Worlds Conferance

I have become involved in a meeting that intends to discuss bringing a recognition and a form of unity across the certification of the major Stage Combat organisations around the world.

 

Representatives from the BADC(UK), SAFD (USA), FDC (Canada), NSFS (Scandinavia), and SAFDi (Australia), There are a couple of independent representatives, of which I am one.

 

The exact details are to be ironed out during this coming meeting.

 

My hope is that this will lead to recognition, officially, between the organisations when students have been

certified and then take that certification  to another country and wish to continue training.

 

This is an issue that students of ours have had in the past, having trained with us and been certified by the BADC they return to their home country and wish to continue to training. However they then find that they are expected to only only recertify in weapons they have already done but also go through the minimum hours of training with those weapons. In some countries they expect you to go through 30 hours for each weapon.

 

This makes no sense to me, someone who has already trained with a weapon and been tested it, is expected to spend 30 hours with a weapons they have already done exactly the same as someone who has never handled the weapon before.

 

That is a baseline. I can understand that on a case by case basis, some people will need more training especially when they have achieved a low grade level in in the training, but to make it a blanket necessity and requirement makes no sense to me.

 

On a related theme, a minimum of 30 hours per weapon before you can go in for certification?! An advanced process of 5 weapons? 150 hours. How many hours do most people get to train a week? 1 1/2 a week? That's 100 weeks! 2 closer though with breaks etc, closer to 3 years. Now we aren't talking about a martial art, we are talking about a performance skill. Not including the time that would have been spent on the level 1 exam, around 3 weapons, or level 2 weapons, and other 3.

 

Again this doesn't make sense to me. Teaching a Principle based system then improvement in one element or style, should improve the skills and competence in another, so in general the more training one does the quicker and more proficient one should become with newer styles.

 

It occurs to me that the minimum requirement for the hours in organisations that have no grading system in their certification process. With grades you can show the "skill" demonstrated in the exam. Without a stratified level system, the mandatory hours goes someway to insuring that everyone one is at a standard.

 

Anyway we will see what happens and I'll keep you posted.