I DON'T BELIEVE IN IT!

 By Phillip Starr

I stood before the group of beginning students who had been training for about four months and told them,, “I think you're all ready to take your first examination.” I then provided them with the necessary details; the date and time of the tests, what to bring, what to expect, and so on. Afterwards, one of them approached me and said, “I'd prefer not to take the test.”

“Why?”, I asked.

“I don't believe in rank”, he replied. “I'm not interested in getting different colored belts. They don't really mean anything.”

I chuckled, remembering how many times I'd heard this same statement. “Actually”, I said, “They mean more than you might think. But regardless, that's the way we do it here. If you don't take the exam, you'll be stuck in the beginner's class and you can't move forward.” His long face revealed his frustration.

Over the decades that I've taught martial arts, I've heard countless students (as well as many people who never studied martial arts a day in their lives) say things like, “A black belt doesn't mean you're really good. In some schools it's very easy to get a black belt...” True enough. I can't argue that point. However, we do need some form of certification that indicates that an individual has achieved a given level of skill. Certainly, these levels vary from one association or school to another but they are necessary, nonetheless.

For example, your physician posts a copy of the diploma he received upon graduating from medical school. It's signed, dated, and stamped and very official looking. But we all know there are many doctors out there who probably shouldn't even be handing out aspirin, right? How would you feel if you went into a doctor's office and his certificate said simply that he had attended a particular medical school but it made no mention of graduation? It'd spook me, for sure! What if high schools and universities didn't award graduation diplomas? You could walk into any job interview and claim to have a PhD!

This is a problem that many kung-fu stylists face. A good number of them will puff out their chests as they affirm, “We don't even have certificates or colored belts. They've never been used in the Chinese martial arts...” They've never considered what this means and what's happened because of it. Consider; any Chinese person can claim to have trained under a well-known (but deceased, of course) Master for a considerable length of time. He has no proof of it and even if he has a photo of himself standing beside his famous mentor, we don't know how often he attended training (once a week, thrice a week, once every other month...) or if he ever acquired any notable level of skill. All we have is his word on the matter and let me be the first to tell you that I've met some highly respected kung-fu instructors in the U.S. whose actual skill is rather minimal.

Mr. Adam Hsu, who was a well-known kung-fu teacher in the U.S. for many years (he now resides in Taiwan) emphasized the need for grading systems in the Chinese martial arts community. For the most part, his argument fell on deaf ears. This is most unfortunate. When we purchase something of great value, we usually insist on a “certificate of authenticity.” Shouldn't we do the same thing with martial arts teachers in whose hands we place our health and lives?