01/09/2023
During the late 90's we made an effort to incorporate basic weapons training into our regular classes to the point of requiring brown belts and above to need to learn and test with weapons, mainly bo staff at the time, along with their regular empty hand material. This lasted a couple of years maybe, if even that long, and was eventually taken out of regular curriculum. Couple of reasons why, to many students, it ended up being 'to much' extra to work on on top of their normal requirements, and also, there wasn't total 'buy in' and commitment of adult black belts to want to teach it to make it work. If the 'buy in' would have been there, the better chance it could have worked, also when immaturity raises up in the sense of 'wasn't my idea', that tends to impede growth as well.
Happens in everything, martial arts isn't immune to it. I deal with this everyday at work, at church, basically anything when we are around mentally insecure humans
Brown belt level at that time was the equivalent of red belt level currently. Students at that point have a minimum of 2 years training to get to red belt level, many of my students longer than that due to how I try to manage them individually based on their efforts and capabilities.
Teach the art, manage the class, lead the individual student
