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 There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:17

Maybe at a very high level that is true, but to the average, or above average player that absolutely is not true.

A very good teacher can make a world of difference.



Thoughts?


That quote attributed to William Kincaid came up in my google alerts under Clarinet today.


I disagree.

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:21

There is something similar from the east: "it is a poor student that does not exceed the gains of the master."

But this one doesn't exalt the student at the expense of the educator. I think Kincaid's quote [as presented] is bogus and myopic.

James

Gnothi Seauton

Post Edited (2008-08-19 19:22)

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: weberfan 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:33



A good teacher and a good student make each other better.

My own teacher often says that in the week between lessons I am teaching myself; ie diagnosing troublespots, working on technique and finding pleasure in hard-won improvement. I come back to him with questions. Without my teacher's guidance and skill, both as a player and as an analyst of music and the way I play it, I'd be floundering.

Calmly, quietly and methodically, he inspires.

No good teachers? I disagree.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:40

It's like saying that there are no good coaches, only athletes....

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: crnichols 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:51

That statement is pretty out there...I hope that was not Kincaid's intention. I do agree with what I feel the statement implies. A good teacher cannot compensate for a bad student(i.e. one who does not apply themself). You may study with the finest teacher in the world, but it's up to you to apply their advice.

Christopher Nichols, D.M.A.
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
University of Delaware

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-19 19:51

"It's like saying that there are no good coaches, only athletes...."

Oh, wait. Sorry to break this to you David...that's actually true. You didn't hear about Phelps and his lack of coaching? He does it all himself without any aid.

James

Gnothi Seauton

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: weberfan 
Date:   2008-08-19 20:03




David,
The quote, it appears, comes from Sherman Friedland's column. He seems to be saying that the greatest players are well beyond even a good teacher. They are people with special gifts. In that context, Mr. Friedland is probably correct. But for the rest of us, a good teacher is essential.





http://clarinetcorner.wordpress.com/

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: NorbertTheParrot 
Date:   2008-08-19 20:05

"there are no good coaches, only athletes...."

The UK cycling team has just had unprecedented success at the Olympics. I can think of three possible explanations:

1. By sheer chance, a whole lot of great cyclists were born in the UK 20-30 years ago, far more than we've ever had before.

2. Cycling became wildly fashionable a few years ago - not that anyone actually noticed - so all the natural athletes gravitated towards cycling at the expense of other sports.

3. A couple of brilliant coaches got together and made it all happen.

I know which explanation I believe.

Oh, and by the way, before anyone suggests it, I don't believe:

4. They're all on drugs.

Sorry if this is off-topic. It seems to me to have some passing relevance.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-19 20:07

The quote is both true and false; it depends on the student and the teacher. A very talented student will gain much with a mediocre teacher but a mediocre student will never become very talented studying with a great teacher. ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 A little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: FDF 
Date:   2008-08-20 00:27

If a student succeeds, it is because he or she is a good student.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: William 
Date:   2008-08-20 00:32

""It's like saying that there are no good coaches, only athletes...."

LOL--how about, "no good conductors, only musicians...."

Actually, the best relationship is a good teacher with a good, motivated student. On the other hand, a good student can make a bad teacher seem good--or bad, unmotivated students make a good teacher seem bad. Also, what is "good" or "bad" differs between evaluators--parents, principals, adjudicators, students & peers, audiences, etc, etc, etc. This is why the merit pay idea for public school educators is so controversial and unworkable. The "rules" would have different interpretations and applications between individuals and districts. Even teachers themselves cannot agree on what is "good" or considered successful. Fortunately, there are lots of good teachers that do their best every day or week for their students and it is really up to the students to take advantage of the opportunity to learn. Teachers as motivators?? Absolutely!!! But in reality, there are some students that even John Phillip Sousa (assuming he was "good") would have failed to inspire.

A good teacher can make a world of difference, but "how much?" depends on the student in class. And be careful with those evaluations...........

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-20 01:11

How about: "There are no good sounding clarinetists...just good sounding reeds"?

