mercredi 25 juin 2014

"Professor"

Please consider this a spin-off from the Alan Thornton thread. (Or not, if you don't care)





From time to time you see the title professor being used in the martial arts world. Now, I spend part of my life in the academic world where I'm very familiar with the title, and aspire to it myself one day but not got there yet (maybe this year at last, but that's another story).



What does it take to be a professor in the academic world? Typically something like:-



- A first degree in their field (3-4 years of full time study)



- A doctorate (same again, making an examined original contribution to the sum of human knowledge in their subject)



- A track record of successfully supervising other people's doctorates.



- A publication record usually of 20-100 peer reviewed research publications, usually with at least a third of those as the lead author. As a crude rule of thumb, 3 research publications is equivalent to a research doctorate.



- An international reputation (as in, people from all over the world are actively using their work and seeking their advice)



The fastest I've ever seen anybody do this is about 20 years from leaving school: so let's say about 50,000 hrs of dedicated effort; most (of the small proportion of academics who ever get there) take double that.





It wouldn't be all that hard to provide an equivalence to that within martial arts practice: something like, let's see



- Dan grade through 1000-2000 hrs of training

- At least that much more personal training again.

- Have trained and graduate double figures of dan grades examined by other people

- Significant international teaching experience

- Running a reasonable sized organisation

- Be able to demonstrate to a panel of very senior peers that they have developed and improved their own art significantly.

- Have written authoritative texts being used across the martial arts world.





Do many of the people adopting the title "professor" in the MA world come at-all close to that? Does that matter?



Is it just an anglicisation of the French "professeur", or "teacher", and we shouldn't get precious about it?



G




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