Miyagi: Your friend, all karate student, eh?
Daniel Larusso: Friend? Oh, yeah, those guys.
Miyagi: Problem: attitude.
Daniel Larusso: No the problem is, I’m getting my ass kicked
every other day, that’s the problem!
Miyagi: Hai, because boys have bad attitude. Karate for
defense only.
Daniel Larusso: That’s not what these guys are taught.
Miyagi: Hai — can see. No such thing a bad student, only
bad teacher. Teacher say, student do.
Daniel Larusso: Oh, great, that solves everything for me.
I’ll just go down to the school and straighten it out with
the teacher, no problem.
Miyagi: Now use head for something other than target.
[Dialogue from Karate Kid]
Do you remember Mr. Miyagi? Well, I guess that’s like asking if you ever saw any of the Karate Kid movies. Mr. Miyagi was the martial arts mentor of Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) in the first three Karate Kid movies. Why do I ask? The actor who played Mr. Miyagi, Pat Morita, died on November 24th 2005. He was 73.
I think it is essential that we don’t confuse a man with the character he plays on stage or screen. Pat Morita was never schooled in karate or any other martial arts. But he was a hero. He was a survivor. Morita suffered from spinal tuberculosis and was hospitalized until the age of 11. Against all odds he was cured but went straight from hospital to an internment camp for U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent. It was in the middle of World War 2.
Things never came easy for him. Imagine trying to make a life in America as a Japanese right after World War 2. But as Joal Ryan writes in E! Online, “In the end, Morita persevered–and taught others to do the same, in reel life and in real life.”
Because he was a hero in real life, I think you can indulge me for using his on screen character to draw some lessons on teaching. What precisely did Daniel Larusso learn from Mr. Miyagi?
At the most obvious level, he learnt karate. But you don’t need a PhD in film to know that what Daniel really learnt from his sensei was about how to live — lessons about humility, perseverance, courage, loyalty, etc.
I am coming to believe that this is the role of every teacher. A teacher may be assigned a subject, e.g. art, mathematics, science, woodwork, theology etc. And he or she should teach that subject to the best of his or her ability.
But whether the teacher is aware of it or not, he or she is also teaching lessons about life at the same time. It just happens. The question is not whether one should be teaching this second parallel curriculum. The question is what life lessons are we teaching?
I remember one Sunday school teacher I had. He was an extremely boring teacher. Often I would be the only one in class because I was a good boy and not the type to skip Sunday school. (He taught that class because we were a small church and he was the only one available.) This teacher would show up every Sunday without fail. I can’t remember a single thing he taught me in class. (I think I was 16 at the time.) But now, looking back, I realized that he taught me about faithfulness.
Recently I was reading the blog of a young Christian teacher teaching in a rural school in Sabah. He was one of the best of the present generation of young Christian professionals. He was someone who saw his work as calling and had chosen to teach far from the middle class comforts that many of his peers would have considered their just rewards for college education. I had no doubts that he would have taught with patience and compassion.
On his blog, he shared that he was very discouraged when he graded the exam papers of his charges. I am sure he tried his best. But as he stared at the papers before him it seemed that little had gotten through.
I wrote to him and said that while it was very understandable that he should feel down that what he taught in the classroom didn’t seem to have gotten through to his pupils, I strongly suspected his pupils would have learnt other lessons from him. These lessons may not have been part of the official curriculum. But who is to say which lessons would serve them in better stead down the road. If there is one thing I have learnt in life, it is not to call a game too early.
This weekend I will have the high privilege of speaking to a group of Christian teachers from Singapore and Malaysia. I pray that the Lord will help me to convey to them the strategic nature of their vocation.
The teaching profession is highly valued in Singapore, which goes all out to nurture their human resources. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, teaching does not attract our brightest and our best in Malaysia. Yet apart from family, who else has that kind of exposure and influence on our young?
We seem to be living at one of those cross roads in history. We have many reasons to be cynical and pessimistic about the future. At the same time there is new generation rising in our churches and in society at large who seem to be relatively free of defeatism and desiring to make a change for the good. This generation of “millennials” (those born 1982 onwards) deserve all the help they can get. But they need more than just people who can teach them technique and head knowledge. They need people who can teach them what it means to be truly human.
Hence teachers must come to realize and embrace the fact that they are actually teaching two curriculums. One is the official school curriculum. The other is the curriculum of life.
I can understand if teachers were to be resistant to the second curriculum. It’s harder to be a mature human being than to get an MA. Besides most of us are so busy and tired just fulfilling the expectations of the Ministry of Education. Who has got the time to teach about life?
Unfortunately this frantic activism is as prevalent in our churches as it is in our schools. We want to make our charges knowledgeable and productive. Yet we ignore the fact that most leaders fail not because of a lack of knowledge or ability. They fail because of failures in ethics and morality.
Fortunately, teaching our young about life is more about who we are than what we do or say. But it must still happen intentionally. The best teachers were always aware of this. No matter how difficult their task they sought to convey more than just knowledge. They sought to share their very lives.
Of course the responsibility to help our young grow in maturity is not just the responsibility of schoolteachers. It is everyone’s responsibility. But the need has never been greater.
Ok, the Karate Kid was just a movie and quite corny at places. So why was it so popular? I attribute its popularity to its portrayal of one fundamental truth that we all need people to teach us how to live. May we seek to be senseis of life to our young and to each other.
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it?” 2 Timothy 3:14 TNIV
Your brother, Soo-Inn Tan