Music teachers, Maps and Dragons

by Minim ^Pro @ 2010-12-20
Teachers are probably a good thing overall. As somebody who makes part of his income from teaching, I realise that's probably what you'd expect me to say. Nevertheless, I still feel the need to put that word probably in the sentence.

When potential new students come to see me for the first time, I tell them that I don't believe its possible to 'teach' music. When we think about teaching, we tend to think of the teacher as the omniscient authority and the student as an empty vessel. At the beginning of the process, the teacher has all the knowledge and the student has none. Gradually the teacher imparts that knowledge to the student until the student becomes an authority in his own right.

Music just doesn't work like that. I tell my students that studying music is like going on a journey and a teacher can only act as a guide. He can draw you a map of the terrain, he can show you some shortcuts to save you taking the long way round, he can sometimes drag you out of the quicksand when you've taken the wrong path. The path of musical development is never a straight one and is different for everybody. A good teacher can act as guide and counsel, but ultimately the student has to make the journey on his own.

If that all sounds a bit zen, consider this also: teachers can only teach you how to do what has already been done. They can only show you how to do what they know how to do, they can only give you the knowledge that they have. This means that a teacher can only really take you so far. Innovators and game-changers did not learn how to be innovators and game-changers from teachers - how could they?

You can ask a teacher to act as guide on your musical journey but there is always the possibility that one day you will come to a place where the teacher hasn't been before. At this point you have two choices - you can either walk forward on your own or you can turn around and go somewhere else that your teacher does have a map for. Sure, you could try and find a new teacher who has a map of the new terrain, but at some point you will come to the end of their map and the two basic choices will remain.

And it's not just teachers. Audiences, other musicians, critics - all these people have their own maps and their own points at which those maps stop. As musicians, the biggest choice we will ever make is choosing to travel around the known world or becoming explorers. It's not an easy choice because the known world is truly full of wonders and many of them are best experienced in person.

Then again, the people they raise statues to are the ones who set sail straight for the bit on the map marked 'here be dragons'.

From: http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2010/12/20/music-teachers-maps-and-dragons-10226870/