| Libertarian Party of NY -- Press Release -- NY Libertarians Kick Martial Arts Proposal |
Cooper credits the Libertarian Party's Legislative Watch Coordinator and Livingston County Chair, Albert Dedicke, for bringing this issue forward. Dedicke is a day care teacher from Mount Morris. He is a brown belt student of Isshinryu at Champion Martial Arts in Avon. Dedicke contends "This bill is an unnecessary intrusion into a relationship between teacher and student that has existed for thousands of years. As an unintended side effect, it would also prevent experienced students from helping new students, decreasing the quality of all martial arts instruction for all students."
New York City Council candidate James Lesczynski is a financial services marketer and a yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do. He strikes back too. "Given the state's decades of failure in education and the martial arts instructors' millennia of success, we should keep them as far apart as possible. In fact, rather than regulate the martial arts schools, the legislature should look to them as an example of the virtues of separating school and state. Attendance is not compulsory, no government curriculum is mandated, no taxes are levied to subsidize the schools. Yet somehow, thousands of students of every age and economic status are successfully educated by instructors who demand the highest standards of discipline and performance."
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