Teachers open the door. You enter by
yourself.
– Chinese proverb
In our last post, we
discussed the relationship between the Kohai (eager student) and Sempai
(mentor). Implied in the relationship between Kohai and Sempai is the idea of
personal responsibility. When you think about it, personal responsibility is
really the linchpin of the relationship between the student and the mentor.
What is personal
responsibility? The Brookings Institution’s Ron Haskins defines personal responsibility
as “the willingness to both accept the
importance of standards that society establishes for individual behavior and to
make strenuous personal efforts to live by those standards.”
Makes
sense, right? Take responsibility for everything that deals with yourself, and
make sure you’re living up to the standards of your community.
There’s
another aspect to personal responsibility that’s equally important, however,
and should be clearly understood. Haskins
goes on to say “personal responsibility also means that when individuals fail
to meet expected standards, they do not look around for some factor outside
themselves to blame. The demise of personal responsibility occurs when
individuals blame their family, their peers, their economic circumstances, or
their society for their own failure to meet standards.”
At the Dojo, it’s not
uncommon to have a student come up for a stripe with no folder and immediately
begin with “My mom forgot…” or “my dad forgot…” Without delay we will ask, “Whose
folder is it? Whose responsibility is it?” Our folder is just that—OUR folder.
Not Mom and Dad’s. So it should be something for which we are personally
responsible.
Other examples of things you
should be personally responsible for are: pulling your attendance card; knowing
your terminology and answers to your questions; knowing your curriculum;
getting your Intent to Promote Forms completed on time; and keeping up with all
of your classes.
How, then, does the
Kohai/Sempai relationship hinge on personal responsibility? Quite simply,
without the student taking personal responsibility for her learning, the work
of the teacher is entirely in vain. Similarly, if the teacher does not take
personal responsibility and constantly improve his skills and his knowledge in
the Martial Arts, he will not be the best Sempai he can be—he will not daily
earn the title of Sempai.
Remember, the instructors and
SWAT members take personal responsibility very seriously. We train hard and we are
here to help you any way we can. Ultimately, if you are to succeed as a student
of the Martial Arts, you have to take personal responsibility for your
training. The best teachers in the world are useless to the student who refuses
to own the hard work required to achieve Black Belt excellence! At the end of
the day, the responsibility of your training is up to you.
