“Your goal should be to be better than me.” I’ll never forget how shocked I was when Sifu Paul Roberts told me this. I had just started learning from him and we were casually chatting about his teachers’ skills as well as recounting stories of past martial arts legends. When he asked what my goal in training with him was, I told him that I wanted to get good. I had never considered beating him (or any or my previous teachers) as a goal. It seemed not only unthinkable but also, well, disrespectful. Who the hell was I to think that I could surpass my sifu?
In fact, I had never heard of teachers encouraging their students to strive to be better than they are. If anything, it was usually just the opposite, with teachers cultivating a culture/environment in which they (and their own teachers) were supreme authority figures, almost god-like, and their skills unbeatable to the point of being mythical. But all of a sudden, here was Sifu Roberts not just encouraging but practically demanding that I strive to be better than he is. It was jolting, but I realized a little later that I needed to be jolted.
From what I’ve seen, martial arts tend to perpetuate deification more than most endeavors. I think there are several reasons for this, including the Asian culture in general, the people/personalities that martial arts tend to attract in both teachers and students, and the business/economic advantages for a school in setting unattainable (or vague) goals.
But whatever the reasons, deification is detrimental for the individual and for the art because it prevents both from progressing. That was Sifu Roberts’ (and that is now my) main reason for encouraging students to make their ultimate goal beating the teacher—we want the art and our students to progress.
Think about how far technology has progressed because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made it their goal to improve on what was then considered “high-tech.” Although they surely respected their professors and the tech leaders of the time, they also must have believed that they could in some way go beyond these individuals. Had Gates and Jobs instead deified them, you might very well be reading this blog post in the form of a printed monthly newsletter instead of on your smartphone or tablet.
Although I expect my students to strictly follow my methods (at least for a while, in order to understand and apply the principles) and to respect me (even when they do surpass me), I remind them that if I’m a good teacher, my goals should be to teach them to beat me, and that if they’re good students, their goal should be to learn to beat me. When they do beat me, they and the art will have been taken to ever higher levels.
So now you may be asking yourself if I’ve surpassed Sifu Roberts. It’s a good question and one that you can answer if you come train with us. Hope to see you soon.