The Professional Problem : Part Two
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The Professional Problem : Part Two
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Date
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April 1941
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6
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2
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4
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4
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en
The Professional Problem
PART TWO
Another fault we find with many professionals is that they teach static, immobile and, therefore, useless fencing. After all, fencing is a touch-making sport, presumably taught to make it possible for you to touch an alert, moving, uncharitable opponent without being touched yourself. What do you see at some Salles? Let us look in at some Salles and watch the professional give a lesson to a pupil. Why must this lesson all take place within a ten-foot length of strip? Doesn’t this professional know that fencing calls for mobility, that legwork is as important as handwork? Perhaps he does, but he also knows that short lunges are easier on the pupil (and himself). A bad case of coddling.
There used to be a fencing club in this city where all fencing lessons were given in a very short alcove. If the professional backed up five feet he would fall out of a window. If the pupil retreated by the same distance he fell down the stairs. The club had plenty of room but this professional loved his little alcove. This was many years ago and this club’s teams were very successful in competition. This was back in the days when fencers stood like marble statues in nice engagement and raced blades around one another until one chest or another got in the way. Those days are gone. Today’s fencer must learn to stretch, hit from distance and beat a quick retreat after failing in an attack. Marble statues have been relegated to the museum. You must give your fencing lessons on a full-length 40' strip and use all of it.
Many professionals reading these comments may agree with the professional who once told me to mind my own business. He argued that I would consider it some nerve on his part for him to tell me how to run my business (which happens to be a type of engineering). This would be a perfectly logical argument except for the fact that he knows nothing about engineering whereas I do know something about fencing. The active competitive fencer sees as much if not more fencing in a season than the average professional. This professional will never accept the fact that fencing is developed by the amateur. The amateur develops the sport, the professional analyzes and applies these developments. It is the man in the trenches who teaches the teacher in the war college how to teach the man in the trenches.
Another point of value to professionals is that the average American, though instinctively shiftless, enjoys a hard workout. You can take an American boy and drill him until his tongue hangs out and he will be around early the next day for another grueling lesson. The minute you let him off easily he suspects you of short-changing him. Never hesitate to stretch an American out to the full. Work him to exhaustion and he will come back for more. Coddle him and he loses interest in what he is doing and respect for your ability to make him do it.
America is now very much on its own in regard to professional fencers. Europe as a source of supply is more or less shut off to us. This is perhaps to our own good for where the European professional may have excelled in skill he did fall short in carry-through. He generally arrived with distorted ideas of profit at little expenditure of energy. He often came to these shores believing that $5,000 a year fencing contracts could be picked from trees and that all he had to do was to open a salle d’armes and a bank account simultaneously and that his mere presence in the one would automatically fill the other. Nothing was further from the truth. To make a living as a fencing master in the United States is no easy assignment. Americans are no easier to squeeze money from piece-meal than any other nationality. European fame has little but transitory effect upon our impressionable minds, whereas money must produce results before we will part with much of it. Therefore, we saw many importations come and return by later boat, embittered by the fact that financial plums did not fall into their laps as the mere result of showing their fencing diplomas. Others stuck it out and we value many of these among our foremost, hard-working, successful masters.
The native professional should come to the task with no distorted view of the job and its returns. He should know that with hard work he can make a living. He should have no preconceived ideas of getting rich. However, if he loves fencing, likes to work with young people, has patience and is willing to work like a horse he should be able to anticipate some success as a professional. He needs not be a champion fencer himself, although competitive experience is an asset in that a former competitor better appreciates the ambitions, qualms and problems of those of his pupils who seek competitive outlet. He must know the fundamentals and be able to teach them correctly. He must understand these fundamentals and be able to answer the ever-present “Why?” of learning pupils. He must never be careless with his instructions but be satisfied only with correct actions from his pupils.
He must love the sport as the amateur loves it and never be satisfied with any erroneous ideas that there is nothing more for him to learn and that his future is secure with mere repetition of what he already knows. He must view each of his pupils individually and strive to pattern each along the lines of that individual’s aptitudes. He must dare to teach his pupils more and more even though he knows that the more they learn the better able they will be to judge his abilities. He must realize that the establishment of a salle d’armes is the beginning and not the end of his objectives.
When a competitive amateur enters the professional ranks his competitive days are not ended. In fact, they are beginning. He is in a highly competitive profession. Few professionals realize that they are being discussed and compared constantly by the amateurs themselves. Those professionals that do not happen to get themselves discussed are those that the amateurs have already put upon the shelf as self-satisfied teachers willing to carry on year after year without further progress. The good professional is the one who is discussed the most, the core of controversy. Therefore, the professional must strive to stay off the shelf. He must remain competitive in the eyes of the other professionals, in the hearts of his own amateurs and in the respect and appreciation of the amateurs of the other professionals.
—D. E.
