why i am leaving my school

my Martial Arts school is getting nuttier all the time. Sometimes I think i am in a cult.

belt tests are priced on a scale $65 for your first test, increasing up to 2000 for black belt

students are automaticley scheduled for tests, every three months since your last test for the first 5 belts. If you can't make it you need permission from The Instructor

if you come with injury they do not listen and treat you like you are lazy or lying

now students are told not to associate with other students outside of class and gathering of more than 3 people require The Instructors permission.

it is a good school and the teaching is mostly good but the rules are nuts!!!! :bang: :bang: :bang:

 

I would have been gone if I was you, it sounds like your schools is about money and control. If you are paying them I do not understand why they think they can control who you talk talk to outside of class. No matter how good the instruction is I would not want to be apart of any club that sets rules like that.

 

65 for a test? Rediculous.. 2000 for a test if even more ludacrous. You can do better elsewhere. Your wallet should've been the first to tell you that.

 

"now students are told not to associate with other students outside of class and gathering of more than 3 people require The Instructors permission."

WTF? (and I don't mean tkd!)

 

the fees are insane mate...
higher than KM licenced teaching certs....
and those are the highest I have ever seen (or paid)
every three months... total crap man... also outragous
i acually can understand not wanting students to train oneanother and teach or not address bad habits... THAT makes some sense.. however, that should be explained to students.. and not be some RULE they try and enforce...
what are they gonna do kick you out and lose out on all those testing fees.. for all three of you .... based on the description of the structure... i doubt it
LEAVE... go find a judo club and enjoy the savings and better training more than likely....
cheers

 

wowah! those fees are massive and the rules are stupid, i see wat you mean about being in a cult. leave now, while you still can

 

Follow your heart in this matter..

the prices seem extortionate...the rules drachonian....life is too short to waste it on things you do not enjoy..

Find a school with students and instructors you like and respect .

Smurf

 

ditto.

 

Get out.

More importantly, bring up your concerns with other students one-on-one. Be honest and direct. You have a chance to help them out by giving them a kick in the right direction. The responsible, tho admittedly more difficult choice is to do so.

During this, do not be influenced to stay. By anyone.

 

Regardless of the other stuff mentioned by the original poster, this is the one that thoroughly puzzled me.

I've just got to ask why? What is the thinking behind this? Sounds to me like someone has serious issues of insecurity.

 

Certain people enforce an ideological monopoly on those they profess to be teaching or helping as it gives them control over them.

In ma, some are just afraid that the flaws in their teaching are obvious when directly compared to other styles and have so much invested in people believing what they teach is perfect or the best way to fight that they do extreme things to maintain that illusion.

 

GET OUT OF THERE!!!

I used to attend a school like that, and left due to similar reasons.

Don't put off thinking about leaving - it will only incease your uncertainty over whether or not you should leave.

$65 per grading? I'm surprised people actually go to it!

 

Uh oh... McDojo Alert!!!!! Get out whilst you still can!

About the rule where students aren't allowed to associate outside of class without the instructor's permission... That sounds to me like your instructor doesn't want his students associating because he's afraid you'll collectively realise what a scam he's running and decide to make a stand together and then he'll lose all his students.

If you really love your martial art, go find another school. There are some topics floating around here about what to look for in a new school and how to avoid getting involved with McDojos... they might be able to help you find a place with a good instructor.

 

Just curious, what's the school's name?

 

Yeah what is the name of the school, style, and where is it located. You should be trying to warn other people of it. They sound carayzee

 

Damn. A guy I'd never heard of telling us he's leaving his school. I was half-expecting a Hoimun rant!

In all seriousness Neopet. Good on ya. Our school is exceptionally good, but the prices are going up and up. Hopefully it will never end up quite that extreme.

 

Just like my old TKD school. I got lectured for cross training (though by cross training in JKD it improved my WTF sparring game and it wasn't rare for me to have my way with the blackbelts sometimes........... ). Also there was alot of ego and arrogance problems with the teacher,finding fault in everyone and being nothing but a damn critic. It's a shame, he was a great teacher in terms of what he knew about the art and the sport (being a 5th DAN and one of the British judges for national tournaments). But he turned into a bully and an all round unpleasent person, many students left by this time. I kept on though because I didn't want to give TKD up. But sometimes I missed classes for a long period due to family, college and so forth. I'd always train though, which was apparent when I excelled in my gradings. Although it was at this time that he banned me from ever coming back to class, saying it was because of a lack of devotion - Really he just had a tick on his shoulders and I lost all respect for him at that moment. But I'm kinda glad, because now the whole school has closed down and he's buggered off somewhere else

 

ya find a new school lol.....those rules are just plain stupid

 

It does sounds extortionate. Are these testing fees on top of a membership fee, and if so, how much is the monthly membership?

Disregarding injuries is a very bad sign as well.

The nonassociation rule also has me confused, as I can't think of a logical reason for this at all. Have you tried asking what the point of this is? You may not get a good answer, but how they react to the question itself may tell you loads.

 

Because he doesn't want more than two people discussing what is going on in the school together. In sociology we learned how relationships make big webs with people being the nodes. Each strand of the web represents the relationships between the people involved.

When you have two people, there are two "nodes" and 1 strand.
When you have 3 people, you have 3 people and 3 relationships.
When you have 4 people, you have 4 people, 6 relationships.
5 people, 11 relationships.

The point being that the more people you get in that social network, the stronger the network becomes, so the teacher won't want people in his class building strong social networks outside of the class, because those strong social networks will have an easier time working against the network he has created, and the ideologies he has imposed on it.

Simple cult tactics.