Morality

[AngelaG]

Would you feel comfortable teaching someone a martial art if you felt that maybe they didn't quite meet your moral expectations? How about if you suspected they may use it in street fights etc?

Angela

[Petek]

I would feel uncomfortable teaching someone a bit 'dodgy', conversely I tend to find that people like that often want immediate results, which in all good traditional dojos is not immediately forthcoming. I have been instructing for nearly 15 years now, and have never had a student I considered dubious.

Having said that,prior to my instructing at my dojo, we had a chap who trained for 2 weeks- 6 lessons. He then walked into a local pub, picked a fight with a bloke, went into zenkutsu-dachi/ gedan berai and got 7 bells beaten out of him. He carried on training for 2 years though.

I read /heard somewhere that it takes about 1-2 years for a karateka to get handy, most dodgy blokes/blokettes can't wait that long.

To extend the question, would you teach someone you took an immediate dislike to ?, & would you go on first impressions. Most people say they want to start karate to either'get fit' or learn to defend themselves, not to go down the king's head/ bowling alley and beat people up.

There you go, that = 2p

[Aefibird]

Well, I'd feel uncomfortable in teaching an adult Martial Arts if I knew that they were going to use it to go to the pub and kick seven bells (or try to!) out of someone else.
However, I've never been in that situation (I only teach kids classes at my dojo), so I can't say for sure.

If I ran a MA club and I knew that for definate that a particular person only wanted to learn karate to be able to use it to fight (street fight) with, then I probably wouldn't want them in my dojo at all - having people like that train can give a MA school a bad name very quickly.

[Sasori Te]

I had an adult male in my school in Arizona. He went home and broke his Dad's wrist with a wrist lock that he had learned in class the night before. I immediately dismissed him from my class.

However, to answer the original question, No. I would not teach someone that I didn't feel comfortable teaching.

[AngelaG]

Sasori said:

I had an adult male in my school in Arizona. He went home and broke his Dad's wrist with a wrist lock that he had learned in class the night before. I immediately dismissed him from my class.

However, to answer the original question, No. I would not teach someone that I didn't feel comfortable teaching.

Did the bloke just break his dad's wrist through stupidity, or were they having a fight?

[Sasori Te]

Sheer ignorance. He and his dad both apparently liked to play the tough guy game. I told him if he wanted to prove how tough he was he could do it at home.