I have briefly and not-very-seriously studied a variety of martial arts. But as I started to study behavior analysis, I had learned enough about the martial arts to become very skeptical that most martial arts students would be successful in an actual situation that required self-defense. That’s because in martial arts class, you study under very contrived situations (e.g., put your arm like this, OK now grab my wrist). Now, after a long period of training, it can look really impressive. There might be many benefits (e.g., social, health, discipline, focus). But would the skills a student develops in a typical martial arts class work in a real-life self-defense situation? In my view, it’s unlikely but pretty hard to do the research or get that data.
Now in behavior analysis, pretty much the only thing we are interested in is getting the behavior to work well for the client in real world situations. In some programs we use practices that are very contrived (like a martial arts class):
• Get the child’s attention first
• Ask what do you want to work for?
• Make sure you speak clearly
• Provide tokens contingent on correct responses
• Use an errorless teaching procedure
• Contrive the opportunity to mand
• And on, and on, and on
Now there is nothing wrong with any of the above practices as a training technique. But I worry that we are sometimes satisfied with the impressive looking demonstration (like a martial arts class) without doing much fading of the types of procedures used above. Or actually checking if the skills we taught work in the real world.
We are different than a martial arts class. We can go and see if the child is requesting with mom, having conversations with peers, or learning cognitive and academic skills in the general education classroom easily (well relatively easily compared to seeing whether self-defense skills are effective in the real world!)
It is heartbreaking how often I’ve seen skills that looked amazing under specialized sets of conditions but don’t work under real world conditions. It is easy to fool yourself that everything is wonderful if you never leave the contrived situation. Even worse, when it doesn’t work in the real world after we have spent enormous time, effort, and emotional energy, we get upset. There is a tendency to blame others (e.g., the parents wouldn’t implement it, the school won’t support the program).
In order to Poogi, you have to have the right criterion for success. That criterion is always the question: Does this skill work under real world conditions? If it doesn’t work (or worse you haven’t checked), you aren’t finished yet.