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POSTED BY: ranger1100ky on Jun 2, 2008
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The definition of 'traditional' is a moving target, depending on who you ask.
I've been at this since 1981, so I'll give you my definition.
First off... it has NOTHING to do, with your particular 'flavor' of Taekwondo, be it Chang Hon, Songahm, Palgwe, Taegeuk, or even another curriculum.
What makes Taekwondo traditional, is its focus on the 'total individual'.
Truth be told, 'self defense' doesn't even factor into the picture of whether an art is 'traditional' or not.
General Choi was a military man. He's partly the reason the South Korean people even HAVE military forces at this point. He trained his troops in what would become Taekwondo, to instill disicipline, national pride, and simple hand to hand combat maneuvers that could be readily learned and easily adapted.
Most of the soldiers involved, would wind up earning their black belts VERY quickly. Taekwondo was part of their daily routine, so they got plenty of practice time logged in, over a much shorter timeperiod, than most of us do today.
Like most military men... Choi probably realized that teaching someone how to kick butt and let God sort it out, without teaching them restraint, would be a fool's errand. So he developed his training to address this matter. We know that this would eventually grow into the tenants of Taekwondo and the student oath.
The training was demanding, not only of body, but of the mind as well. When you added the 'moral compass tuning' which the student oath and tenants provided... you had the trifecta of mind, body, spirit...
THAT is the root of traditional martial art, right there... Training on all three fronts.
We look at the arts today, and we see still, some schools that subscribe to the 'pushup' method of negative feedback discipline. I don't think there's a thing wrong with it. It's how I was trained. But the presence or lack of it, does not make a school 'less traditional' than the next.
A traditional program instills discipline yes... but it inspires excellence and INDIVIDUAL growth.
A true traditional school, is one, where you, as a student, have two people to please... yourself, and your instructor. Your instructor is the final word. You are his/her apprentice/disciple. Everything you do from the day you bow in, reflects back on him/her. You listen to your instructor, you do what they tell you. You DO talk with them as well, since that exchange DOES help them to find new ways to help you understand what they're trying to teach you, and it helps you cultivate that deep trust you'll have to have in them, to be able to freely obey them, even when they ask you to do what you think is impossible.
"When the student is ready to learn... the master will appear."
Notice there is no plurality in that statement. Traditional instructors may lead classes, but they teach individual students. The Master/pupil relationship is completely at the center, of everything a traditional school is. You don't move up when some twit in a suit hundreds of thousands of miles away says so. You do so, when your instructor says so. And even if there's a class of 20 other people around you... you are your instructor's student. Everything said in class, or one to one, goes for you. Your job is not to 'stand out among peers'. Your job is to learn, to one day, surpass the example that your instructor has set for you.
Traditional martial art, is not 'systems' or 'programs' based learning. It's founded solely in the master/pupil relationship. The goal of traditional training, is not to turn you into a clone of your instructor. The goal is to raise you to a point, where you outgrow the need to be held by the hand, and grow to a point where YOU can take the wheel, and perhaps one day raise students of your own.
When you reach that point... you've reached the point where you can truely honor your instructor's teachings, by passing them on to your students, along with what you have learned, giving them not only your instructor's wisdom, but your own as well.
To be truthful... we could scrap every form, every organization, and 'write our own ticket' and still have a traditional school... (That's probably why there are so many styles of martial art really... virtually every one, started with one person who said of past teachings, "That's nice... but I've learned a couple of other things I want to pass on to my students too...")
So... what is a traditional school?
It's a school, that treats every student as an individual, where the instructor, no matter how many students he or she has, takes each student as an individual, under their wing, to help that student grow in mind, body, and spirit, towards the day, when the student will one day extend their wing to a fledgling student of their own, and raise them, just as their instructor did for them.
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Getting through life takes just a LITTLE bit of insanity!*g*
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