The Dirty Secret of the Sons
When meeting someone new, invariably one of the first questions they ask you is, “what do you do for work?” My answer, “I teach people to use lightsabers,” which tends to elicit a standard response…. A moment of computational silence followed by some form of “Really, what’s all that about?”
After five and a half years, I think I can finally explain what I saw in my head at the start of this crazy journey.
My experiences as a behavioral and learning support teacher in the NSW school system highlighted an absolute dearth of usable life skills in the curriculum. Students, especially those on the spectrum, were incredibly hard on themselves when it came to learning something new. Many had never really challenged themselves, generally because of an almost crippling fear of failure. I saw the need for an activity that was fun, engaging and challenging that could be used as a tool to encourage students to question how they think of themselves.
Over time we found there were two major areas most people, both neurodivergent and neurotypical, needed to develop within themselves; resilience and self-esteem. When learning something new, failure is to be expected; if you don’t suck, you don’t learn. The way in which a student reacts to this failure will colour how they view themselves and effect their ability to grow as a person and a student. Everyone has had a negative experience in a learning environment as they grew up and this often leads to a long-lasting fear of failure, judgment and/or ridicule. We describe the manifestation of this fear here at the Temple as a subconscious knee-jerk reaction.
EXAMPLE – Learning the correct grip for Spin and Flow
I know as a parent; every child has been chastised at least once for not holding a cup properly and dropping it. The parental response is often along the lines of “by the Great Spaghetti Monster child, hold it properly, use your whole hand!” The subconscious makes a note of this (you don’t want to get in trouble again) and from then on, every time you pick up or hold an object, you use a whole hand grip. When spinning a saber however, if you hold the hilt with your whole hand, it prevents smooth movement (it locks a heap of muscles in the forearm that are an evolutionary hold over from when we swung in the trees). By taping the unnecessary fingers together, it shows the student how to be consciously aware of what their body is doing and to learn a new way to hold the saber. We are demonstrating in a concrete way the tools needed to identify why we react to any given situation and how to become “the master of our domain.” Once a person understands why they react the way they do, the power of that subconscious knee jerk reaction is removed and they are one step closer to knowing more about themselves.
Self-esteem is a tricky beast as it is so closely tied in to how we view ourselves; we are made up of a jumbled mess of subconsciously remembered experiences and our reactions to them. That time you couldn’t solve a math problem and your teacher asks if you’re dumb? You remember that moment and the laughs of other students in the room and you confidently state that you aren’t a math person from that day forward. But why didn’t you get it? Maybe you were away the day the core theory was taught. Maybe it was the first time you had encountered the concept and true understanding comes with practice. Either way, the student sees only a failing in themselves and this can lead to the student avoiding any form of math they can to save further embarrassment. Think about how many times you have been embarrassed or scared and the scars that puts upon your psyche. More often than not, the trauma is pushed down into the subconscious, ready to leap out when you least expect it. By letting a student experience failure in a safe environment with minimal consequences, we can highlight how a student reacts to failure and begin to reshape their relationship to it. This is also developing resilience within the student, especially when tied to the “I suck” narrative.
EXAMPLE – The power of being told you suck!
When someone begins lessons at the Sons, they are told the 6 cardinal rules of the Academy; Rules 1-4 - don’t hit anybody, rule 5 – we don’t talk about Fight Club, Rule 6 – you suck! Being told you suck is a heavily loaded term, as most people have heard it said in jest and in all seriousness. As a teacher, their reaction to this tells me a lot about the person. If their shoulders slump, my guess is self-esteem issues. If they get angry, they hold themselves to a high standard and are offended you are implying that. If they scoff, they have a healthy ego. The next sentence the teacher imparts is the important one – “It’s not that you suck as a person, it’s you suck because you haven’t done this before”. As soon as you say that, you are giving them permission to fail. “If you don’t suck, you don’t learn” is how we say it at the temple but I think Socrates said it best when he stated “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” When a student truly understands that not knowing something is not a shameful secret but a situation to be remedied through developing new skills, you begin to change how they approach a challenge. Whilst they are learning saber techniques, they are also reacquainting themselves with learning as a positive and self-affirming activity. If embraced, the you suck mantra becomes a useful tool in a student’s everyday life. We often remind our students that whilst they suck less at the end of the lesson than they did at the beginning, they will suck again next time because they will be learning something new. All of the energy they used being down on themselves for not picking something up straight away can be put towards developing themselves as a theatre combatant and as a person.
But What Does It All Mean?
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is a powerful tool for self-development. Trauma (both large and small) will often colour how we perceive ourselves, others and the world at large. These emotional echoes can lead to self-destructive behaviours, both internally and externally, and we are often perplexed as to how and why we react the way we do. The beauty of using lightsaber theatre combat as a teaching tool is that it automatically puts the student into a space where they have no prior experience (I can count the number of people I’ve met with theater combat experience on one hand) and they begin with a clear level of expertise – none. More importantly, the student can see clear and definite growth following each class; they couldn’t do the technique at the beginning of the lesson, they can at the end. When you see one of our instructors do a phenomenal 12 spin flow or execute a sexy disarm, the student may believe they could never do that themselves. As the instructor models techniques and demonstrates to the student that they can learn something they thought they never could, a new world begins to emerge for the student. Anything is possible, as long as you understand that you will fail, but as Yoda states, “the greatest teacher, failure is.” If we approach failure as a teaching tool and not as a source of shame, the growth the student displays will become self-evident. Our instructors also continually model the you suck philosophy, They are constantly researching and trying out new techniques and skills inbetween lessons or some times even actively joining in the lesson themselves. To return to the math analogy used before, if we take the extra time to teach the student that one technique they were struggling with, we have only fixed their distress relating to that one technique. If we readjust the student’s attitude to learning, we set them up for continued positive learning experiences throughout their lives. According to Confucius, “Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime!”