Klarinet Archive - Posting 000461.txt from 2004/10

From: "Patricia A. Smith" <arlyss1@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] The authoritarian teacher (was: [kl] Daniel Bonade and Rose)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:54:54 -0400

Lelia Loban wrote:

>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.
>
><snip of a well written post, for space considerations>
>
>
Lelia, you make some good points. I definitely think there are a
goodly number of those "sadistic" "Professor Umbridge" types from HPV
out there. That said, I also believe some other things have been
overlooked in the process:

1) Often, too many young players come from backgrounds that focus way
too much upon "playing" as the MOST desirable career in music, while
other careers in music are inferior by inference. However, without
music teachers, music therapists, music retailers, repair specialists,
people who develop music-making software, people who develop curricula
for music instruction, etc., where would we be? IMO, though it is
wonderful to appreciate fine performers and their artistry, it is also
important to realize that these other professionals have dedicated their
lives to assisting others in ways that are not only important to music,
but to society at large. Our world would be poorer without them.

2) Though I felt you described three possibilities for the "micro-focus"
on such a few measures in a lesson, IMO, there is yet a fourth
possibility. If the teacher is otherwise an amiable sort, and is not
being mean or bullying, but merely too focused on details, perhaps the
teacher may possibly have ADHD or some related disorder in which s/he
has difficulty focusing attention for long enough periods of time to
listen to students play entire pieces of music without stopping them.

IMO, it is a good practice to listen to any prepared piece in its
entirety - or at least through an entire section for longer works, even
on the more advanced levels, in order to find out if mistakes are
occurring in patterns or if they are merely isolated occurrences. This
is especially true of sightreading, technical problems, tonguing and
rhythm perplexities. If a student misses the same rhythmic pattern,
say, five times out of seven, s/he needs some work on it. If s/he only
misses it 2/7, then perhaps that was a fluke. But only if the teacher
listens to that piece in its entirety will s/he know for sure.

The teacher who inherently lacks ability to focus long enough to be able
to listen to and analyze a student's playing for this amount of time,
and can only look at minute details, a little bit at a time, will often
break down a student's playing into manageable "sections" of just a few
measures. S/he will do this, not to be intentionally cruel to the
student, but because if the student plays more than, say, half a page
through a set of exercises, the teacher's mind wanders so badly, s/he
forgets the music, and is most likely thinking about where s/he's going
for the weekend, or, whether or not the guy next door has clean
underwear. ADHD is like this, and it affects more adults than one would
think.

This is NOT to say this teacher would NOT ever be a good teacher, or
that the teacher cannot train his/herself to overcome this deficiency
with behavioral interventions, either self-monitored or
therapist-assisted. S/he may have a good DEAL to offer students.
However, a student would either:

a) have to have some awareness that this is what is going on with this
teacher, and that the teacher was not being picky out of malice, or out
of thinking the student was "no good";
or,
b) the teacher would have to explain to the student that s/he teaches in
this way because it is the best way for the teacher to remain focused on
the student's playing (without going into a lot of unneeded detail).

I gather, Lelia, that most teachers you've known of who do
"micro-measure analysis" tended to be the "in-your-face" tyrant types,
rahter than merely absent-minded professors trying to fight being
absent-minded...those tyrants are the ones I avoid - for myself & the kids.

Patricia Smith

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