HARDCORE JEET KUNE DO DISCUSSION FORUMA Pro-Wing Chun/Jun Fan/Original Jeet Kune Do Forum (BY INVITATION ONLY): Would you teach something you felt was ineffective?

I posted this on another forum, but I thought people here might find it interesting.

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Let me preemptively apologize before I write this. I know it's going to be a long and wordy post. I can't think of any other way to approach this issue. Also some might find this post "insulting" or "nitpicking" or "illogical". So be it. I'm certain that such criticisms stem more from the "camp" people belong to than the strength of their counter argument.

To facilitate the discussion I'll start off with an analogy outside of martial arts since so many people here are so emotionally attached to their particular viewpoint. One of my non martial arts hobbies is outdoor education. I've taught many classes including nature, camping and first aid. Over the years I've been involved in this hobby a lot of things have changed and a lot has stayed the same. One thing that changed was instructions on how to deal with snakebite. When I was a boy we were taught the "cut and suck" method. That is making an incision across the bite marks and then sucking the poison out either with a suction cup or with your mouth. Maybe you heard the Lone Ranger and Tanto joke where the Lone Ranger gets bit in a private area and Tanto goes to the doctor to find out what to do? The punch line is "Lone Ranger, doctor says you're gonna die". Anyway the latest information is you should NEVER use the cut and suck method. It's ineffective, can cause infection and exposes the rescuer to the risk of ingesting poison himself. For a while so called "venom extractors" were pushed as an alternative, but the latest is that those don't work either. The only official advice is "get the victim to the hospital quickly so that he can get anti-venom."

I was never satisfied with the "don't do anything but get them to the hospital" answer. Say if someone got bit while lost in the woods? It might take days for that person to be found in which case anti-venom would be no good. I looked up various alternative therapies. Charcoal seemed to hold the most promise for treating venomous bites, although I found mostly anecdotal evidence for it. Then one day when I was about to do chi sao with a training partner I noticed he had a spot on the top of his wrist. He told me that it was from a brown recluse spider. If you've ever looked at pictures of the aftermath of brown recluse spider bites you know that they are typically VERY damaging. I asked he how it was treated. He said he didn't have health insurance so his wife found a leaf in the yard from a weed called "plantain". This is different from the banana like fruit that some people eat. It grows wild all over the southeast U.S. She chewed up the leaf and taped it over the wound. The last time I saw this guy he didn't have a TRACE of the spider bite.

Fascinated I did my own research. This leaf is good for poison in general. Recently on trip a friends son was stung by a yellow jacket wasp. I put some plantain on it at the pain stopped immediately. From my research plantain is also good for snakebite. Thankfully I've not had to test this, but I would certainly use it if I had to. Unlike the "cut and suck" method it can't make the problem worse and evidence shows that it can actually help.

So what does any of this have to do with JKD? Well this is really about teaching in general. Recently I was asked to teach a first aid class. The class material had the old "cut and suck" method in it. I modified the material. Knowing that the old snakebite method has been repudiated as ineffective and knowing that I have another method that's more effective why would I teach something that I didn't believe in? The answer is...I wouldn't.

Would I teach the old snakebite treating method for historical reasons? No. I might say "in the old days people used to do such and such" but I wouldn't TEACH it. Why would I encumber a student's mind with something I didn't think worked?

Would I teach the old snakebite treating method because someone asked me to? No. Not even if they were paying me. Someone's life might someday depend on them having the best information for treating snakebite.

If someone who still taught the old method wanted to compare what they taught to what I taught would I then teach the old method to have an "apples to apples" comparison? No. I would let THEM teach the old method for treating snakebite and I would teach my method of herbs and charcoal and getting to the hospital as soon as possible. The comparison would be on two different methods to treat snakebite and NOT of two different people doing the same ineffective thing.

I CERTAINLY wouldn't teach the old cut and suck method because I thought it was "less boring" than my new method. We're talking life and death here. Whether something is boring or not is immaterial.

Some people reading this already know to what I'm alluding. For those who haven't figured it out, it's the never ending controversy over trapping. Some in the JKD world have thrown it out, some have kept it in. Some seem to fall in some murky area in between. The first JKD person I had ever heard of discarding trapping was Matt Thornton. Burton Richardson eventually took that path also. Love em or hate em I can respect their logic. They haven't found trapping useful, so they don't use it. Period. Not for "historical reasons" not as a "comparison with Wing Chun" not because someone asked them to trap for a photo sequence, seminar or any other reason. Now I have to qualify this. They will do "clinch" style traps like arm drags. That's because they've found that effective.

I still use trapping. But at one time I had serious doubts about it. Then I found what was missing I had the mechanics and the sensitivity but lacked the strategy to really make it work. This is something that's difficult to teach. I don't know if I could teach it. It's something you have to discover. Steve Golden has his own wonderfully infuriating way of making you figure things out for yourself. I know I'll never convince people like Matt Thornton that trapping works, but I've used Matt's "acid test" of seeing if it works against a non cooperative resisting opponent by trapping while sparring. So I personally know that it's useful.

Still there's the belief that "new is always better" even though as Solomon said "there's nothing new under the sun". (Don't believe me? How old is Muay Thai boxing? How old is Greco-Roman wrestling? But people treat both of these arts as if they were "new" or "modern".) But what happens when you find a use for something old? Back to medicinal analogies, a few hundred years ago people used leeches to treat just about everything. Often this did more harm than good. President George Washington may have prematurely died thanks to this treatment. But now modern doctors have discovered that leeches can be helpful for treating people who's limbs have been reattached. While leeches aren't always the answer, there are times when they are VERY helpful. Hmmm...sort of like trapping.

Final analogy. Some time ago someone tried to make the case that Windows is like "new JKD" and it has nothing to do with DOS like "old Wing Chun". I pointed out then that the DOS shell is still there and still quite useful. Well lately I've been learning a new web development system called "Ruby on Rails". The thing is, it's IMPOSSIBLE to use ROR without using the command line. Paul Bax will be happy to know that there is an ROR implementation for the MacIntosh. But that uses the Mac's Unix command line. That's right. The "newer" versions of the MacIntosh operating system are all build on the OLD command line based Unix operating system. When Steve Jobs left Apple years ago and formed NeXT he realized that he needed a command line. Unix is actually older then DOS even though it's far more powerful. Unix makes up the structure of the latest Mac operating systems just like some say Wing Chun makes up the structure of JKD. DOS no longer makes up the structure of Windows per se (although the file hierarchy structure remains) but you can certainly use DOS commands from Windows. Likewise though I'm not sure how much of the WC structure remains in JKD I'm certain (for myself anyway) that WC techniques such as trapping, lin sil di dar or cross stamp kicks can be used from a JKD structure.

Ok, I've spent far more time and energy on this than I should have. I'm sure I won't convince anyone an any "camp". But hopefully what I've written is clearly understandable to all. But I won't hold my breath on that.

Regards,

John M. Drake

Would you teach something you felt was ineffective?

Good Post John!

Re: Good Post John!