The Right Tool for the Job
Building a Better Future for Education
In this series, we’re exploring key differences between the classroom and a martial arts training hall. Previously, we looked at the impact of exams versus promotions. Today, we shift our focus slightly—away from exams, and toward the broader toolkit educators can use to shape behaviour, motivation, and culture.
Drawing inspiration from martial arts—where structure, mindset, and progression are seamlessly woven into daily practice—we’ll examine how similar systems could be adapted for classrooms, helping create deeper, more sustainable learning environments.
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Structured Expectations
At the core of martial arts lies more than just physical skill—it cultivates a structured mindset that guides behaviour both inside and outside the training hall. Framed as a "way of life," martial arts philosophy applies consistent expectations and consequences in every area of life, reinforcing deeper personal growth.
The philosophy centres around six core values:
Courtesy
Integrity
Perseverance
Self-Control
Indomitable Spirit
Honour
Each value carries significant depth, fostering maturity and character development. Our early research reinforced their importance, showing that the traits parents most wanted for their children aligned closely with these values. Clearly, integrating structured expectations into education doesn’t just uphold standards—it directly addresses the developmental needs families recognise as vital.
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Intrinsic vs Material Motivation
In martial arts, students are driven largely by a pursuit of intrinsic mastery—striving for personal growth, skill, and discipline for their own sake. However, a crucial difference between martial arts training and classroom education is the element of obligation—attendance at school is compulsory. This makes fostering intrinsic motivation significantly harder. If adults struggle to find genuine value in compulsory tasks, imagine how much more challenging it is for children.
Our solution begins here: by strategically using material incentives as stepping stones towards deeper, more lasting forms of motivation. As you follow along, you might find yourself questioning whether these methods are the best choice. However, there is a much broader strategy at play beneath the surface. See if you can spot it as we move forward.
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Physical Rewards
Material rewards provide immediate, engaging incentives designed to captivate students’ interest from the outset. We deliberately crafted these rewards to be tactile, collectable, and impactful.
Tokens are the first type of physical reward students encounter, awarded specifically when demonstrating one of our core values. Notice the clarity here—we’re not rewarding vague notions of "being good" or simple obedience. Tokens reinforce meaningful societal behaviour through gamified, instant feedback. This approach taps into young people’s natural preference for immediate gratification—but crucially, it does so in a purposeful, controlled way. Tokens act as our opening move, setting the foundation for deeper engagement.
Trophies represent a step forward in the strategy, moving students gradually from instant to delayed gratification. Designed around exploration and independent learning, trophies encourage students to pursue goals proactively. They introduce the idea that greater effort and patience yield greater rewards—a critical stepping stone in shifting students towards longer-term, intrinsic forms of motivation.
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Promotional Motivation
We touched on this in our previous article discussing exams, but let's summarise briefly here. Traditional educational exams are currently framed entirely as judgments. Passing these exams is motivational only through the avoidance of the pain of failure, which is problematic—especially considering how valuable failure can be as a learning experience. In martial arts, gradings are instead framed as a rite of passage, a promotion unlocking new content. Seen through this lens, martial arts already employs subtle gamification, an approach proven highly engaging for young learners. The belt system reinforces progress on social, psychological, and practical levels in ways too numerous to explore fully here.
Given that we have a proven model, why not adopt it and harness these benefits for younger generations?
However, there's a challenge: a coloured belt ladder is designed for a single skill set. Students pursuing multiple skills simultaneously would find themselves frequently switching belts, undermining the system’s simplicity and effectiveness. We needed an adaptation.
Our solution: instead of belts, we chose ties—a smart, familiar item commonly associated with educational settings. We kept the progression colours but shifted to more subdued, stylish shades better suited to a classroom environment. To accommodate multiple subjects, we introduced tie clips: coloured clips indicate progress in additional subjects junior to the current tie level, while gold clips with Roman numerals represent total subjects mastered at the highest ("black-tie") level.
This adaptation retains all the motivational and symbolic benefits of the original martial arts belts, but with increased flexibility to meet educational needs. A tie may be easily shop-bought, but the right to wear it must be earned—and the experience of earning it is what truly gives it meaning.
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Upholding Standards
Consequences—often a controversial topic, but worth examining through the lens of martial arts. It's rare to witness prolonged behavioural issues in training halls, and that isn't because the instructors are authoritarian figures. It's because they maintain clear expectations, consistent standards, and high levels of mutual respect.
Martial arts instructors understand a key truth: when the structure is clear, consequences don’t have to be cruel. They become a natural part of the learning process. When a student breaches a boundary, the result is exclusion from opportunity or privilege—not out of spite, but out of respect for the standards the community upholds.
Consequences and rewards serve different but equally crucial roles. Rewards draw students towards positive behaviours; consequences push them away from harmful ones. The absence of one weakens the other. When rewards are abundant but consequences are absent, they lose their weight. When consequences are ever-present but rewards are missing, motivation withers.
Applied fairly, consistently, and thoughtfully, consequences reinforce that actions have impacts beyond immediate feelings. They nurture resilience, responsibility, and emotional regulation—essential life skills far beyond the classroom.
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The Deeper Strategy
Now that we’ve explored the toolkit, let’s step back and look at the larger strategy behind it all.
Lived experience is the core of learning. We often learn more from failure than from success, after all. By allowing students to experience both the highs and lows of motivation—material rewards, delayed gratification, missed opportunities—we provide them with direct comparisons. We offer real, visceral moments from which deeper understanding can grow.
Some might feel uneasy about tokens or trophies, believing them shallow. But these experiences are not an end in themselves—they are stepping stones. Tokens deliver that rush of instant gratification; trophies gradually pull that reward further out of reach. And by the time students have collected several trophies or tokens, they’ll likely start noticing that the excitement fades. It’s this fading that opens the door for conversations about the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Moreover, using material rewards wisely allows us access to tools that otherwise might be dismissed. Without these stepping stones, it would be far harder to get students engaged early, harder to create the depth of understanding we're ultimately aiming for. It would be a poorer, slower, and less engaging journey.
Before dismissing these methods, we adults should remember that we too work for material rewards—money, homes, clothes, status. So long as students grasp the nuance—that material things are fine when understood, but are no substitute for deeper meaning—we aren't just handing out rewards. We're giving them the opportunity to experience the truth of that lesson first-hand.
Ultimately, lived experience remains the greatest teacher of all.