Dear Master Joe,

I read the story about ATA Tae Kwon Do in your newsletter and it brought back some not so pleasant memories. Dylan first started with ATA at Capital Gymnastics. Our situation wasn't quite as costly as the example you site, but it was bad enough. I paid a $150 initiation fee and $90 a month. That was a 'discount' because the school had just opened and needed students. A couple of months after we joined, the price went up to $120 a month. Dylan joined the sparring club and we spent $500 for membership and some equipment worth about $50. Testing was $60 every 6-8 weeks, alternating between a new belt and a patch. To make matters worse, Dylan really wasn't learning anything. The instructor used a lot of games and didn't really teach the kids the forms consistently. She felt that they should just have fun. The last straw came for Dylan when the instructor let a little girl in his class skip a belt and earn the next higher belt because her family took the adult class and they wanted her to stay at the same level as the rest of them so she wouldn't feel badly - even though she often refused to participate in the class at all and didn't know any of the test material. This was a general trend for the school. Everyone tested every period and no one ever 'failed'. Unfortunately, most of the kids didn't learn a lot, either. At that point, I removed Dylan from the school and looked for a new form/school. That was February 2003, when Dylan began classes at Shaolin Do.

I can definitely attest that Shaolin Do is a much better value than ATA, and that Kung Fu is a much better form than the ATA Tae Kwon Do we experienced. Dylan and I have both been much better satisfied since we made the change.