Amateur, Retailer, Professional? Rediscovering the Classic Martial Arts Teacher
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- Created: Friday, 25 February 2011 08:35
- Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 October 2017 06:50
- Written by S. Musco, Head Instructor
- Hits: 1506
“Between the amateur and the professional … there is a difference not only in degree but in kind. The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different integration, a different nervous and muscular and psychological organization…. A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.”
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri
Rationale
Law. Medicine. Engineering. We expect much from those who practice what are termed professions. Society has long been aware that certain occupations have consequences too significant, and/or processes too subjective or arcane, to be safely or properly evaluated by any but another practitioner. Thus, these activities are entrusted only to those with a true calling to their field and the recognition of their peers.
Furthermore, no matter how skilled or well meaning, we are all only human. Security comes from the knowledge that individuals who provide us "professional" services answer to a high authority than themselves.
Read more: Amateur, Retailer, Professional? Rediscovering the Classic Martial Arts Teacher
On November 8, 2015, four high ranking karate masters from Okinawa, Japan presented a full day of training workshops in New Paltz, New York. The event was hosted by the New Paltz Karate Academy, and sponsored by the Okinawa Prefectual Government as part of its worldwide cultural outreach effort. Over two hundred traditional martial arts students and teachers from throughout the northeastern United States attended the event.
