The founder of karate (Gichin Funakoshi) once commented that the true purpose behind the study of karate is the perfection of character of the practitioners (Funakoshi, 2003).
Read that again slowly, for it is an odd concept for Westerners. American educators, especially in the adult education field, may find the link between learning physical skills and development of the self particularly foreign. Since the work of Eduard Lindeman, we have tended to define the term “adult education� as something properly separate from mere vocational learning (Smith, 1996). We separate the learning of tangible skills from the development of a person and from finding meaning and purpose to our lives. In marked contrast, for the martial artist, through years of kicking and punching and throwing one's partners, the ultimate goal is to become a person of noble character.
Funakoshi was not the only martial arts practitioner to come to this realization. The great samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi came to the same conclusion, leading him to write The Book of Five Rings. A book that is not about how to conquer one's foes but to conquer one’s self. It is ironic that it has become a best seller for the business crowd!
I have seen some of this transformational learning through the martial arts seep through in my own life. I remember one incident in particular that opened up for me the value of the karate in my own understanding of myself. It occurred when I won my division at a karate tournament for the first time in my late 30's and was standing in line to collect my trophy. It was the first trophy I had ever won in my life, and it was amazingly for this "macho" sport. While exhaustedly waiting, I met a woman a little older than I who had just done the same thing. Surrounded by kids picking up trophies, here we were as middle-aged "ladies,� getting teary-eyed over a goofy statue and sharing the experience. On an endorphin "high", we were reflecting together and individually on the moment.
The fact was that we had done much more than just win a few sparring matches to earn this honor. We had worked really hard at a difficult sport that was once reserved for men, and we had become good at it. It had taken resolve to even start and persistence to continue, especially with jobs and families competing for training time. The sport itself is incredibly demanding in stamina, balance, focus, speed, strength, and judgment. But most important it had forced us to face our fears every time we'd gone to the dojo, and it really tests one’s courage to go up in a ring against people you do not know.
So we stood there, sweating, realizing how much we had grown in order to come to this moment. It was not just a trophy indicating we had won a few rounds of glorified tag. It was a trophy indicated that we had won against everything that had tried to stop us from coming to that moment. We had beaten lifetimes of opponents; we had beaten our own limits.
So, if you look at what transformation can be made of a person through a simple sport - what could you do if you could show people that they can read? Or they can write and write well? Or they can run a computer? Who knows where you can go with the right situation and the right learner? If you can facilitate someone’s growth so that they pass their previous limits and challenge the world-view that labels them deficient, what can you facilitate in their understanding of their own meaning?
We, as adult educators, need to consider that transformation of a person can occur through learning “how to do� tasks. Not instead of it.
References
Funakoshi, G. (2003). The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Smith, M. K. (1996, January 28, 2005). “Adult education�, The encyclopedia of informal education.
Retrieved July 30, 2005, from http://www.infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-adedgn.htm