Posted by Kenneth Sloan on May 23, 2003 at 01:02:02:
In Reply to: are Band Directors Musicians? posted by Tuba Ply/BandDir on May 20, 2003 at 16:30:37:
My, my - what a rich supply of raw material.
This posting brings up three (3) completely different points:
a) what is the point of testing?
b) what is the point of teaching?
c) how much of an expert practitioner must you be to be an effective teacher?
One at a time...
Music, like most endeavors worth pursuing, is a multi-dimensional activity. Testing for competence in such endeavors is tricky! IF all of the students are pursuing a balanced course of development, THEN you can test just about anything. Ask for scales, ask for etuds, ask for sight-reading - the students will sort themselves out the same way on every test. BUT - if you tell the students beforehand what will be on the test...they will change their behavior. They'll try to game the system. Ask for scales...and they will practice scales. Don't ask for scales...and they won't (unless they understand that practicing scales will help with their etudes and their sight-reading - which they won't). So, the best thing for the tester to do is to ask for "some of everything". Scales, prepared pieces, sight reading.
How about teaching? Is the teacher supposed to teach the subject matter? or prepare students to pass the testt? "Teaching to the test" is endemic. If the TESTERS do their job correctly, then "teaching to the test" is not a problem! And, teachers who pride themselves on "teaching music, not scales" may sound brave and forward thinking, but may simply be disagreeing with their colleagues about what "music" is. And that's the point here. If the TESTERS do a bad job (designing test that look at only a narrow subset of the necessary skills) then "teaching to the test" will reward the teacher, and harm the student. Who did the harm? The teacher, or the testers?
The real villains in the original posting are the districts that don't require scales! They tempt the short-cut teachers to short-change their students. Teachers who ignore this pressure and make their kids play scales anyway should be applauded - but it's a pity that they have to be brave.
and now for something completely different ("The Larch") - the old saw about "those who can't, shouldn't be allowed to teach", or some such. Well, I think that "some can blow'em and some can show'em". These are two distinct skills. In my own (day job) field, I see many people who can perform - but can't teach. And others who can teach - but not perform. I must say, thought, that most of the great teachers are *also* great performers, but only because they are totally immersed in the field, and can do it all. But, by necessity, most of the great teachers are "has-beens" - they rarely are up to date technically and often appear unskilled (to the casual observer, or their students).
There's also a point of view that great performers have a great DISadvantage when they try to teach - they literally can't understand why beginners don't understand some things and can't perform basic skills. They also have great difficulty understanding why every student does NOT want to spend 18 hours of every day practicing!
so...BD#1 was crying out for help - he was being tempted by the DarkSide. He knows that he *must* teach scales, but was really complaining about the failure of some of the testers to MAKE him teach scales. BD#2 was a well-intentioned idiot - for some reason assuming that BD#1 didn't understand why scales were important and taking the opportunity to go into his well-practiced rant about teachers and performers. Ho-hum...very boring.
Nice troll, though.