lack the necessary frame of reference to discern what is good advice and what isn’t.

I know that for me, in my early training I often came home with a new wrist lock move and thought something along the lines of “good, now if someone grabs my wrist like that I’ll be able to do move “X” on them”. I took the effectiveness and relevance of the method as a given because a martial arts instructor had shown it. I shared the public perception is that black belts (etc) know what they are talking about and are good at SD. Obviously over time my real world experience brought up glaring inconsistencies in what I’d been taught and I slowly began to question with a more informed frame of reference.

Looking around me in mainstream clubs I see lots of people, even high grades, still believing in the dubious stuff. Yes people’s inherent laziness and desire for comfort are factors in the proliferation of “easy route” (dubious) self-defence, but I think it is wholly unfair to lay the blame for attending poor training on the average student – they are attending somewhere which claims, either explicitly or by implication, to teach self-defence. Most students seem to find it very hard to spot all of the posterior talkers.

 

[Andrew Green]

I tend to think it goes both ways, people that preech self-defence, and the "we're to deadly to spar" are talking out there rear ends, but they aren't the only ones that do it.

Most "self-defence" is nonsense in terms of fighting, but most people aren't there for the self-defence. Olympic TKD fighters are not likely to delude themselves into thinking that form of fighting is the way to fight even when those rules don't apply. Same for point fighting.

At least not at the upper levels.

Wrist locks and things of that nature can be effective, I have used them outside of a class to control, but it was definately not a "fight", just times when physical force was needed to diffuse things, but no one needed to get hurt. Very effective.

Had it gone to a full out fight the wrist locks would have gone out the window...

Which again goes back to how far you want to take things. Learning some releases and wrist locks is better then nothing. Learning to hit hard and fast, even if your sparring is point fighting is better then nothing.

Most people aren't there to learn to fight, most of them never will. They are there to excercise, have fun and socialize. Some are there to compete in there respective sport.

But if we where to suddenly, magically convince everyone that the only way to be truly effective is to train everything live and with hard contact, and to make all existing schools start doing that, I'd guess that most would be closing there doors soon after.

I realise that it is somewhat deceptive in that they are claiming to teach effective self-defence and there are better methods. But in what industry is that not the case?

Have you ever walked into a car dealership and been told that the cars they make are not all that reliable? Yet they sell cars, even when reliability ratings get published.

Or a toothpaste that claims to be a decent, but not great way to keep your teeth clean?

All marketing is BS, in any industry. Yet no one tries to hold Budweiser up and say they should be held accountable for making a inferior beer and marketing it as the best.

 

[Adept]

Yet no one tries to hold Budweiser up and say they should be held accountable for making a inferior beer and marketing it as the best.

Well, they should!