Klarinet Archive - Posting 000091.txt from 2003/07
From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: [kl] Teacher vs student (was ATG Reed system)
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 21:10:12 -0400
I'm going travelling for a month. As my 'See You Later' message......
Tom Puwalski wrote:
It's funny, I'll run into a clarinetist, every once in a while, who will
ask me "How do I learn to play Klezmer music?" I'll take a few minutes
to explain [snip] Usually one out of every two people will then
proceed to tell me exactly why what I have just said won't work. They
don't try it. They don't follow the directions, they won't do what other
successful people have done that works.
When I was learning to snow ski (many, many years ago), I asked the
instructor "How am I doing?" He sighed in a good-natured way and
replied, "I can see that you're trying, so please don't take offense,
but like most students, when I tell you to do something, you do
something else instead.
"Several months ago," the instructor continued, "I had O.J. Simpson (the
football player) as a student. It took me 20 minutes to teach him
parallel turns. After I had him in his gear and on the slope, I told
him 'Put your left leg this way [demonstration], put your right shoulder
this way [demonstration]...'
"O.J. did exactly what I said, and he made a perfect parallel turn the
first time. After 5 more minutes of showing him other things, O.J.
told me: 'I know that I paid you for a full hour, but you've showed me
what I need, so have a cup of hot chocolate on me.' O.J. paralleled
and schussed his way down the hill while I stood there and watched."
Isn't this part of teaching? For most of us, more than one explanation
is required before the information seems believable, much less before we
internalize it. Perhaps your example shows students at their flippant
worse, but for many of us, an expert's methods simply don't make sense
at first.
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