Reflections on Examination

The bane of my issues with running a professional karate-do dojo, has been exclusively two things that are closely related. One is examination, and the other is the outcome of examination. Refining/fixing the former, has solved all the issues I’ve experienced with students of the latter category. Let’s take a walk through memory lane…

Throughout my near forty year karate journey, I have done it all. Big tests in halls with hundreds of other students, testing in Japan, little venue tests, and then the Sensei Moshfegh test. We’ll get to that one later. All of the tests, save for Sensei Moshfegh’s, had one thing in common…they were standardized. As with all things standardized, one essentially prepares and learns… how to take the test. What begins to germinate from this process, is an artificialness that is buffered and supported by the ego since it is results oriented…results that are not truly reflective of knowledge, but rather of ability…and an ability that itself, is not even the yardstick for proper discernment. I tell my students….imagine if I, Picasso, and Van Goh were told to draw a straight line. Can this determine who the best artist is? Now imagine that I drew the straightest line because I practiced drawing a straight line, and I buy into the idea that I am the artist de jur amongst my peers, because this straight line examination validates my superiority over Picasso and Van Goh! Do you see the silliness of it all?

A colleague of mine, a fantastic martial artist in his own right, once asked if I could come and assist with testing his students alongside him, since he had spent months preparing his students. I obliged, and what I witnessed was a robotic performance, perfectly executed, but lacking personality . Even the personal ticks and body quirks that were specific to the instructor, was unnecessarily and inadvertently absorbed by the student! By objective, standardized measures, the test was a success; however, one could easily observe that a slight deviation from the standard would have completely left the students at a loss.

When Sensei Johnston and I started the kids program, he wanted something structured, and would test students every three months. I pushed it out to every four months, and once he passed, I combined the classes into adult classes, and I pushed testing further to every 6 months. Currently, testing is done once a year. Sensei’s idea was to keep the students motivated by dangling the carrot of promotion. I, however; was never satisfied with testing because it didn’t reflect the results I was looking for. The scope was too narrow, and unrepresentative.

Today, as I’m constantly looking to improve the quality of what students I’m taking in, and what I am delivering t0 them in return, I’m on the precipice of making a revolutionary decision that will upend even Sensei Moshvegh’s progressive testing ideas. It all stems from distilling what I require from my students, and all I require is two things. My students need to be able to follow instructions, and they need to sincerely enjoy karate-do. If these two requirements are present, there’s no need for carrots and motivation. There’s no need for testing, or kyu and dan ranking. Here, there’s no ego, no materialism, no artificial judgment. You come, you train, you take what you earned, you return home and you repeat. The old system was a closed system where arbitrary walls were erected, where someone was being suckered and someone was milking a system. It all played into a façade of self aggrandizement and monetary gain. Look, lets be honest. Even the dan system which was extended from 5th to 10th dan, was unnecessary. If your training is done correctly, there’s nothing new to learn beyond your 10th-15th (or 4th dan) year of training. All the other rankings including “renshi”, “hanshi,” “kyoshi”, “sushi”….whatever…is a good ole boys insecurity blanket of back slapping, and winks.

Since I promised to reveal Sensei Moshfegh’s testing methods, here goes. Sensei would simply have a conversation with you. He would ask you questions and you’d have to answer them. It was novel, and it was much better than the typical karate examination, because one was forced to rely on knowledge rather than dazzle with physical ability. The problem however, was that this too became a standardized examination, whereby one would parrot terms and ideas without really having internalized them.

Look, ultimately to each their own. I’m just being brutally honest, and changing the way my dojo and students present themselves to the world. Present your true face, and you’ve achieved infinitely more than those who live behind a façade.