Belt Auction

Is there no officially set syllabus for belts in Karate?

It seems to me that each school makes up its own, surely there must be a set standard though? I've seen some schools that say a minimum training time of 4 months between each belt but others just a few weeks.

Public Comments

1. Each school or association is autonomous. The master or instructor sets his/her own standards.
2. It should be more about the student's own ability to progress to the next rank themselves and not just because he or she attends class for several weeks or a couple of months, and pays the monthly fees to attend, not to mention spend the fee for the testing. But mostly it's due to the organization or federation the school is under as a rule of thumb, but usually no there isn't a set guide line of time that a student has to spend to receive the next belt rank, because from discipline to discipline and organization to organization therefore a lot of upper echelon people that disagree about the way the schools should be handled. some disciplines like Hapkido don't usually even have a belt system to progress the student. while other disciplines will have several degrees in between the ranks before the next rank is awarded.
3. each system or style of martial arts has its own curriculum some stating that 4 months training is required, some grading part each month, some bi monthly. we currently grade bi monthly. two months should be sufficient time for a good instructor to teach all the requirements for the next grade, it also puts pressure on the individual to attend all lessons and to practise at home.
4. part of the reason for this is you have a lot of different Karate organisations with different protocols.In the early days of western Karate there were only a few major orgs K.U.G.B and Wado-Ryu and Kyokushinkai,therefore simpler and easier to set relatively common standards.hope this helps