Paul Rubin March 15, 2009

Subject: Why have the training policies not changed for so long?

Dear All, I have been a member one or more of the TABs since 1992 to the present day. I believe that I am the only person to have served on all three TABs. I helped whelp the Euro-TAB and in the process ensured that it had a Governing Body that had accountability to the membership of the National Associations of the countries which it served. I also helped mid-wife the AusTAB including helping to write its constitution. At my insistence, Trainers’ influence over that Guild was limited to a non-voting consultancy rôle.

In my rôle as Chair of the NA-TAB I was a participant in meeting that constituted the IFF in Paris in 1992.

I have been a trainer and Educational Director since 1991. I was certified as a Trainer before becoming a member of any TAB. I applied for trainer certification only after 16 years of supporting my family as a Feldenkrais Teacher in daily practice. I have been Educational Director of training programs in several regions of North America, Australia, Switzerland and Italy.

I recite these aspects of my experience simply as a résumé of my qualifications: in short, I have been an engaged participant and attentive observer of the development of training policies and regulations for some 17 years.

To the point:

It is taken on faith by most people active in the international forums of discussion and policy making that everyone wants training policy to change. I am not so certain that it is even a concern to the vast majority of those who have taken Feldenkrais training programs and who are applying their training in so many different ways in the world.

But let’s leave that aside for a moment and use as a working supposition that everyone wants change in the training policies.

That being the case, why has change not occurred? The most current and common belief is that the Policy (Protocol) for Changing Policy has made change “too difficult.” And yet, five years after this belief was officially adopted as a position, and five years after a small group of people successfully nominated themselves to form an International Working Group (IWG) to move the process along, there has still been no change. The successor to the IWG, the Structural Review Committee (SRC) struggled with the issues and could come up with no better solution than “since we cannot find a solution, let’s give up and give the task to each National Association - disbanding the TABs and Training Policies as we go.”

Can we conclude from this that it is not the Protocol for Changing Policy that is at fault but perhaps the fact that though “everyone” wants change, everyone wants very different changes and change in different directions? Could it be that this leaves no specific change or manner of change with enough support to be adopted? My observation for many years is that this is indeed the case.

For example, “everyone” recognizes that the training policy – most especially the portions that govern the processes for Certification as Assistant Trainer and Trainer – need streamlining. Desperately. And I agree. Why has this not been achieved? Could it be that when discussion turns to that topic that there are too many sub-agendas from different elements of the community that end up blocking any change?

If there was agreement that any single area of training policy truly needed revision because the process of educating new teachers was not working, I believe that the community would find a way to make the needed changes under these Protocols or would find an agreeable revision of them to enable changes of this kind.

In other words, though “everyone” wants change, there is no single issue needing attention badly enough to mobilize a solution upon which a sufficient number of people and constituencies can agree. There is widespread discontent among the people whose focus is on the training process. However, I would venture to say that, during the five years that this current process has been going on, trainings and the teachers they graduate have continued to improve. As has the quality of Assistant Trainers and of Trainers. I see that the Assistants I work with are increasingly competent compared to those of five and ten years ago. I see the Trainers I have helped to become Certified doing better at the beginning than my generation did in our beginnings … and that they, too, have some things to learn that they can only learn while working in that rôle over time.

I absolutely see my graduates being more confident, more likely to apply their training in their work, more likely to practice as teachers, and definitely to be of a higher quality that the graduates who have preceded them one, two, or three years ago. They are clearly at the level of the best of my own graduating class by the beginning of their 3rd year.

The most pressing discontent seems to me to have more to do with access to employment in training programs and NOT to do with their quality. It is hard to forge agreements on such agendas when they remain mostly hidden and are couched somewhat dishonestly as though the discussion was about improving the quality of the trainings.

Still, I understand this kind of discontent and yearning. And it is important to address it and to work with it as positively as we possibly can. It is even more important to do so in ways that do not lower the quality of the end result of the trainings: the readiness of new graduates to take the Method into the world in their chosen way. We must not return to a quality of education or a state of affairs that we have successfully improved only through much struggle, now avoidable error, and much, much learning.

The policies that govern the creation of new Feldenkrais Teachers/Practitioners should never be trivialized to become about providing employment opportunities for people who wish to perform the functions of Assistants, Trainers and Educational Directors. The Policies must include procedures for training and mentoring Assistant Trainers and new Trainers and to bring along new generations ready to work in those rôles, certainly. The Policies must be reorganized to preserve this function of mentorship and supervision while being streamlined to eliminate those large parts of the current process that are not relevant to the end product.

But in the current atmosphere of false urgency to enable change, I simply have to raise these issues. There is great danger in over-fixing a system that in many respects is working well and is improving each year. Baby, bath water.

Sincerely,

Paul Rubin

Educational Director ISSE 1158 Naples Street San Francisco CA 94112 USA TEL: +1 415 333 6644 Mobile: +1 415 509 0700 mailto:paulrubin@feldnet.com http://www.feldnet.com