Klarinet Archive - Posting 000453.txt from 2004/10

From: Andy Jablonski <ajablons@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] The authoritarian teacher (was: [kl] Daniel Bonade and R
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:18:57 -0400

I would imagine that at the time of his first lesson he wasn't a beginner.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lelia Loban [mailto:lelialoban@-----.net]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 2:22 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] The authoritarian teacher (was: [kl] Daniel Bonade and Rose)

Rich Watson wrote,
>I will never forget my first lesson with the
>late Keith Stein (wrote the Art of Clarinet
>Playing). I had a mountain of highly technical
>work prepared and he very patiently spent two
>hours on the first half bar of the first measure
>of the first piece. Then, without fanfare, he said
>simply; "If you can't get the first note right, why
>bother with the rest".

Do you think that you needed the whole two hours to understand the
teacher's point about that half-bar? When a teacher asks a student to
repeat some little thing over and over and over and over at the first
lesson, with just enough variation and feedback to stop the student's mind
from going into "screen saver" mode, this ritual probably has little to do
with the particular piece of music. Maybe it also has little to do with
the general principle of working on details until they're right, though
that's a necessary principle for a student to learn and it's what teachers
usually say (or even believe) that they're teaching with this method. But
when a teacher *begins* at the first lesson by asking a student to obsess
over something tiny, I suspect that what's really going on is one of three
things:

1. The teacher hero-worships one of his or her own former teachers who
used this method, and blindly copies it, or saw a description of this
method in a book or heard it in a college class, and copied it. This
teacher doesn't analyze why (or whether) this teaching method works with
*this individual* student. At best, someone who learned how to teach by
rote may turn out to be adequate, or mostly harmless, but not inspiring.
It's a bad sign if a high percentage of that teacher's students get bored
with music and quit every year. (Naturally, the teacher thinks the kids
quit because kids today are spoiled, lazy, etc. etc..)

2. The teacher is conducting a maturity and personality test. The teacher
uses it to find out something about the new student's attention span,
tolerance for frustration and ability to adapt. After the first lesson,
this type of teacher rarely repeats the demand for obsessional focus on one
little thing, but moves on to whatever teaching technique h/she thinks will
work with whatever combination of technical skill and personality the
student seems to have. This teacher wants to make up his or her own mind
about a student, instead of simply accepting what other teachers have said.
S/he freely changes teaching methods from one student to another, conducts
other types of tests as well, and earns a reputation as creative, adaptive
and good to excellent -- unless, of course, s/he's deluded about his or her
ability to understand the test results! If the teacher guesses wrong,
jumps to the wrong conclusions or tries to pigeon-holes kids into rigid
categories, then the student who's being treated as a stereotype will grow
increasingly resentful and either confront the teacher, change teachers or
quit music.

3. The teacher is conducting an obedience test. This authoritarian
personality wants to show the kid who's boss, right away. The student who
meekly obeys at once may get bullied unmercifully thereafter, while the
student who fights back may get thrown out -- or may earn respect and
favored status. Some kids do extremely well with a domineering
maestro-type, as my husband did with his best violin teacher, Mischa
Mischakoff, an old-school Russian (probably made crustier by 17 years as
Toscanini's concertmaster -- Toscanini had the same type of personality)
who used to hit Kevin with a fly swatter and pinch or twist his fingers
when he played wrong notes. Yes, Mischakoff spent the first entire lesson
drilling Kevin relentlessly on some nit-picky little point. Mischakoff
kept Kleenex boxes, each one conspicuously marked with a student's name,
lined up on a shelf in the practice room. The first time a student started
crying during a lesson, Mischakoff would produce a new Kleenex box, write
the student's name on it with a flourish and add it to his trophy shelf.

As a good amateur violinist in his 50s, Kevin is still proud of himself
because he never did earn a Kleenex box. His memories of Mischakoff are
strongly positive. (Kevin's the type who responds to a push by regarding
it as a fun game and pushing right back.) But, obviously, that kind of
teacher can inflict serious damage on a passive, vulnerable kid, who breaks
down like Humpty Dumpty and can't be put back together again. There's a
fine line between an authoritarian but good teacher and an abusive monster.
The good authoritarian teacher will gently but firmly tell a passive or
timid student's parents to find a different teacher.

If I were a parent with a student just starting lessons with a new teacher
who used this method at the first lesson, then I'd want to sit in on a few
more lessons, to figure out whether the teacher is an excellent one
learning how to relate to this particular student, or a pig-headed bore, or
overly-controlling or even sadistic. I'd also want to talk with other
parents and find out how this teacher's students fared over the long term,
before I signed up my kid. I don't approve of coddling kids instead of
challenging them, by any means -- babying children only makes them weak --
but if anything about the teacher reminded me of that vile dominatrix in
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," I'd grab my kid and run
screaming.

>My guess is that some of the "college level" people
>who are critical of Rose may be spending way too
>much time on gymnastics while overlooking some
>finer points of musicianship.

Even if it were possible to control students enough to *prevent* them from
going through that phase, wouldn't it be a mistake? Don't we all need to
find out just how fast we're capable of playing machine-gun staccato (or
whatever)? I wonder if the student who allows a teacher to restrain him or
her from even trying these things might be *too* obedient -- if the learned
obedience itself might block development of the musicianship that comes
from independent thinking.

It seems to me that a period of obsessing over technical prowess is a
necessary rite of passage, as a means of taking control over one's own life
-- of taking responsibility. We need to find out where we fit into the
world of music and whether we're planning or just daydreaming. Without the
technical skills to compete at the top levels, we're daydreaming, and we
need to find another satisfying way to earn a living. There's only one way
to find out if we've got the right stuff -- better sooner than later.
Otherwise, almost overnight, it seems, a talented teenager with unrealistic
dreams of great and glorious things can turn into a frustrated 60-year-old
still bitching about the lucky breaks s/he never got. (Know any musicians
like that...?)

Lelia Loban
For a stronger America: Kerry and Edwards in 2004!

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