NewMusicBox: It’s education week here at NewMusicBox, and since I’ve recently written a few posts aimed at students, I thought this would be an opportune time to share some thoughts directed toward teachers themselves. Having had some great and less-than-great teachers (as well as some great and not-so-great teaching moments of my own), I’d like to step back for a moment and identify some inherent problems in teaching, especially teaching creative skills like music composition.
5 comments:
I very much agree with alot of what this article has to say. I too have had teachers, as I'm sure everyone has, who tried to ignore perplexing questions by either averting them to another topic, giving an answer which seemed like it could fit another question, stating the question was irrelevant, or just ignored it. As a student I always remembered being disappointed by these instances and thinking that I would have respected my teacher more for admitting they didn't know the answer. If they had just admitted they didn't know, I would have then walked away with a challenge to come up with an answer of my own, instead of walking away thinking the question wasn't important enough to answer. I think a lot of teaching has to do with leading students to think on their own, not just feeding them answers.
Like Jacquelyn, the content in this article resonates with me. I can imagine it must take a decent amount of courage for a teacher to admit they are wrong. Today, I think too many teachers are concerned with giving their students all of the right answers, and also with preparing their students for standardized tests. I think any great teacher will not only cause their students to question things that they have already learned as true in the past, but they will also be constantly asking themselves questions. A teacher cannot only be a teacher. A teacher must also be someone who is constantly learning themselves. I think this idea is especially true for teachers in the School of Drama, since the theater industry is always changing technologically and economically.
I absolutely agree with this; confusion and lack of knowledge are infinitely more powerful than being handed information on a silver platter and never questioning outside the set curriculum. The best teacher I ever had (a math teacher, not an arts teacher) did exactly this. He would explain the contents of the lesson, but most days he also saved time to introduce us to the next step; he would point out what aspects were still under debate, or things that even he did not understand and challenge us to do research, to come up with theories and explanations of our own. It made our comprehension that much deeper to be taught what wasn't known, what needed to be explored, and to make discoveries of our own.
I think we have to keep in mind that there are several kinds of teachers. Some of my best teachers were never instructors in a classroom. There are people who teach, and it is their job. There are those who teach and it is their passion. And for many, those positions overlap. But I feel, especially here at CMU, the most valuable things I have learned are not in a classroom or studio, nor are they necessarily from professors. "Unteaching" is a process, as is learning. Learning, in fact, is probably an incomplete process because one is never "done" learning. The best teachers are those who empower students to keep asking questions, and be curators of their own information.
I also completely agree with this article. Two of my favorite teachers in high school (History and Art) taught some of the basic facts we had to learn, but the rest of the class was discussion. The teachers asked us for our opinions and questioned our reasoning. What was great was that there was no answer. The teachers made us argue with ourselves to come up with an eventual answer. Sometimes, it was fun, because there would be no answer. There would be no right or wrong. Last year, I had the same pleasurable experience in my Roots of Rock n Roll course. Our teacher introduced us to new (or old and forgotten) music and then proceeded to discuss what we heard. We looked at the roots and deeper meanings of the songs, and he asked for our opinions. Sometimes, I thought he was studying our answers to try and understand humans. Then I realized, that I began to study everyone's answers. I began to understand a little more about human nature, how we perceive people, and how we behave towards one another. I think this is more important than anything you learn in a book.
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