Moderator: Bill Glasheen
Bill Glasheen wrote:Wow, that's pretty generous.
I recall my stipend covering my tuition, and paying me $440 a month. I found a way to survive through graduate school. I supplemented that with loans, but didn't have to pay any of that off until after I graduated.
I do not recommend most folks start graduate school after married or starting a family, unless the spouse is on board and can support you financially. The divorce rate at UVa for married grad students was something like 2 out of 3.
There is a cure for all that. Due to video game addiction and faltering grades, I have removed the X-box and Macbook from my son. No cable either. I allow doses of time gaming with the Macbook when he reads at least a few chapters.
Parents matter. You cannot let videogames and TV raise your children.
Valkenar wrote:While some styles are surely dying out with their last students, others are developing. The branches of Uechi-Ryu, as I understand it, are like dialects of a common language. As time passes, they will become different enough that we'll consider them distinct styles. TMA evolve over time, despite all efforts to go back to a (real or imagined) past state of perfection. And then there's styles like Jeet Kune Do, synthesized by new people from their own ideas and styles they borrowed from.
Bill Glasheen wrote:How a TMA manifests itself was never meant to be fixed in stone. TMAs are suppose to reflect the best of what we know to be, within the parameters which we choose to operate. What "it" will be in the future remains to be seen. Build a good program and they will come.
Victor Smith wrote:Karate books have become rare at the bookstores they now feature MMA and BJJ texts.
Likewise as a teacher I would be doing my students a disservice if all I did was pass on what I learned 20 years ago. I myself have to keep learning and incorporating new material, while tossing out what becomes irrelevant or superceded, so that my students have the opportunity to be current when they leave my class. I am continually modifying my classes from one term to the next as a result.
While some styles are surely dying out with their last students, others are developing.
Tomorrow’s challenges
Taekwondo of the 21st century, like its Asian cousins karate and kung fu, is facing a new challenge in the global arena. Mixed martial arts competition, or MMA, has proven a massive hit with global television audiences, making it the first combat sport since pro boxing to succeed as mass entertainment.
Moreover, the broad technical range and “no-holds-barred” rule-set of MMA arguably makes it more effective as a fighting system than style-specific martial arts such as judo, taekwondo, karate and kung fu, none of which have won significant audiences beyond their own circles of practitioners. How Asian martial arts will be impacted by MMA in the long-term remains unclear.
Although the current WTF president, the respected academic Dr. Choue Chung-won, eagerly promotes the art’s internationalization — he once noted his pleasure at seeing a demonstration mixing taekwondo and tango — South Korean flags continue to be saluted in taekwondo training halls and sewn on taekwondo uniforms worldwide. It is hard to think of another Olympic sport that so closely binds itself to its country of origin.
And at home, its catchment pool may be dwindling. In the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, Korean taekwondo practitioners were hardcore martial artists in an era when few other extra-curricular activities were available. As growing prosperity makes young Koreans less hardy, ever-increasing leisure options create competition for martial arts.
Today, outside the military PT curriculum and pro-athletic training at sports universities, Korean taekwondo is almost exclusively the province of children. And with regular grade tests being taken by thousands, the once-vaunted black belt has lost its mystique.
Moreover, as of this November, Korea’s Cultural Heritage Committee has recommended taekkyun be listed as a UNESCO living cultural heritage. In a truly remarkable renaissance, the ancient martial art survived Song’s death in 1987. His students oversaw the art surging in popularity in the 1990s, mainly on university campuses. Today, even to the layman’s eyes, it is easy to distinguish between it and taekwondo. An official designation recognizing taekkyun, not taekwondo, as Korea’s traditional martial art, drives a further nail into the latter’s dubious history.
So taekwondo stands at a crossroads. Will it secure a full-time Olympic slot or not? Is it a martial art for adults, a combat sport for athletes, or an educational activity for children? Is it traditional or modern? Is it Korean or international?
Arguably, it is now deep and broad enough to be all the above, for the art’s astonishing global popularization mirrors Korea’s astonishing national ascent — the greatest national success story of the 20th century. However — like the peninsula — it remains divided among different governing bodies, with their own forms and competitive systems.
Glenn wrote:But what if instead the master actually continued to learn and grow as a martial artist throughout his life, then he would also likely be teaching differently at different stages and thus the two students could learn a different version of the same "style".
Or what if the master was also an astute teacher and customized how he taught the different students?
jorvik wrote:Although [they live] a less violent life they seem to have a real understanding of violence.
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