House of Shusaku Clan

    Keywords: Online Go

As some maybe aware, I became disenchanted with clans when I learned of their fundamentally antaganistic nature. At that point I decided that I would not carry out plans to create the clan. I took this page of the list of temporary clans. Despite this some people keep asking me to join. Given the number of people who keep asking, I will be creating some sort of group devoted to teaching. Given what appear to be failures ( or at least lukewarm results ) of previous attempts to create groups that teach, in particular on KGS, I want to think over how to do this. I have been too busy recently to devote enough time to thinking. But soon I will have free time and put my ideas in motion.

The group that replaces HouseOfShusaku? shall be called Kitani House.

Hopefully to become a KGSClans as well as a House of the Go Sabaki club.

Temporary Clan leader: ThaddeusOlczyk/olczyk/DrOlczyk
Playing under olczyk ( for now). I started this house/clan based on a vision of what a good house/clan should be. I recognise that I am too weak for this position and will give it up when we find someone stronger who wants the job.


Members:

  • Prodigious
  • masterdo

As the clans were being formed, I saw the TSC. Since many of the members were people I like I thought I would like to join. But I has two problems. WHen I encountered them they had already closed membership.

Worse was the name. Shobute is not a style. A person does not plan on Shobute when they start a game ( unless they know they are badly overmatched ). It is something they do when they get the feeling that the game is going sour and they must do something deperate to turn the game around before it is too late. As such I do not think it is a good technique to base an organisation on. In the same way I do not think a Yose Clan is a good idea.

I plan on something very unique for Shusaku Clan. Not only do will it be a clan, but I plan for it to eventually tocome a Sabaki Go Club house.

I plan on something very unique for the House of Shusaku Clan. Being ( hopefully ) both a house of the Sabaki Go Club and a clan, this will be a natural clan for the development of go players. The highest achievment of Clan Shusaku will be picking up young players and turning them into dans, who go off and found their own clans of great strength.

Two main techniques will be used.

  • Mentoring. Each member ( except for the highest and the lowest ) will have a teacher and a pupil. The relationship will be a mentoring one, not a teaching one. (Jared: Can you explain further? I like to teach and be taught ...)
  • Group study sessions, where we meet in groups. The clan or a small subclan to study some aspect of Go.

I am looking for members and some invitation have already been sent out, and as long as there is room, we will be looking for new members. However before we collect too mny pupils I would like to have a few teachers in place. So at present we are looking for strong members more than weak members. I am looking for dans, sdks and some teen-level kyus so that we may form the "rungs of the ladder".

Jared: Hi! This is what I wanted House Inoue to be like. Maybe with a smaller group it will work better. Sign me up! I'd be glad to be clan rep, too. I'm most interested in the mentoring ladder. Study groups are difficult to form, but I'm willing to try again.


Thad: Sorry. after cuby's response to DrStraw, I had to think about it for a while. his response along with a few other things he said about clans, makes me think that clans main task will be to pull out their rulers and drop their pants. I still want to do something. In particular I want to find some way of getting people to play games more seriously, which I think is necessary for the game to be much help, and something I think is a big problem online. So House of Shusaku will eventually be transformed into something else (I've got a few ideas). For more of my thoughts on this see WhyKGSClansHaveBombed. Maybe we will get to talk online soon.

As for what I see as the difference in mentoring and teaching... Showing someone schiho, or geta or some joseki is teaching. To get a picture of mentoring imagine it in the business world. A vice-president see a smart new employee. He decides to mentor him. Does he show him how to use the copy machine? No. Rather he shows him how to do things like seeing that there is some problem with a project. ( A simple example of a cop mentoring a rookie. "That guys a con man." "How can you tell. He has a real honest face." "Well a con man with a dishonest face would not be successfull,now, would he?" ).

Mentoring is about helping the mentee through all sorts of things. Teaching them how to look at pro games. Teaching them how to review their own games. Looking at their games to see their strengths and weaknesses, and devising a plan for them to improve on each.

Maybe the best way to explain the difference teaching and mentoring is in the last chapter of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance". The son asks if he could learn how to repair a motorcycle. The father replies, "Repairing a motorcycle is easy, if you have the right attitude. It's getting the right attitude that is hard." Teaching is showing the person how to repair a motorcycle. Mentoring is showing the person the right attitudes.


This is a copy of the living page "House of Shusaku Clan" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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