Rightly or wrongly, that is how I see certification as offered by large martial arts organizations. I see so often the arguments made here about transferability and acceptance, etc., for KKW certification. Those are very much consumer-oriented benefits.
It is only when you talk about individual things such as recognition in your instructor's eyes, that the focus turns to something else... And then we wouldn't be talking about transferability or acceptance, would we?
But if you're asking me on a personal level, I don't really value 'certification' the same way I think most people on the TKD forum do. My karate dan certification is a handwritten document in Japanese (perhaps even the Okinawan language/dialect) by my teacher. It merely states that I have been given a certain status by him. It would mean nothing to anyone else outside the circles my teacher is associated with, yet I treasure it above almost anything else I own.
Good points!
Though I think that that organizational certification goes beyond consumer benefit.
When I attended an acredited (or whatever the operative term is) high school, I received credit, and ultimately, a diploma. That credit and diploma are accepted anywhere in the uS. If my family had moved the summer after my sophomore year in high school, I would not not have had to repeat my freshmen and sophomore years at a new school. Once I graduated, my diploma is recognized by any higher learning institution because the high school I attended was accredited or certified, or whatever, in some way.
Parents who home school also have a means of certifying that what they do is actually schoolwork that meets the standards of the educational system so that when their kids turn eighteen and want to go to college, they aren't told that they have no diploma.
Now, suppose I never attended school and my grandfather taught me in the back yard, never doing whatever one needs to do as a home schooler to allow me to have earned recognized credit. He is the one who taught and quizzed me on the material, so I could easily say, 'only his approval matters. I don't need the approval of an outside organization that doesn't know me.'
Well, if I chose to attend college, I'd have to take a placement test and then take a ton of base classes in order for me to get to where the college feels that I should be before taking any of the classes that I might want to take. The college may deny, and I may have to go to a community college, where I'd still have to take the base courses.
If I go to look for work, I will be told that I need a high school diploma. Not having one, I'd have to go out and get a GED.
Now, I think that it is important to note that at no point did I ever see myself as a consumer when I was in school. I was a student. Technically, everyone paying for a service can be classified as a consumer, and even public schools involve you paying for a service. People just don't notice because they pay through their taxes rather than by direct fee. When you go to the doctor however, and do pay by direct fee, you are a patient, and few patients think of themselves as consumers.
Certainly, lack of organizational certification in martial arts does not carry the same level of consequence that lack of a recognized H/S diploma does. It does, however, protect the student's investment to a degree.
As for the 'my master's certificate is far more important to me than some foreign organization's certificate',well, I cannot speak for karate or other arts, but with the KKW, that Kukki cert means not only that your master with whom you have trained has certified you, it meas that he or she was willing to recommend you to the Kukkiwon.
Most don't change high schools, but some do. Likewise, most taekwondoin never encounter an issue where rank portability is an issue, but some do. So yes, most taekwondoin would likely be unaffected one way or the other by Kukki certification or a lack thereof. But some are.
So while I agree that an organizational cert provides a nice consumer benefit, that is a by product rather than the function.
I think that students generally do not view themselves as consumers and usually are not going to great lengths to verify their instructor's credentials. I do think that
parents of students are consumers and are the ones most impressed by stuff hanging on the walls in the office.
Now, if I as a
taekwondo student do think of myself as a consumer,
and I am paying more than a hundred dollars for a BB test (many are more that three hundred),
and my instructor holds Kukki rank high enough to get me Kukki certification, I'd consider myself shortchanged if all that I received was something that he had printed at Office Depot. Particularly if I'd been paying him for four years.
Now, if the test cost less than fifty bucks, I won't complain, though I would hope that he would at least offer me the option.
Daniel
