Who's in Charge - I don't know - third base

Yes that is a variation on the old Abbot and Costello routine, but it is something for the instructor to remember as well.

From the outside it certainly looks like the instructor is in charge. The instructor stands before the class and tell everyon what to do. It really is far more subtle than that.

I teach a very small adult program, hardly more than a handfull of students, the most were 10 years ago. My model isn't the modern dojo, but the concept of what pre-1900 karate instruction may have been like, on a personal one to one level.

The program has it's rewards, the foremost is that my dan's have stayed an average of +15 years after their sho-dan program before they move on.

At the same time I've never had two classes in a row with the same people, and that slows down some aspects of training.

An instructor can only do what their students allow them to do.

We're not living on an island 45 miles long, with students that can walk over to the house to train. I'm sure it was easier in those days to tell the family bye after dinner I have to train for hours every evening for the rest of my life. They did't have jobs that require them to work many hours, to travel everywhere, and all of the other disruptive factors trying to make the student move on. They didn't have electric power, movies, television, etc. and lived in communities where everyone knew what everyone else was doing too. In fact training with an instructor probably held a very different status for the student than today.

If you can't give your students a program that will focus their interests on training then other factors will take over and they will move one. That is what is right for them.

What the instructor can do is make the students study unique. If every class is different from every other class, forever, then a student never becomes bored, or knows what happens at 8 o'clock every time.

Personally I try to adopt the concept of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that the more you know about one aspect of the art, the less you know about others, and work to make every class a unique, once in a lifetime experience of study. So the student knows that missing a class is missing a unique, never to be repeated training experience.

The student is still in charge, they must show up for training to take place, but the content is the instructors, part of the eternal balance.

And now back to shoveling show in New Hampshire, about another foot yesterday.