Mindset of an martial artist in academic teaching

Students teaching each other

Learning is not just a skill, but also an attitude. 

The mindset of a teacher in an evolving martial art is that of a relationship where both student and instructor are venturing in a common effort to excel. The training place, the dojo, is a safe place to make mistakes and the instructor-student relationship is based on creating independence by learning how to learn. The Asian-influenced philosophy that is nourishing mindfullness in learning, with the aim to improve skills, can seem somewhat reversed compared to Western thinking that dominates in academia.

A typical class room or dojo

In academia, a lot of time is spent on adsorbing a lot of information with a presumption that students know how to process this raw information. This stands in contrast to the thinking in martial arts, where possessing a text with an important technique would be considered useless or misleading without a moral understanding. The written information of a technique in martial arts cannot be grasped unless one is able, with assistance of a teacher, to contextualize and animate it and appreciate its synergy with one’s present moral and intellectual understanding. With age and experience, the understanding continues to grow. Though the Asian-inspired thinking in teaching is hundreds of yeas old it is only now beginning to gain popularity in Western academia. Alvin Toffler and Roy Leighton are among a few who strongly speak in favour of replacing the overall understanding of education in a modern society from an obsolete form based on memorization, were information is available to anyone anywhere, with the ability of applying the knowledge available.

Wonderful teacher-student interaction when teaching in Japan

As an university teacher with a background in martial arts, the academic education seems incomplete by allowing students to pass a higher education by displaying a mere ability to answer written or oral tests as expected, without simultaneously educating the person how to apply the knowledge for something good.

To become a good instructor in martial arts, the teacher needs to be a leader among equals: respecting the students while destroying his or hers own ego. Developing skills in academia to a higher level (as it is the goal in martial arts) is possible if the teacher embodies the passion for the subject and insists on communication with students. This contact is based on a mutual respect and striving for excellence by example. 

A thought example. Imagine attending a martial art class where you for 45 minutes listened to a power point presentation of a teacher explaining how you should move and behave. Would you come back for the next lesson? Now imagine a university lecturer who takes the students somewhere relevant and interesting for the subject, shows and explains about the subject as examples appear or in response to questions, insist student explore and use their senses. Would you come back for that next lesson? Perhaps even go home and read about questions that appeared in the discussion?

Today's class is under water

Promoting passion and healthy self-criticism above long-term purely academic aims, such as degrees, might also result in overall better-doing students. In addition, constant self-reflecting empowers students to adapt to inevitable changes in life and constantly reflect on their roles in collaborations. One aim of higher education should be that the students would find they have an excess of passion and begin teaching back on their own initiative - thus showing they have developed a heart for learning. 

Students teaching and learning, and smiling!

Link: Bujinkan Estonia Tartu Dojo

Modern Sisyphus - are scientist's smart to publish in academic journals today?

The publishing of academic work is a tightly controlled process, with critical review taking months and sometimes years of work that needs to stand the test of "experts" believing in your work for it to reach print. This is to ensure quality to avoid that bad, or even misleading work, do not get the quality stamp "scientific" and "peer reviewed". The idea is good, but is it fair under current day standards and is it even abused?

Historically

Testing your experiments against the criticism of your equals is an old concept that dates back before the time of natural scientists. In the age of alchemists and early time of the natural scientists it was simply to dangerous to openly speak of your ideas and theories without putting your life and limbs at stake in Europe. So, the ideas and results was coded or secretly sent between trusted individuals within the same field for commenting or simply sharing the progresses. One such network that included historical figures such as Sir Cheney Culpeper, Benjamin Worsley, and Rober Boyle that were possibly members of the Invisible College.

When the work of national philosophers were vindicated by people in power in the 17^th century discussing theories and results became more public accepted. Actually, in the early days of science the researcher had to perform the experiment in front of a live audience, trying to convince them – the predecessor of today's scientific presentation. Eventually the written form went public and commonly the universities provided the press.

Up into our time the published articles has been taken on by a large and increasing number of publishers. Some mastodons almost monopolizing whole sectors and others grass roots and independent publishers. Today publishing is associated with costs for the journal due to staff and printing costs, but it may have gone a bit out of hand.

Exploitation of researchers in publishing

A scientist today can rarely avoid frequent invitations to review articles, publishing in new journals (often for a fee), share their knowledge in book chapters (often for a fee), not to mention a horde of new conferences inviting your to give a presentation (but often for the fee of attending). It is hard to see this as short of exploitation.

This is probably a “natural” development of how we build our academic sector today. Scientists work for free, or pays, to share the most recent advances to the world. The more people you want to reach with the new knowledge – the more expensive it is (such as making your article Open Access in most journals).

For comparison, consider a journalist. Journalists are seen by many scientists as counter productive to progress since the information they provide to the public often is distorted and misleading making the increasing of knowledge so much harder. The journalist has a much wider audience and the journalist get paid to publish! This puts the voice of scientists at a clear disadvantage since damage control within their field is work that is pro bono.

Just, to highlight the main differences, consider the following generalized financial differences...

General perspective on costs and salary in publishing
	Journalist	Scientist
Writer is measured on how much is published and by the popularity of the published paper?	Yes	Yes
Writer is paid to write?	Yes	No
Writer is paid to review?	Yes	Rarely
Costs can be associated with publishing for writer?	No	Yes
If made available for free the writer pays for it?	No	Yes
If made available for free or published in larger quantities the writer is paid more due to extended use of creative material?	Yes	No

... in short the researcher can suck waxed fruit!

In addition there is a long row of similar things about content, such as integrity, thoroughness of background research, spelling and language, speculation on material presented etc. that are very different depending on whether a scientist or journalist is to publish their material (sadly enough).

Looking at this kind of set-up it is difficult to publish an article without getting a bitter taste in the mouth. One do not feel very clever doing so unless you have a huge sense of Utopia (like me). Actually, it is scary how easy it is to earn fair money for your efforts by taking on a journalist-hat and write a science-sounding article (qualified or not) for a pet magazine or the like.

Good journals do exist

One of my favourite journals is Vet Med Zoot. It is free to publish in. It is journal controlled by an university. It has an impact factor (important to bosses of researchers). It has a good editorial board. It is Open Access. Down side is that MedLine has not listed it yet and it is thus not searchable by researchers only using this tool. But, the journal is close to what the original idea of a publication was supposed to be. More of that please!