The Belt System: Gradings

What does the colour of a karateka's belt symbolise? Experience? Ability? Does it show something about them as a person and do we make assumptions that aren't always true?

I think one of the best ways to judge this is examining the nature of gradings;looking at what the criteria is for moving up to the next belt and how a karateka is assessed against it. Personally, I think that gradings asses a somewhat narrow range of aspects to someone's karate: technical accuracy in relation to dealing with pressure. Is this all a belt shows about a karateka? Their technical accuracy under pressure? So are we right to make certain assumptions about other aspects of their training?

The other side to this argument is that, although the things assessed, in terms of range, are quite narrow, other aspects of someone's karate might influence those things. For example, there might be a correlation between the level of technical accuracy an examiner sees and the level of commitment of that particular individual. Their level of commitment might then say something about them as a person, however people are complex and never in black and white. So 'commitment' isn't very informative on its own.

But there's also dealing with pressure in the equation. There might be two karateka, both technically accurate when doing karate, but while one excels under grading-type pressure, the other does the opposite. Who would pass and who would fail? The difference is how they deal with pressure.

How one deals with grading-type pressure doesn't say anything major about a their personality, I don't think. It can't help you make any broad judgement about how they deal with pressure because there are so many forms of it; I've always done well under grading-type pressure but am sometimes uncomfortable when faced with more everyday pressures.

To conclude, karate is complex, too complex for examiners to asses the whole of it. Some aspects of someone's karate are just impossible to asses. Besides, what is the 'whole' of karate? They'd have a totally impossible task! People are also complex, so in most cases, examiners can't judge them because of the small amount  they see of them in such a brief time. I remember at my black belt grading, just before the examiners gave us the results, one of them told us that it was done on what they'd just seen of our karate and not on personality. I'm not certain exactly why he said this, but it supports my conclusion that a karateka's belt colour does say some things about their karate but they shouldn't be totally judged on it and we shouldn't make the belt system in to something it is not.

My next post will look at the impact the belt system has on our training and will be less pessimistic about it!