James

Gnothi Seauton

Post Edited (2008-08-20 01:13)

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: allencole 
Date:   2008-08-20 03:12

I've got to hand it to FDF, at least to agree that there is no success unless the student is good. And sometimes, to be a good teacher, you have to give that student a lot of room to operate in. Last year, I had a tenor sax kid who had tremendous musicality--and I didn't teach that to him. He just HAD it. Made first-chair all-State on a student model horn and mouthpiece.

In that case, I had to be careful not to interfere with those factors that made him so special. Most instruction involved enhancing his sightreading, and working with him on certain expressive techniques (primarily piano-style tempo changing) which might be misinterpreted by an audition judge. He didn't need me to teach him to be expressive--he just needed to examine his interpretation through the listener's ears.

I can't take credit for his ability, and I'm sure that we have all had that moment of realization.

I often think that the best role of a teacher is to get the student to accept and embrace the realities and requirements that go along with being a musician. Most will be pretty self-motivated beyond that point. Teachers also have to realize that sometimes a student will arrive at a terrific place via a path that you don't think they should take. With clarinet in particular, I think it behooves us to look hard at what is/isn't necessary and what is/isn't optional.

A star student will generally shine unless bored or discouraged. What we may need to think more about are the potential 'supporting players' who may not be our star prizewinners but who could, with proper motivation and encouragement, keep amateur music alive for another generation.

Allen Cole

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students"
Author: skygardener 
Date:   2008-08-20 03:15

How about this?
There are no good doctors, only good patients.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: hans 
Date:   2008-08-20 03:26

I agree that "A very good teacher can make a world of difference". So, unfortunately, can a very poor one.

We should discuss what qualities or attributes a good teacher must possess. A knowledge of the subject matter is presumably a given. My definition of a competent teacher would include one who has the ability to identify the student's primary learning style(s), plus a thorough understanding of the many theories of motivation (Herzberg, Maslow, Expectancy Theory, Equity Theory, etc. - there are many and each could be relevant) and which of these apply to the student. An unmotivated student with high potential is unlikely to achieve much.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Mark G Simon 
Date:   2008-08-20 03:44

The saying might mean that a good teacher never stops learning, and thus always remains a student.

Clarinetist, composer, arranger of music for clarinet ensemble

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: graham 
Date:   2008-08-20 09:54

A good student (I prefer to call him/her a player) can have a particular problem (e.g. articulation) that a good teacher can help them iron out.

A good teacher can bring something meaningful to an average player which is worth the value of their tuition fees and adds to their life.

If the saying is really supposed only to relate to outstanding students the saying should say that. As a saying it is an empty nostrum.

"There are no good sayings, only good interpretations of sayings"

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-20 13:08

Now I like Mike's take on the statement...but the statement itself lacks context to interpret it well.

But still a good idea,

James

Gnothi Seauton

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Bradley 
Date:   2008-08-20 16:16

Personally, I interpret the quote to mean that there can only be bad teachers. To me, a teacher that is "good" is doing the job they're paid to do (ofcourse some fit some students better than others etc.) while a "bad" teacher is someone who does not allow the student to grow to their full potential/ or actually pushes them towards things that are bad for them (bad technique habits etc.) because it's a really bad fit [teacher/student].

In my own personal sense, Mr. Kincaid's quote works completely. We can look in history at the megastars and realize that there is no way to prove it was because of teachers. If a teacher is not bad, they will help students, and the more perceived success a teacher has, the more that really qualified students will flock to him/her.

I am in NO WAY diminishing what teachers do, and I realize that it's one of the hardest things for anyone to do well. However, I think Mr. Kincaid's blunt wording was to try and emphasize the fact that students are the ones who make their careers great. All the "best" teachers have students who don't do well. I don't think that should be considered their fault, either.

Bradley

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-20 17:32

Would a player like Ricardo be as good as he is today if he didn't have great teachers early on?

Probably would, but he's the exception. And, having really good teachers early on inspired him and gave him tools which he used to become the player he is today.

Remember, you are your own teacher 6 out of 7 days a week - be a good one.

