The paradigm of "Martial Arts" - outdated?

Underground
1

I've been thinking, more and more, that the idea of "oh, I want to learn to defend myself, so I'll go to my local XXXX studio and learn XXXX martial art" is really a paradigm that's outdated.  I want to serve people's desire to learn self-defense, but people outside the arts don't understand the differences between one and another.  

If you were to re-imagine the entire industry, what would better serve our audience?

I'm thinking more and more that we'd all be more effective teachers if there were a framework like this:

1) Nearly everyone is encouraged to take a 6-12 month "self defense" class.  This focuses on basic, generic skills that are style-nonspecific, with a greater focus on awareness, context, psychology, and other risk management.  The goals would be to (a) contextualize the body of knowledge in our industry and (b) to develop a basic platform of effectiveness for each student.

2) From there, anyone who wants to pursue any particular art(s) or style(s) is encouraged to do so. It's now been given a perspective of "further study in some particular aspect or aspects" of the greater field. You love kicking? Right over here.  Want to become a good boxer? That way. BJJ? Wrestling? FMA? You get the idea. 

I can't help but feel that something along these lines would help the general public better understand and contextualize the options they have.  Today's willy-nilly market is just too confusing: everyone from tai chi to bjj says "lose weight! self-defense! learn our martial art!" Nobody knows how to sort through the haze until they've been involved in it for a long time. 

I'd be happy if we, as an industry, could be more effective.  People out there want answers, and we're not making it easy for them to find them.  If Self-Defense is actually what they want, how do we make it easier to find appropriate answers?

If it were your call, what would you do?

2

Good post a refreshing concern.
Our thoughts:
General speaking, the goal of today's instructor/teacher:
We learn a system and become sufficient in that way.
We open a school/gym.
The goal is to teach this system to as many people as we can to fulfill their expectations and to produce income to support ourselves and our family until we retire.
We develop a ranking/progressive system to gradually take the students through different stages, the more they learn the more they get to learn in the future, perpetuating a desire to stay. The longer they stay the more they learn, the longer they stay the more secure our financial future. We need them and they need us, a dependency created from desire to learn and the desire for money to live. This has been the concept and it never ends well, yet many continue to follow this pattern.
Dependency is the root of all sorts of psychological problems, mainly fear. We fear we might not get what we expected, or we fear we might lose what we already have. Fear breeds mistrust, insecurity, anger, frustration, anxiety, self-doubt, blame and confusion.
We personally don't like the word instructor/teacher because we really can't teach anyone anything, just as we can't tell anyone anything because people have their own thoughts, their own perspective, their own beliefs. People can only learn from their own experience, that's how the (ego) the mechanical mind works. Regardless of what we may think or what program we design.
Every movement necessary to defend our self the body already knows from moving through life and doing sports, tasks etc.  All the possible motions and movement that is needed has been done, consciously or unconsciously already.
Since we can't really teach, we can only share. When people come visit us we share experiences and invite  (the self-help idea), how we learn from ourselves, self- knowledge.
We discourage people to look to us for a way because they already know the way, we just remind them. We share many options and ideas as fast as needed until people learn how to teach themselves. Then we send them on their way. The sooner they get it, the sooner their out on their own.
We are free from one another free from any dependency. We save people time and most importantly money.
Once the (idea) self-knowledge is developed people can utilize information from any source, seminars, Utube, vids, books, forums. This is why we post threads, so we can encourage the (idea) of freedom and not be imprisoned and manipulated by any external thoughts, media, programs, or belonging to a school/gym, or organization, there is absolutely no allegiance what so ever. 
This (idea) has been very beneficial because trust has been established and future expectations negated.
At this point we have to ask ourselves, how then can we make a living? 
When there is true trust and security within the relationship, there is no dependency.
 No matter how we try to get people out and on their way people still keep coming. We have had people for 30 years who come and go bouncing from school to school than coming back for feedback and or confirmation to their own experiences and to share. People are free to come and go as they please. The money is not the important factor; therefor it comes freely without regret.
Unfortunately do to the conditioning of western society many teachers and instructors will most often have an ulterior motive other than what's in the best interest of the individual as long as it falls under the heading of business.
To avoid this pitfall it's up to us to realize and apply the one-knowledge, Self Knowledge, which grows only from freedom and is void of dependency. 
Teachers and school owners cringe to hear us say these things publically because many think the all- mighty dollar is put in jeopardy creating fear, thus many resort back to controlling tactics once again. Most don't realize or comprehend the value of a trusting relationship and the true potential of all involved.
The paradigm shift should not focus on how an industry should prescribe an antidote for the public/student but to negate all long term designed methods. The individual (so called teacher) focuses on one's own self-knowledge to set an example, thus inspiring people to look within as they personally experience and witness the results of the viewed.