Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitar
I think the best teacher is, as usual, the student. The teachers are usually nothing more than pass-throughs of information that the observers (students) metabolize to the extent that they can teach themselves. If one cares to analyze it, that's the truth regarding teacher/student relationships.
I've never taught anyone anything. I've only shown them what I do and they pick it up from there. The idea of placing a value on that is to say that my time is valuable and I should be compensated for it. That would be the perspective of the for-gain teacher who has such an income to protect. Naturally, he or she will defend it that way. But, not being a for-gain person of music, mine is simply a watch and learn proposition if the observer has the desire to pick up what I'm putting down. If the desire is not there, paid or free lessons will have the same effect - little to none.
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I believe there are serious flaws with that argument. Saying that the best teacher is the student and that teachers are nothing more than ‘pass-throughs of information’ is completely devaluing the role of a qualified, experienced and competent instructor. If your theory was correct, then there would be absolutely no need for teachers of any kind, whether the subject is biology, medicine, history, or even auto-mechanics. Why, all a teacher of your description would need to do would be to point to which book a student would need, tell them which chapters would apply to them and that would be essentially it. Or to take it a step further, if the teacher were the coach on a baseball team, they would simply say ‘watch how I do it, because I really can’t explain the process of what I’m doing,’ or perhaps in your case, if the player still couldn’t learn from example your attitude might be ‘well, I can explain it in a step by step process, but I’d rather not.’ It seems that your definition of a student should be self-guided and self-taught, being automatically in possession of the gift of ‘watch and learn.’
This is assuming that all students are completely independent, which is absolutely false. It is only the exceptional, tremendously gifted student that is like that. I’m not sure how many students you’ve ‘taught’ with this method, but I can tell you that over 40 years of teaching, I have had literally thousands of students in that time period. Of that amount, only a small percentage were self-guided. The rest truly needed to shown not only which door to open, but how to choose which door would be right for them and how to proceed down that path. At this point some would need a structured map, while others needed a little less structure. In either case, on the smallest exception needed a lesson or two without proceeding on their own completely.
Please don’t assume that I do not value the need for a student to eventually learn HOW to fish, rather than just being given a fish. My role as a teacher is to first show them what they want to learn, and then teach them how they can go about learning on their own, using the foundation that is laid out for them.
I can’t begin to tell you how many students have come to me saying that they wound up wasting more time wading through those ‘free’ lessons on the internet in order to finally find one that addresses their personal, specific issue. And even if and when they find that, many of those lessons are not structured, nor do they provide any end game or guided path toward that students particular goal. Additionally, they provide zero feedback, as they are all canned.
A qualified, experienced instructor, regardless of the subject matter, provides a student with a time saving, structured path that is personalized to their specific needs. Not only that, the instructor provides invaluable feedback if that student may be making crucial mistakes during the learning process, which everyone, regardless of their natural ability, will be bound to make. To say that ‘teachers are usually nothing more that pass-throughs of information that the observers metabolize to the extent that they can teach themselves’ completely devalues the art, craft, dedication, genius and importance of the teacher.
Finally, in the case of those rare, exceptional students that only need to be show which door to go through, the value of the teacher to actually understand that student’s need and point them to the correct door cannot be by any means underestimated.