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: clariniano 
Date:   2008-08-20 17:40

Yes, there are definitely bad teachers--and there's lots of bad students too. While most of my students play with good time, technique, and tone, I had a few examples of students who didn't want to play with good timing or technique. One of them (a piano student) seems to have learned from his experience by not doing so great on his last exam, though is currently doing extremely well, another I decided to dump because although he was making some progress (he did have sensory-integration issues, his dad told me about them only after I mentioned to his dad that his progress seemed extremely slow) he also had behavioural issues (he is 12 years old, I know of kids half his age who were much better behaved!

I've encountered a lot of students who had not only technique and tone problems, who were very weak in their ear training, rhythmic awareness sight-reading and music theory skills; often I find if students are weak in at least one musical area, they are often weak in several areas.

I've also had students who were clearly gifted who didn't sound good when they first start taking lessons with a good teacher, but a few months later the students and families comment on how much better they sound and how well they do when they perform for various events.

I admit I do not succeed with all students--but in those cases it's clearly their way of thinking that causes problems. If a student is not going to practice, or not practice efficiently, you can be a great teacher and still fail to get the message across to some students.

Meri

Meri

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ryder 
Date:   2008-08-21 02:29

"Remember, you are your own teacher 6 out of 7 days a week - be a good one."

Very true. Since you only see your teacher (this is general of course) once a week, take every bit of information you get from that lesson, write it down, write it on your hand, music whatever... Use that information and be the teacher. ask yourself if what you just played was 'perfect' (different ideas on that though) and if not, run yourself through the process of teaching yourself much like your teacher would, assuming they are a 'good' teacher. Remember to analyze what you do to know WHY you are doing it.

This is bill28099's (user of this board) signature. I hope you don't mind bill28099.

"A great teacher gives you answers to questions
you don't even know you should ask."

Would y'all agree. I would.

____________________
Ryder Naymik
San Antonio, Texas
"We pracice the way we want to perform, that way when we perform it's just like we practiced"

Post Edited (2008-08-21 02:34)

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Alexis 
Date:   2008-08-21 09:30

The first statement is absurd.

Good and bad are the extremes of a spectrum used to judge relative quality. A 'good' teacher is one at the furthest point on spectrum from a 'bad' teacher. The good teacher can only be judged by the presence of a bad teacher, and vice versa. So unless, you sacrifice any assessment of the quality of teaching, this statement has no validity.

I think its a lousy quote.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Lelia Loban 2017
Date:   2008-08-21 11:43

In order to make any sense of the original quotation, we'd have to define "good" and "bad." Well, good for whom? Bad for whom?

I do think it's possible to generalize, up to a point, especially when defining "bad." The student who never practices and fails to show up at half the lessons is a bad student. The teacher who assigns a book of scale and arpeggio exercises and never gives the students real music to play is a bad teacher. But, hardly any teachers and students fall into such extreme categories.

We don't all learn in the same ways. I keep thinking back to my own education. If a teacher treated me politely and praised my work, I tended to give up. I assumed the teacher treated me with kindness and demanded so little because s/he thought I was a hopeless case, pitiable, not worth the bother of criticizing.

I learned the most from teachers who either snorted and bellowed or stomped around in a nearly-silent rage. My favorite teachers often ranked among the most hated on campus. Other students described them as martinets, dictators, dominatrixes, sadists and so forth. None of them were mentally ill in the literal sense; they were simply demanding, willing to require more than most teachers thought prudent. Were these bad teachers? Not for me! After growing up in a home where Socratic dialogue was the norm over dinner, I thrived with a teacher who cared enough and respected me enough to glare at me and yell, "Prove it!"

Never did find my fantasy music teacher, but I wrote him into some fiction, where he's an infamous pipe organist, screaming at his student, "If that's the best you can do, then go play like the organ grinder's monkey for somebody else!"

Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-21 11:52

Absolutely Alexis


I think that the only time you are too good for lessons is when your ego gets too big for them.


and that's an unfortunate time.

