The Development of the Jan de Jong Jujutsu Grading System: Curriculum vs Examination (Grading) Question

The following is a comment that was posted on one of my Facebook posts sharing one of the posts about the development of the Jan de Jong jujutsu grading system:

Earlier I made an implied minor criticism of one aspect of the approach taken in these analyses. I said something along the lines of the need to clearly differentiate between an examination set or system and a curriculum. I added a vague comment stating that designing teaching outlines / lesson plans around test questions is a really bad idea.

I could not locate the earlier implied criticism regarding examinations and curriculum, although I vaguely remember it. 

The criticism was vague and lacked a practical explanation, however, it did sow a seed that I initially resisted but then succumbed to my natural curiosity (curiosity being one of Klein's five paths to insight that can lead to a new and better understanding).

I consulted a 40-year veteran educator who has also been involved in curriculum development for the Department of Education WA. This is an extract from his response:

Thanks for the email. An interesting question. Lots of detailed arguments can be made but essentially exams and tests are about eliciting information from the candidate that reflects their understanding of the curriculum that has been taught. ...

The tests and assessments (at least the major summative ones) cannot hope to cover the whole curriculum (i.e. everything that is taught) and so tend to be testing only the “core” or important parts of the course. They also test both skills (e.g mapping) and content understanding and application. Questions and the required format of answers (e.g. – multi choice, short answer, math problems, essay arguments etc.) relate to the level of answer required from simple recall/understanding through to application and then evaluation.

I then asked my education expert to apply the theory to martial arts practice:

Essentially, if I was to link the idea to martial arts, the curriculum would be the skills and knowledge taught during a block of learning, and the “grading” would be the test to see if the student could demonstrate that he/she/they knows the curriculum. In the Martial Arts case, I assume the curriculum is about the throws, blocks etc, that you learn and practise. These are then tested appropriately with demonstrations. I don’t know if you can test everything in the curriculum in a grading or whether, like in education, you just do the core of the curriculum. The nature of your curriculum (if its just practical skills) means that the gradings are just physical tests looking for technical demonstration of the curriculum. If there are other aspects to the course/curriculum, you may be able to add other ways to test the students.

In terms of teaching to pass examinations (gradings), my education expert had this to say:

In education, “teaching to the test”, means just focusing on how to pass the test or exam, through the explicit teaching of exam techniques and a focus on core areas and just past papers. The goal here (and we have become this unfortunately) is to prepare the kids to pass the exam at a high level. That is now an industry across Australia – revision seminars, practice books on NAPLAN etc. But the tests are not the curriculum – that is much bigger and wider. 

I am all about using theory to inform practice in a practical way. This idea was first enunciated for me in my first lecture during my MBA (Master of Business Administration) at the University of Western Australia's Graduate School of Management - using theory to inform practice in a practical way. This has been the basis for the first book that I wrote on the science behind all fighting techniques. It is the basis for the second book on a new and better understanding of our natural and learned responses to a threat. It was the basis for the articles that have been published in various national and international magazines based on the work within those two books. It is the basis of this blog and that of the Kojutsukan blog.

What, if anything, can we extract from the above discussion in terms of theory informing practice in a practical way?

The first thing that comes to my mind is: is the grading system the curriculum for the jujutsu taught by JDJ and the JDJ tradition?

Here I invite the readers to express an opinion either way. If you believe that there is a curriculum separate from the grading system, please provide details.

 

Both the abovementioned critic and the education expert adviser express the view that 'teaching to the test' is not a good thing. Towards the end of my teaching tenure at the Jan de Jong Self Defence School, I taught to the test, and I was very good at it. In fact, JDJ said that I was the best instructor in the school based on my student's performances in their gradings. They consistently excelled in their gradings to the point that at times JDJ would stop marking so as not to miss any of the performance.

When thinking about it, the traditional approach to advancement was for the instructor to determine one day that the student was ready for advancement without any formal testing. Is there a distinction between curriculum and examination in that tradition?

The abovementioned critic referred to teaching plans and lesson outlines. If the refer to anything other than copies of the grading sheets, then they were absent in the Jan de Jong Self Defence School. 

Remember, that while we are focused on one martial arts school here, the detailed examination enables us to learn something about all martial arts schools, as Friday argues in Legacies of the Sword: 'One can, therefore, learn something of broad value about the physiology of traditional Japanese martial art by carefully dissecting one school, in much the same way one can draw broad insights about the physiology of all species of all mammals by dissecting any one' (p. 10). Also see Shodan Requirement: History of Jujutsu post.

Of course the core of all learning, the identification of similarities and differences, are at the heart of this process. 

And here I would like to invite readers of other martial arts schools to share their distinction between curriculum and examinations/gradings, if there is one. In this way we can learn by comparing, one of the proven highly effective ways of identifying similarities and differences, and on of Klein's paths to insight that can lead to a new and better understanding.