For years we have deliberated the idea of a "child" Black Belt.
We used to teach kids the same as adults. We knew that they couldn't learn the same as adults but we tried to ram the material down their throats anyway. Once in a great while we would get a gifted child that could hang in there and get to Black Belt while in the meantime we made it mostly impossible for them to succeed in an adult curriculum. Kids couldn't match adults in technique and should not be expected to. Well it took many years to figure out how to teach them better but I think we finally figured it out.
While in college I studied child psychology but had not translated it to our martial arts teaching. Now we have designed a "Junior" Black Belt rank that lets kids that train hard and practice a lot the opportunity to make a rank that is a condensed version of our adult Black Belt. After this promotion they will continue training to learn the remainder of our adult curriculum to become a full fledged adult Black Belt. This photo is of our first group to be awarded the rank of Junior Black Belt.
Congratulations!
Kwan Jang Nim Bogdanski
No comments:
Post a Comment