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Brenda 2017
Date:   2008-08-21 12:05

I think that any of us who teach should be modest and realize that we're great teachers for some of our students and not suitable for others. We aren't the "end all" for all. If a teacher rants and raves he could be totally demoralizing for some who've already been through some awful things in their short lives. Other students would find they need to get their butt kicked and would thrive on it! (I remember my brother commenting on his Grade 4 teacher who was feared in our elementary school, he said he learned a lot from her and enjoyed her class.) As has been mentioned many times on this board, students should have a few teachers in their learning careers in order to be more rounded as musicians.

Also it's absolutely true that the student is their own teacher most of the time. If they're taught, and able to, push themselves with proper practicing techniques then they'll most certainly excel as time goes on. I can tell right away if my student has practiced. They make the exercise sound very easy when it was a real struggle just the week before.

When I used to phone my teacher to share my thrill with a great examination grade, he'd tell me that I was the one who did the work. Of course he knew that without him I wouldn't be anywhere near as far as I was, but he was 90% right.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Nessie1 
Date:   2008-08-21 12:33

Crumbs Lelia!

I don't think that many of us would prefer your type of ideal teacher.

However I do agree with may posters that a good teacher varies his or her approach according to the student but I think that he or she should always be encouraging where it is deserved.

Of course, this again can depend on the student. What is a good performance coming from the moderately able student who may never play at Carnegie Hall or wherever but who has worked very hard at something to achieve that level may deserve constructive criticism and a push to take things further coming from the student with much more aptitude who is a potential professional. The less able student may achieve a better standard in more time, of course, but he or she should be given credit, encouragement and praise for what has been achieved at this point.

I also believe that praise should be given for what is good about, say, a piece even if it is not perfect - yet! Saying "That's so much better than last time" or "You're putting in great expression" is bound to inspire confidence and make the pupil want to work more.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Mark Charette 
Date:   2008-08-21 12:46

Nessie1 wrote:

> Crumbs Lelia!
>
> I don't think that many of us would prefer your type of ideal
> teacher.

The teachers we learn the most from sometimes are not the ones we like or the ones we prefer.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Nessie1 
Date:   2008-08-21 12:56

Mark Charette wrote:

> The teachers we learn the most from sometimes are not the ones
> we like or the ones we prefer.

Well perhaps this also depends on the student!

I had a wonderful teacher for many years who I got on well with and found supportive in every way but when she said " No, that's not good enough!" or " You can do better than that!" I knew she meant it and "pulled up my socks!" but she still did not berate me or run me down.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: allencole 
Date:   2008-08-22 16:17

I rarely find it necesssary to berate a student unless there's a respect or character issue. (of course the latter covers a lot of territory <g>)

One characteristic of a good student, is that a good teacher can simply be honest. Personally, I don't think it pays to be a drama queen unless you want your student to be one, too.

I like the idea that I can compliment a student on his/her improvement, but remind them that the standard has not yet been met. Honesty on the part of the teacher shows respect for the student, and I think that most students will respond well. Histrionics may have their place, but probably at a high level than I deal with.

That said, I do have fond memories of a teacher who would lecture me for 45 minutes after a half-hour lesson.

Allen Cole

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-23 22:47

Can't agree with you Lelia! Leon Russianoff was one of the great teachers of the 20th century. He treated students with respect and never yelled or stomped, it worked for so many students, including me. He encouraged me to practice by his attitude and respect. If you are a "good" student, meaning you have a decent degree of talent and responsibility and have the desire to "be all you can be" which is what makes a good student, then a teacher like Russianoff will bring out the best in you. I would never think of coming to my lesson wit him unless I was always totally prepared, so I came to very lesson totally prepared and he praised me, motivated me and encouraged me. Even if he never taught me a thing, which was not the case, I would have become what I am because of him, not despite him. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 A little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Mark Charette 
Date:   2008-08-24 00:51

Ed Palanker wrote:

> Can't agree with you Lelia!

But there's nothing to agree or disagree with! In Lelia's case one thing worked in a particular case, in other cases perhaps something else works. That wooden ruler across my knuckles reinforced a few things during class in Catholic school for me ... though I wouldn't recommend it (and neither would those nuns) in all cases.

