Posted by Puzzled on November 05, 1998 at 10:26:37:
Everyone on these message boards seems to love to talk about small things but no one addresses the really big issues.
What do I mean by big issues? Let me list a few that concern all people who do Tai Chi Chuan or any other type of Kung Fu.
(1) The new fad of "Shaolin Monks" training people in the US. Come now, take a history lesson. The temple closed in during the Japanese occupation of China. It re-opened later but Mao limited their ability to spread their word AND to accept new monks. Then in the 60's the temple was shut down during the days of the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guard.
Currently around Song Shan there is the temple (a great tourist attraction) and numerous government sponsored Wushu training centers complete with fake monks. A great money making deal and many of these people are truly able to teach but they are NOT monks.
(2) Magazine publishers who fuel controversy. Inside Kung Fu is famous for this. A few years ago, they were greatly responsible for the feud between William Cheung and Leung Ting. They fueled the Shuai Jiao feud, the east coast vs. west coast wushu association argument, the ninja craze of a few years ago, and now the UFC craze are all backed and made bigger by these magazines. They are currently setting up a controversy on this Shaolin monk thing. The recent article on real or fake monks was written by a student of a professed monk/monk student who is also NOT what he professes to be.
Is responsible journalism too much to ask for?
(3) "Instructors" who learn from a teacher in a seminar venue and then promote themselves as that teacher's close student.
(4) Instructors who have no professional ethics
There are several cases of instructors who use their role to lie or cheat the public. There are also a number of male instructors who use their position to make their schools into sexual hunting grounds for their own pleasure. They do not limit themselves to adults or one sex either. What happened to the idea that instuctors should also be role models?
I have yet to hear of any female instructors violating ethics in this area so we men should get our act together and become honorable.
(5) Instructors who write volumes in magazines and books about Martial morality and the responsibility of the teacher to student and student to teacher who have almost all of their senior students leave them for ethical and moral issues and for violating the trust between teacher and student.
These are just 5 examples of issues that face all of us involved in this art form. We need to police our own and clean this junk up or we all end up looking bad.
Instead, we quibble over small things.