Servitude

While on the issue of pay per hour, what about what is paid to the instructor employees. Here is a job that require a person to have two or more years of specialized training (usually which can only come from the school itself) and “certification” (which means an ordinary person off the street, even with a PhD, cannot do the job) and yet it pays less than ten dollars an hour, with no benefits. From the beginning, students are trained to be instructors that will work for practically nothing. The only way for them to make money in the martial arts is to open their own schools and continue the tradition of student servitude.

Small martial schools may be relying on volunteerism to stay afloat, but large schools, or smaller schools than have grown in size, exploit volunteerism, and use it as a way to increase profits with no capital expenditure. Be aware, at some point, volunteerism becomes servitude. If it is voluntary servitude, then it is not a problem for you. However, if it is involuntary servitude or a case where you have been trained to be a servant without your conscious knowledge of it happening, then it may be something you want to think about.