Lelia didn't put forth any absolutes for anyone.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 01:23

Bottom line, a good teacher can help any student improve if the student listens to the teacher and does what the teacher asks them to do. A good teacher will make a very talented student become a great player. A good teacher will help motivate a good student to become a great student. A poor student will probably not improve under any circumstances because they are in fact "a poor student". ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: skygardener 
Date:   2008-08-24 02:33

I have had my share of teachers that were very demanding and those that were the opposite and simply requested. For me, I think that the best teachers were/are the ones that actually teach something, regardless of character. Although, this seems obvious, many teachers teach very little.
Some give nothing but superficial comments about the music "More crescendo, slight rubato here", and the student has really LEARNED nothing. They have only been instructed to remember a few things about one piece.
Some teachers are broken records that simply say one of a few set phrases to their students like, "Practice with a metronome" or "Practice slowly". Although, they may mean well by this, the phrase "Practice scales" Or "practice slowly" is not enough to get the whole point across. The questions that need to be answered are "Where? How much? How slow? How fast? How long should I practice slow? How much time should I spend on a one section in a day before I move to another section?"
These might seem like unnecessary questions to the teacher, but the student has no way of knowing the answers to these essential questions that make the difference between a profitable practice session and a fruitless one.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Brenda 2017
Date:   2008-08-24 14:28

Skygardener, this is so true. Most learning happens in the student's practice room. But if the teacher doesn't spell out HOW to practice, then a lot of time is wasted and proves to be unproductive. Overall the student's experience in learning to play music can be disappointing. But with specific instructions about how to break down the practice time (so many minutes with scales, exercises, long tones, being prepared for the plateaus, etc.etc.) then the student over time will find himself improving, and will stay motivated.



 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 14:42

SkyG, that's what makes a good teacher different from a poor one. A good teacher actually teaches something and inspires the student to go the extra step. I've had students that were so self-motivated that all I had to do was listen and coach. Depending on their age and what they needed in the way of basics determined how much I actually had to teach them as opposed to how much I had to coach them. Believe me, it's a pleasure when you get a talented student that does everything you ask, listens intensely to your suggestions, tries everything you suggest and recommend and comes in completely prepared each and every week. That's what I did when I was a student and that's what Morales and several others did, or do now, as my students. Give me a dozen students like him and I'll be called the greatest teacher in the world but a good teacher also takes a motivated "average" student and helps them become "as good as they can be, maybe even a little better". If a teacher needs to yell at a student to inspire them to work hard they are “a poor student”. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
Listen to a little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: skygardener 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:08

"If a teacher needs to yell at a student to inspire them to work hard they are “a poor student”"
- But if it is the teacher's nature to yell at all their students...?

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:16

" But if it is the teacher's nature to yell at all their students...?"

If it is because they have high expectations for progress, but never show the student HOW to achieve and meet these expectations: you have a bad teacher.

I don't think that Ed's analysis was describing all possibilities...his posts have constantly had a fixed variable: a good teacher (and their effect on a given student).

James

Gnothi Seauton

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:20

Any teacher who yells at his students is a frustrated person....

Bad, and unacceptable - get therapy.

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: skygardener 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:40

I agree very much with Ed's post.
In my learning experience, I have had teachers that yell, but the more powerful ones were the teachers that very calmly said things like, "I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough." There was no high strung emotions about it, and no yelling. Simply, "This is not enough if you want to be serious about this."

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:43

It's easy enough to say "hey, you aren't working hard enough, and if it continues you will be not working hard enough for someone else, not me".

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Tobin 
Date:   2008-08-24 15:52

Absolutely agreed, David. Being direct and sincere should be able to communicate all that you need.

It's also nice to be at the point where I don't need the student (financially). When you hit that critical mass of studio size you can hold strongly to the high level of achievement you want, and not have to worry about being able to pay the rent.

