Assignment 7: Rank & Reputation [Daniel Gustafson, dgg67]

For this assignment I would like to once again discuss the Taekwondo martial arts school where I trained in high school. While I trained, I began to teach as well, and by the time I left the school, I was a 1st degree black belt and one of four primary instructors at the school. Our programs were mostly oriented towards young children, necessitating each one of us to develop a relationship with the parents of our students. Few parents will trust their children to any-old after school program, so we relied on their trust and our reputation for the success of our business. There were also many students (both children and adults) who would assist with class instruction, so it became very important to display the responsibility levels of instructors as well as students.

The most obvious reputation system in our community is your belt rank/color. There are nine levels of color-belts, the order of which was well known among our students. Belt rank serves essentially as an implicit reputation system. The higher your rank, the more trusted you were to provide correct advice, training tips, or technique demonstrations. Students were awarded with new ranks at testings upon demonstrating their martial arts abilities, their responsibility, and their dedication as a way to recognize their training and elevated level of trust the school was placing in them. Our school had many high-ranking students, so it was also important to designate who the official instructors were. A student-instructor wears a red-white-blue collar, a trainee instructor wears a red collar, a level 2 trainee instructor wears a red/black collar, a lvl 3 wears a black/red/black collar, and a fully-certified instructor wears a full black collar. In a martial arts school, easily visible reputation systems such as these are necessary to quickly command attention and respect from the students. Additionally, parents could easily tell who the primary instructors were, putting them much more at ease about leaving care of their children in our care.

Our school benefited from a very strong reputation. Our school been serving the same community, in the same building for over fifteen years. Additionally, our school was part of a much larger organization of martial arts schools. All schools within this organization had identical rank and reputation systems as described above, so at larger multi-school functions (such as tournaments, testings, or training camps) students and parents were always familiar with the reputation system and could know who to trust. While it is possible to easily fake the conventional signals displayed on one's uniform, behavior such as this within a martial arts organization is nearly unacceptable, non-existent, as well as relatively fruitless. Without the aggregate knowledge described by one's uniform, the display signals are relatively useless, and it would not be difficult to “uncover” such deception (as knowledge is the ultimate test of your uniform's display signals.