Tears

[unknown-user]

In answer to Lydia, about young pupils that get frustrated and near tears. I’d say you did exactly the right thing, and often just a gesture of kindness and encouragement

[unknown-user]

Julieanne, I wish you were here in Asia and can teach me!

Adults have complicated lives, we’re stressed out by work, family, money, health etc and we have a lot of stuff on our minds.

I don’t remember if I ever broke down during a music lesson but if I did it certainly wasn’t over music but over some personal issue like losing my job!

I did have a guitar teacher who would make sarcastic remarks whenever we messed up. I left.

[carl-swanson]

Let me start by saying that I have NOT read every single word of this long thread. I’ve skimmed it and read bits and pieces, and I think I have the jist of what everyone is saying and feeling.

I’m kind of mystified by the original question, because I never had any teacher who drove me to tears and, while I am a very demanding teacher, I have never had a student near or in tears. I think that a teacher who drives a student or numerous students to tears has a personality problem, not a teaching one.

Having grown up with a parent who was a brutal emotional batterer, I am hyper sensitive to misplaced criticism. That is, criticism that attacks who the student is rather than what he/she has done. My particular area of interest in teaching harp is taking students who have come to me from other teachers(please, I didn’t steal them!) and fixing technical problems as well as moving them into more and more difficult repertoire. To do that I have to be very demanding and persistant, but at no time am I ever demeaning, sarcastic, destructive, or vindictive. In the first place, that would accomplish nothing. In the second place, it will create more problems than I am supposedly trying to fix, by making the student do worse rather than better.

A teacher who is mean, angry, demeaning, sarcastic, extreemly negative, is that way because of his own personality and not because he has to be that way to get the best results. A student who studies with such a teacher, even for a short time may take years to recover from the damage a person like that does.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Well, I think I have to say that labeling the kind of teaching I described briefly as emotional violation is not justifiable as I did not present a complete “case study” for psychological determination. People have not changed, I think, only their expectations. Music has not changed, either. There is nothing robotic about what I described. There are different levels of emotions. For instance, I attended a vocal class where they were doing cabaret songs, and a singer sang a song like Why Did I Choose You, or a real torch song and she started crying. Well, the teacher did not indulge her in that. He rightly identified it as a selfish approach and a failure. Why? Because she was crying, not the audience. She made it too personal, and failed to communicate anything to the audience. Her proper goal is to make the audience cry, if that is what the song calls for. Music operates on deeper levels and more intellectual levels in that the ideas and emotional ideas are what need to be communicated, not how bad you feel that day.

This was not a sadistic or oppressive lesson. That being said, you will encounter conductors and teachers who may seem or actually be sadistic in a sense or reality. Especially if they were trained in Vienna. If you are a professional, you have to be able to deal with it, and perhaps the best way is to focus on the music and ignore everything else. That takes training to be able to do. It may seem wrong, but you can’t always do anything about it, and sometimes it may be the only way a conductor or director can get any worthwhile results. The performers may be lazy, uninvolved, shallow or cold. They have to do what it takes to get the needed performance, that is their job. So don’t be so quick to judge.

I think it is a bit different when you look at schoolteachers who have a class for a whole day and a whole year at a time, with children who are in formation. I was certainly not addressing dealing with children.

As for the idea of dwelling on emotional upsets in lessons, I think it may

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

I think I am getting very uncomfortable with where this thread has gone, and perhaps we should give it a rest, dry our eyes, put away the tissues and move on to other topics.

[Amiable Aardvark]

Where this thread has gone?

[unknown-user]

Well, that is the interesting thing that I’ve found about the harp column…that you pose

[unknown-user]

Saul wrote: Well, I think I have to say that labeling the kind of teaching I described briefly as emotional violation is not justifiable as I did not present a complete “case study” for psychological determination.

I should restate that i appreciate your balanced view of acknowledging the emotion, but working to stay on task. That can make the student feel better about self. A teacher who would deliberately make a student cry has crossed a line – i’m glad if that is not what you said. The issue i’m seeing is two different approaches to controlling emotion:
1. learning how to deflect and ignore emotional impulses when needed
2. learning to understand emotions to be able to address them and still function.

Emotions are as important as our nervous systems. They provide information about ourselves and our environment. It is generally not healthy to label some as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They simply are. If a performer is on the urge of tears, it is similar to a performer having a muscle spasm. There are times it is necessary to function regardless, but not addressing the information will likely result in more recovery time.

I agree with you about maintaining the goal of music learning in the lesson. I have had students w/ emotional and anxiety problems. There isn’t a need to spend the lesson talking about them, but it has been necessary for me to make a concerted effort to make such students feel safe. Interestingly, this is more often true of my adult students. When they are so tied up in knots that they cannot play, it is important to diffuse the tension. The problem occurs when the concept of self-worth is entangled in their estimate of their skill or performance. Helping students know that you respect them first and foremost as a human being alleviates some tension. While it is more harmful for children to be exposed to a lack of
emotional support, adults also have the capacity to be harmed by it,
albeit they can have more tools at their disposal to deal w/ it. The
way the brain prioritizes information is the same for adults from what
i understand. It is for me.

I do apologize for any misrepresentation that was directed at your statement. I was attempting to address an issue that runs far deeper than one scenario. That is why i referred to the ‘performing arts’. I was attempting to respond in universal terms. What i was addressing does in fact occur in music, and plenty often. It is my understanding based on experience, research, and observation that violations do occur in our profession, and it begins at the conservatory very often. There is not the focus on professional ethics that there should be. Has there ever been a course in ethics in the performing arts? Probably not, while such courses are more engrained into other fields.

