The Secret of Secrets.

RyuJin wrote: always be wary of a..."master" claiming some secret knowledge....a good teacher holds no secrets from their students...

I'm going to disagree with this (edited, more expanded) version of this statement. I have trained a lot of people in my (non-martial-arts) "job" and I have, and will always hold secrets from them if they are not ready to handle them. It keeps them safe.

When training my students, I do not share advance techniques until they master the basic and then intermediate ones.

But is that keeping a secret?

rugadd wrote: When training my students, I do not share advance techniques until they master the basic and then intermediate ones.

But is that keeping a secret?

Some of my former trainees would say so. They've started screaming arguments about it.

As much crap as I talk about Obi-Wan being a lying sack of creepy hermit, he knew when not to say things. He really did. He's like an anti-Hagrid.

there's a difference between withholding something out of responsibility and keeping a secret to maintain superiority...

on one of the ocassions that i've taught i taught everything i knew and the student wasn't responsible enough for some of the techniques which caused more harm than good....i learned my lesson...make sure the student is ready for what you teach them...the few others i've taught i kept that lesson in mind and withheld certain techniques...i did tell them that i was going to do so until they were ready....i didn't keep any secret from them....i did withhold some techniques from them....big difference...

some instructors keep secrets from their students out of some misguided fear that the student will take said secret and take business from the instructor...

--edit ryujin beat me to it! lol

everybody doesnt need to know how to do all the super saiyen ninja death moves

even with like just a thread on the internet there are some things that dont really need to be said (especially on the internet actually)

the flip side is that for some people, secrecy is really more about feeling important and powerful than being something done as a result of any kind of genuine respect (for anyone other than themelves i mean)

so the challenge is to be aware of these things in ourselves

I defiantly concur with the collected here

RyuJin wrote: there's a difference between withholding something out of responsibility and keeping a secret to maintain superiority...

on one of the ocassions that i've taught i taught everything i knew and the student wasn't responsible enough for some of the techniques which caused more harm than good....i learned my lesson...make sure the student is ready for what you teach them...the few others i've taught i kept that lesson in mind and withheld certain techniques...i did tell them that i was going to do so until they were ready....i didn't keep any secret from them....i did withhold some techniques from them....big difference...

some instructors keep secrets from their students out of some misguided fear that the student will take said secret and take business from the instructor...

I couldn't say it better.