Judging Intention

To be able to make an ethical decision, students must first be aware of what is going on around them.  Thus, today’s class started with awareness drills and then moved on to making decisions based on what students were seeing.

So we started by saluting in with a partner and noticing things about them: the color of their hair, if they had any markings on their pants, which foot they like to keep forward when sparring, etc.  Next was displaying and reading emotions.  One student would silently act out an emotion and the other students would guess what it was.

Then we moved on to the handshake or punch drill.  One student was the attacker, the other the defender.  The two started about 12 feet away.  The attacker would decide (silently to themselves) if they were going to walk up and shake hands with the defender or throw a punch at them.  Then the attacker would wear an expression to fit their decision and begin walking towards the defender.  The defender tried to judge the attacker’s intention and then react appropriately – ethically even.