Saul wrote: This was not a sadistic or oppressive lesson. That being said, you will
encounter conductors and teachers who may seem or actually be sadistic
in a sense or reality. Especially if they were trained in Vienna. If
you are a professional, you have to be able to deal with it, and
perhaps the best way is to focus on the music and ignore everything
else. That takes training to be able to do. It may seem wrong, but you
can’t always do anything about it, and sometimes it may be the only way
a conductor or director can get any worthwhile results. The performers
may be lazy, uninvolved, shallow or cold. They have to do what it takes
to get the needed performance, that is their job. So don’t be so quick
to judge.

It was not my intent to judge them in isolation from context. I realize that the extreme behavior of some musicians in authority is directly related to a dynamic in which there is an underlying assumption that someone must play the dominating role. If the conductor does not, the performers will. That focus on social dominance dynamics over the task of music is the problem i am attempting to address. If a musician is lazy or not willing to perform the task, why should they be on the payroll? Why play the dominance game at all? The supply-demand aspect of our field should offer conductors the luxury of working w/ skilled and focused individuals. Wouldn’t it be healthier for authority to address such issues in performance reviews and individual sessions, like other work environments, rather than using public humiliation as the primary method for correcting problems? It’s much more difficult to diagnose the real issue on the fly and in a public setting.

Saul wrote: I don’t think conductors have been trained to feel powerless, I think that’s a misinterpretation, most likely.

The issue of powerlessness occurs when during
someone���s training they experience a continual reference to being in that
position. People who exert overwhelming force in authority operate w/ the assumption
that it is necessary to maintain order. What would happen if they backed off
from the extreme behavior? Possibly a loss of power? That is what I mean. It is
a similar scenario to the person who brags to compensate for a sense of inward
lack. Very often the individual is not aware at all of the underlying
motivations for their behavior.

[unknown-user]

I was just thinking it could be valuable to give some anonymous specifics from my own experience to demonstrate why i think these issues are important.

I did survive university grad programs in music through the doctorate. It was an emotionally fierce environment, which my major professor described to me as survival of the fittest. Fortunately i am intuitive enough, an INFJ w/ some life experience, that i was able to read people w/ some accuracy. I survived by keeping quiet, showing up, doing my best. I used personal time for crying, and had chronic, severe migraines that caused vomiting from the pain. One year i had 70 out of 365 days which involved excrusiating pain. It was common to see an adult student in tears after a professor raked them over the coals for something. I have a flutist friend finishing her doctorate who confided in me that she cannot walk through the front doors of the school w/o wanting to burst into tears. This is not emotional indulgence, it is a deep scar from her experiences there.

I haven’t done a great deal of performing w/ orchestras, but my first
experience is worth addressing here. I had my DMA, and was starting a
MM in harp. The conductor at a small college where i taught beginning
harp approached me to play in his community orchestra. The pay scale
for someone in their MM was $40 per session on other instruments, It
was $20 for amateurs. I realized they were on a tight budget and (for
better or worse) was willing to accomodate that. One of his first
questions was if i belonged to the union… no. We played the Moeran
Cello concerto from a manuscript. I worked w/ Liz Cifani to iron out
the impossible passages. I bought the CD and made a cassette of three
reps of each entrance. I borrowed the full score and wrote in every
interaction w/ other instruments. When it came time for the performance
i nailed every entrance – and could play it from memory. Throughout the experience he would make
annoyed and ugly faces at me when passing me, would deliberately turn
his back when i tried to ask him questions, etc. My paycheck for four
rehearsals and a performance? A grand total of $45 dollars. When i told him it cost me $25 to transport my harp (i had to borrow vehicles and would fill the tank as a thankyou) He got angry at me and wanted to know EXACTLY WHO was charging me $25. (Caps in reference to his emails to me) He had paid
me $15 per service – below the bottom of his payscale (he also paid for
half services if i wasn’t needed there the entire time). I resigned,
even though i was the only professional harpist in the area.

During my DMA program I didn’t understand how my theory professor arrived at my grade, so i talked to him during office hours. I had never approached a teacher before about a grading question – and haven’t since. He was so offended that i would question him that he railed into me about how my undergrad college was crap, etc. I started crying and was completely mortified to show him vulnerability. I asked for a few moments because i didn’t want to be seen leaving his office in that condition. I gave him a good teacher evaluation overall, with some reference to a question about grading. Overall i was highly respected for my shut up, show up, go home and throw up approach to the stress. Now that i know i can succeed at the top of such an environment, but am no longer fettered by it, there are important things to be said.

[Victor Ortega]

Julieanne, wow… I am so sorry for the horrible things you have gone through.

[Evangeline Williams]

I don’t recall crying in lessons, but certainly afterwards-the main reason was a combo of pain/frustration.

[unknown-user]

I have a couple of students who are prone to crying in their lessons – due to frustration.

[Trista Hill]

This is such an interesting thread.

[unknown-user]

I actually really value the contribution that Julianne has made to this debate, with all of her extensive knowledge of the psychology of teaching and learning. I think that so many of us that teach, are performers, and have not kept up with all the developmnets in eduction. And Julianne obviously has done extensive study in this area.

I’m sure that no one on this column advocates abuse of students, but we all have to acknowledge that it happens. It happens in all work places, but when it does happen in the performing arts it can be much harder to defend oneself against or to define.

[carl-swanson]

Rosemary- I think we all second your terrific post.

I think a distinction needs to be made between the abusive personality type of teacher, who is always going to be mean-spirited, domineering, rigid, controlling, etc., in virtually all situations and with virtually all students, and the occasional frustration that all teachers go through with students who are not getting anywhere, not listening, coming to lessons(consistantly) unprepared, etc.

I’m not sure what the solution is to the second situation, except to tell the student that, since you are not getting anywhere with them, and they are not learning anything from you, that you can no longer teach them but can recommend other teachers. It’s not worth teaching a student with whom you are always frustrated and angry.

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