Gil,
I was a drill sergeant at Ft. Sill, OK.
They tried to bring in mixed gender to Ft. Sill - you should have seen the battalion commander running around like a madman. This didn't work and they quit doing it, after all, Ft. Sill is a combat arms post, but this is starting to mean less and less in "todays" army. Read The Kinder Gentler Military by Gutman. You will see what I mean !
Gil, I own/run a martial arts school in Texas. In the old days getting a black belt was one of the hardest things in life to attain. It meant being an absolute expert in self defense. The requirements for the traditional black belt was incredible ! Now, as in public school, you have to be kind, compassionate, humble, loving, helpful, etc...........Everyone that pays long enough will eventually get a black belt. I am not against the above things - I am against lowering standards and babying students for money.
As in education and the military, the martial arts have dumbed down to a new low !

Robert Davis

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Robert Davis

I call that free-market economy.

In the old days, to learn martial arts meant you follow a teacher for decades to learn. Even then, you started out chopping woods as a youngster for your teacher (I guess that was part of the learning curve - to build strength, precision, and humbleness) for years before your are allow to even taught "the moves".

Since the mass migration of Asians to Europe and the New World in the early part of the Twentieth century, many of those martial arts experts realized there was a fortune to make to mass produce students, and Bruce Lee in the seventies just esscalated that process.

I don't see this is a bad thing. If your intention is to learn, it does not matter whethter you have a black belt or not. Black belt is only confined to Karate and Judo, Chinese Kung Fu has no rank whatsoever. A guy spend years learning Kung Fu can still beat someone with a black belt.

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95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

How about chef, or nowadays, executive chef. Nowadays every kind who graduates from culinary school is a chef. In the "old" days (I'm the last of an old breed I'm afraid) you had to work your way up through the ranks. To be called the executive chef you had to be in charge of multiple outlets. You were never called an executive chef if you worked in the restaurant. You had to oversee catering, banquets, coupla restaurants, the bar restaurant, and other things. You were proficient in every facet of the kitchen, from growing your own tomatoes to butchering your own chickens. You could take a side of beef and break it down into its respective parts.

Kids these days never even see a side of beef, let alone a hind quarter. All they see is the final product precut and premeasured. Most of them don't even make their own stock anymore, or don't know the basics of baking a cake. What a shame, and they call themselves chefs. There's too many, the term now means nothing.

Kuan