[Pitar]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

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.

Yet, it is the truth.

I think the so-called teacher, who is a person who has developed himself to a certain level of achievement, possibly (hopefully) understands that same achievement has merely opened his eyes to what he doesn't know and, especially, why he lacks the knowledge he does: Self limitation through musical self-gratification. It's this latter thought that drives him less as a teacher and more as an errant student of his craft as time goes on. Ultimately, he might outwardly possess the stuff of a teacher but the rebellious student in him, the more professional persona, humbles that to a hard truth.

I think that is the way of the web-based music instrument teachers so, even though they might wax a teaching role, the best they can do is present the material the student is interested in by a demonstrative method. This method, cobbled together and labeled a lesson, really isn't unless it is fully vested in a bonafide lesson plan with the necessary accompanying material such as standard notation and theory that supports it. That's the stuff of a fully rounded musical instrument teacher. Both my sons were exposed to this kind of teacher and now they play their instruments by sight-reading scores and can cite the theory beneath it. Without knowing a foreign language both can simply sit in an ensemble, band and/or orchestra situation, pick up a score and play along to their own contentment. That is not the stuff of web-based demonstrative methods, though it could very well be developed to that level provided the demonstrator is capable of it.

Anything short of that is a demonstrative method of taking a person to a level of play that really isn't teaching them as a musical instrument teacher. They are more demonstrators than teachers, and they know it.

The flip side of this is an acceptance of a demonstrative guide, in place of a real teacher, in a new world order that disdains the arduous task of learning and welcomes the manifold abbreviated methods that better satisfy instant gratification. That is the new student/teacher combination of today and so glaringly representative of a dumbed down society on a downward spiral technology has us on. Why struggle with learning it when it can be demonstrated or otherwise go-ogled?

So, even though you have assembled much of your material and presented it as lessons, and it has been accepted as such, are we really calling that teaching or demonstrating?