James

Gnothi Seauton

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 17:08

I think we need to be talking about what type of student we are discussing. Being that it is Kincaid’s quote, one of the great flute teachers and players of last century, I’m talking about career minded students. They need to have a certain degree of self-motivation, much the same as a professional athlete or Olympic athlete. Now if where talking about an average high school student or younger than that’s a whole new ball game. Still not yelling of course but now there needs to be a different teaching psychology, more patients and understand because you may be doing it as a major part of making a living, instead of a side job, and you’re dealing with an different set of circumstances, students playing for the fun of it. That’s a whole new ball game then when we talk about Kincaid’s quote. ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Mark Charette 
Date:   2008-08-24 17:22

Ed Palanker wrote:

> They need to have a certain
> degree of self-motivation, much the same as a professional
> athlete or Olympic athlete.

I can walk into the athletic department at any university or at least one pro football team's practice facility and hear screaming and yelling with words that I last heard when I was in the Navy. And these folk are already motivated towards careers that can (and do) pay millions.

So, while I might not condone such motivational techniques - they must work, at least in the athletic arena ... and I've heard that some conductors of the last generation achieved remarkable success with those.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-24 17:39

And our parents got great results with a good smackdown too......


:)

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 18:30

Mark, I don't think that's the same as a student in your studio. I've never heard of Russianoff ever yelling at a student and I don't yell either but sometimes a strong lecture is called for to remind a student why they're in my studio in the first place. If a student has to be yelled at in order to work hard they should go into another profession. ESP

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Lelia Loban 2017
Date:   2008-08-24 19:07

My husband's favorite violin teacher, Mischa Mischakoff, used to hit him with a fly swatter. If either of us had ever had a teacher we considered truly sadistic, we would have quit in a flash, unless our parents had found out first, in which case our parents would have yanked us even faster. There's a big difference between a sicko and someone who's demanding and I think students of the non-masochistic persuasion intuit that difference.

Strong demands mean, "I know you *can* do a good job, if you try hard enough." That's good motivation. It's a more honest confidence booster than shallow exercises in "building the student's self-esteem," which mostly come down to praising everything whether it's praiseworthy or not. Empty praise, giving students pretty blue ribbons for managing to keep on breathing, is too confusing: There's no way to tell if/when we've accomplished anything truly worthwhile. If a grumpy teacher who normally groans or bellows (or even bursts into "How can you do this to me?" tears) one day says quietly, "Now, that was *good*," then you know it really was *good*.

Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 21:39

I don’t think Cal Ripkin, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson or Johnny Unitas to name a few of the great athletes ever needed to be yelled at to motivate them. The same is true of the great performers, clarinet or otherwise. What good is yelling at a student because they didn’t prepare their lesson? If a student can’t be motivated to prepare their lessons they shouldn’t be studying to be a professional musician, and the teacher should let them know that. Being stern does not have to equate to yelling or hitting. That may be the old fashion way but it doesn't have to work like that today. And as I said before, when working with younger students, not career oriented, it takes patients, understanding and a special teaching talent to keep them interested and motivated.
Conductors of years ago, and even some today, don’t yell at musicians because they can’t play their parts, at least in my orchestra, they used to yell out of frustration and power. The Szells and Reiners were all powerful and they could, and did, fire on the spot. My way or the highway, even if the musician was trying as hard as possible to please them, it wasn’t necessarily because they weren’t prepared or trying their best.
Does everyone think that Curtis graduates so many great musicians because they have the very best teachers in the world? Certainly they have many truly fine, if not great teachers, but let’s face it, they get the cream of the crop student body to begin with because it’s not only free but the school has a great reputation from past to the present. Any decent teacher there will produce great students because they come there already being superior to most. Am I a great teacher because Morales studied with me, I don’t think so. (though I do think I’m pretty good anyway). ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: DavidBlumberg 
Date:   2008-08-24 21:54

Ed, Ricardo kept coming back because you're great.

:)

http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com


 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Ed Palanker 
Date:   2008-08-24 23:16

Thanks Dave!

 
 Re: There are no good teachers; there are only good students”
Author: Arnoldstang 
Date:   2008-08-25 14:38

Hats off to all teachers out there. It isn't brain surgery ....in a way it is more complicated.

Freelance woodwind performer

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