Klarinet Archive - Posting 001128.txt from 1998/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Absolutes
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 22:18:39 -0500

Roger Garrett and Tony Pays both seem so articulate and reasonable that I
wonder whether part of the disagreement between them results from "culture
gap." I doubt that Roger Garrett stifles his students' creativity. I also
doubt that Tony Pays turns students loose to do as they please with little
instruction. The ease of international communication on the Internet may
obscure the reality that Tony in England and Roger in the United States write
in different idioms of the language. Also, they teach students from different
cultures and different educational traditions, who may need (and expect)
different things from their music teachers.

Broad generalization is dangerous, but my impression (and it is only an
impression, gleaned from the mass media) is that education in England was, on
the whole, more authoritarian than education in the USA in the early 20th
century, and that as time passed, educational experiments that made students
more independent of their teachers at an earlier age, such as open classrooms
and the self-esteem movement, found far greater acceptance (some of us think
way too much acceptance) in the USA than in England. Perhaps Roger Garrett's
responses reflect that (age differences aside, of course) students in the USA
today really do need more structure and discipline than most of them have been
getting; while perhaps Tony Pays's responses reflect that many students in
England really do need more encouragement of their individual creativity than
most of them have been getting. Aside from the nuances of interaction between
individual teacher and individual student, cultural differences between
students in England and the USA may mean that teaching methods that prove
appropriate and effective in one country might work less well in the other.
Thus some of the difference of opinion about "Absolutes" may simply mean that
Roger Garrett and Tony Pays both know how to adapt their personal teaching
styles to reinforce the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of their
nations' educational systems.

I think that TV and the Internet are evening things up, and that the cultural
differences between students and teachers in England and the USA used to be
far greater, but maybe I'm over-generalizing from vivid memories of my
experience as a student of novelist David Lodge. He came to the University of
California at Berkeley as a visiting professor from England, in the academic
year 1968-69, when I took his creative writing seminar as one of seven upper
division students he chose from writing samples and interviews. That year was
the height of the campus unrest, including the People's Park riots and the
Third World Liberation Front riots, along with the ongoing turmoil over the
Vietnam War. With the campus out on strike, we met at night, in a classmate's
home. Naturally this situation made all of us tense, produced culture shock
for everyone involved and fostered misunderstandings galore. Professor Lodge
later wrote some delightful, pointed social satires, including _Changing
Places_ and its sequel, _Small World_, based on his experiences as an exchange
professor. In their respective contexts, Roger Garrett and Tony Pays are
probably both excellent teachers, to judge from the thoughtfulness (not to
mention the intensity) of their dialogue, but it would be interesting to see
how they'd adapt their methods if they, like Lodge's fictional American and
English professors, Morris Zapp and Philip Swallow, changed places.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The highest form of writing is of course a book of one's own, something that
has to be prepared with tact, subtlety, and cunning, and sustained over many
months, like an affair. But one cannot always be writing books...."
--David Lodge, _Small World_ (Macmillan, 1984), p. 99.
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