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A substantial part of my life has been devoted to instructing the game to newcomers, reviewing games of beginners, steering the club, writing articles on 15k level. The benefits and rewards have been in the teaching and the prospering, not to underestimate what you learn yourself when carefully preparing a subject.
I have never received any money but if I were 5d or 6d I would definitely consider it. Even now I've posted a proposal on the Austrian website to exchange lessons for a place to stay. And if exchanging lessons for hospitality is legitimate, then why would being paid not be?
You cannot decide for others in general if they are, even morally, allowed to charge for something they have devoted much time to. There will always be those who parasite on the benevolence of a community, but many others have foregone well paid jobs to invest in this passion called Go only to realize in their thirties that somehow money matters. Now why would they not be granted a few bucks for all the time they wasted?
I agree with Dieter that anyone has the right to charge whatever fee they want for whatever it is someone wants them to do. Clients also have the right to refuse whatever price is asked and make counteroffers, and so on. If a 25 kyu was having a really hard time finding someone to teach him for free and wanted to offer a 5 kyu ten bucks an hour to teach him, it would not be wrong of the 5 kyu to accept, though it would be morally commendable to teach for free instead, or direct the 25 kyu to somewhere he could get free teaching. If the 5 kyu had misled the 25 kyu about his strength, or the difficulty of finding friendly dans willing to teach for free, that would be different, of course, but we're not talking about deceiving anyone here.
As for me, at my mid-dan level, I do not charge for single lessons, and will generally be happy to give them when asked. If someone actually wanted to be my student, however, and get a weekly lesson, rather than just a one-time game plus advice, then I would ask for some small amount of money - less than my hourly wage at my real job, anyway - and feel justified in doing so. Like Dieter, if and when I reach the high dan ranks, I will think about hanging out my shingle and offering lessons for money, though I would probably still give one-time lessons for free if asked nicely.
Incidentally, you do not want to reveal your Shusaku number on your homepage but you do so on the page explaining the concept.
Me too I have something that everybody wants to have, but it means nothing to me so I won't tell what it is.
George CaplanSteve is simply stating his opinion - he does not approve of "ordinary" amatuers charging. His has a right to state his disapproval, he did not say anything about demanding that the practice stop. He simply wants us all to do our best to give back, and he disagrees with us "charging" back. Like I said in my previous post, I basically agree with him - lets face it, if all of our game requests demand opponents exclusively one or more ranks stronger than us (a common practice) we would not have many games would we.
Until then I will never approve of amateurs who charge for lessons which they themselves almost certainly got for free due to the kindest of stronger players. (emphasis mine)
Well, the above statement doesn't apply for me. Over a couple of years, I have paid a total of more than S$1000 for group lessons by professionals. This is a significant amount of money. By the way, that was in a period of time when the Internet was not so popular.
It was commented that using professionals to teach the basic stuff like two eyes and big eyes is an overkill, especially when manpower resources is rather scarce. However, amateur 1 dan players will be more than able to teach such concepts. I suppose this created a niche market for people willing to pay for basic lessons but not willing to pay professional rates. Some amateurs will also teach more advanced topics, but I suspect the quality of the lessons might not be as good as those taught by professionals, but you get what you pay for.
Bob McGuigan: I am all in favor of professionals teaching beginners. I think that even at that level they can have something special to offer. I noticed this when I watched several sessions of Izumitani Masanori 7p teaching a class of beginners on NHK TV in Japan around 15 years ago. At the US Go Congress in Rochester, NY, two years ago I was interested to see that Saijo sensei, one of the strongest pros there, well-known for teaching high-dan level amateurs and student pros, chose to teach the beginners class for spouses and companions of Congress attendees. For myself, studying with pro teachers always leaves me feeling I know so little about the game since I make so many errors. I'm sure that amateur teachers instill a lot of incorrect ways of thinking along with some useful things. Personally I would not be comfortable teaching much beyond the beginner level.
hi there, dr! just wanted to say that some of your chains grew into trees... some of us are still logging on to what's now known as the ktl and teach or review... =) i became much weaker but am still able to teach some 48ks here and there... ;)