Is the point about respect for instructors supposed to generalize to instructors of disciplines other than rationality?
If so, what do you make of Nadia Boulanger? Her accomplishments as a musician (or otherwise) are unimpressive relative to those of her students and peers, and yet she is regarded as one of the greatest music teachers ever, and is accorded correspondingly deep respect by music historians, composers, etc. Are they all wrong to respect her so much, or does it not apply to music or this case?
It seems to me that a better formula for determining respect would somehow reflect the respect given to her students which they say is significantly due to her influence as a teacher. For example, if Aaron Copland singles her out as an amazing teacher who profoundly affected his musical life & education, then she deserves some of the respect given to him. And likewise for her many other students who went on to do great things.
There seems to be an implicit underlying belief in this post that teaching is not (or should not be) an end in and of itself, or at least not a worthy one. I think Boulanger and teachers of her caliber show that that’s just not the case.
You’ve got things the wrong way round. It is the quality of the teacher’s students that tell us whether we wish to study under her. The teachers own achievements are a proxy which we resort to because we need to decide now, we cannot wait to see the longer term effects on last years students.
Another proxy is the success of the teacher in getting her students through examinations. This is a proxy because we don’t really want the certificate, we what the achievement that we think it heralds. We can assess the strength of this proxy checking whether success in the examinations really does herald success in real life.
I agree with the conclusion of the original post but find the argument for it defective. The key omission is that we don’t have a tradition of rationality dojo’s, so we do not yet have access to records of whose pupils went on to greatness. Nor do we have records that would validate an examination system.
Notice that the problems of timing are inherent. The first pupils, who went on to real world success, prove their teachers skill in an obvious way, but how did they choose their teacher? Presumably they took a risk, relying on a proxy that was available in time for the forced choice they faced.
Yes, precisely. The issue isn’t how we can become a better teacher, or find one to study under. The first question, that MUST be asked before all others, is: what does it mean to be a good teacher, and how can we define the relevant differences between teachers?
Once that question has an answer, we can begin searching for ways to make ourselves better match that defined meaning, or in signal traits in others that indicate they’re likely to match that definition well.
Concepts like “has students that will accomplish great things” aren’t useful for a variety of reasons. And once someone has developed a reputation for being a great teacher, they’re likely to attract students with a lot of potential (assuming there are working metrics for potential that are actually consulted, as opposed to rich people simply buying a place for their talentless children). The reputation alone would result in the teacher’s students doing better than most.
Evaluating the teacher requires that we have some way of determining, or at least guessing, what a student’s performance would have been without the teaching.
Isn’t teaching itself a skill? So what that she was a bad musician, she was obviously a first rate teacher (independent of the subject that she taught).
As long as we determine how much of their students’ success is attributable to the teacher, it seems reasonable. It seems we could make those sorts of judgments by:
comparing the success of the students of a teacher with the success of students of other teachers having equally talented students (e.g., compare Boulanger’s students’ success with that of students of contemporaneous Fontainebleau teachers); or
when successful people have typically studied with many different teachers, asking them how much of their success they attribute to the influence of their various teachers.
She gives a pattern of feedback that makes the students practice well? In the sense that she gives positive feedback she functions more as a motivator than as a teacher. Her skill is teaching, it’s only happenstance that she teaches music; has she taught shoe polishing or finger painting she would have produced the best shoe polishers and the most skilled finger painters.
Perhaps she doesn’t have many complex skills but has strong fundamentals (think Tim Duncan of the NBA Spurs). She might make her students practice the fundamentals which will allow them to do more complex work as they get older.
Finally, she might have knowledge more advanced than her skill. She might not have the hand eye coordination or the processing speed to play sophisticated music but she might know how it’s done. Imagine a 5 foot tall jewish guy that loves basketball. He’s not gonna make the NBA. It’s simply not gonna happen. However, he might understand the game better than many NBA players. Likewise he might be the best basketball coach in the world even though his athleticism (and hence his basketball playing skills) is less than that of NBA players. Likewise the teacher might have had a strong theoretical understanding but not have had the ability to put her theoretical knowledge into practice.
I was thinking of Nadia Boulanger, with Astor Paizzolla as the distinguished pupil. Piazzolla was trying to be a classical composer, but Boulanger said his classical music was lifeless, it was his tangos that had fire.
Perhaps the multi-talented young pupil faces perilous choices about where to focus his energies. Whether the older great teacher can warn effectively against the common errors probably depends on having a breadth of experience, perhaps having put in many years as a mediocre teacher, following up pupils and noticing how things worked out. The teacher’s own youthful errors might be uniformative even if severe.
Yeah, definitely surprising, but genius in any form is surprising.
There is an essay here by a former student that gives a sense of how she taught. And Philip Glass describes her as the decisive influence on him in this article, which also talks about her teaching a little.
It was Nadia’s manner rather than her materials that was unique. Her intensity, her emotional involvement with her students, her broad knowledge of music in general, and her ability to project her own passionate enthusiasm for each detail as well as its over-all form, were the qualities that made her extraordinary. Her electric personality brought a distinctiveness to everything that Nadia did. In this, lies what one reviewer called “the difference between good teaching and great teaching,” for in the latter “the student feels that the teaching enacts an extraordinarily intimate and demanding relation between the teacher and his subject, a relation such that the teacher’s sense of his subject is indistinguishable from his sense of life.”
Is the point about respect for instructors supposed to generalize to instructors of disciplines other than rationality?
If so, what do you make of Nadia Boulanger? Her accomplishments as a musician (or otherwise) are unimpressive relative to those of her students and peers, and yet she is regarded as one of the greatest music teachers ever, and is accorded correspondingly deep respect by music historians, composers, etc. Are they all wrong to respect her so much, or does it not apply to music or this case?
It seems to me that a better formula for determining respect would somehow reflect the respect given to her students which they say is significantly due to her influence as a teacher. For example, if Aaron Copland singles her out as an amazing teacher who profoundly affected his musical life & education, then she deserves some of the respect given to him. And likewise for her many other students who went on to do great things.
There seems to be an implicit underlying belief in this post that teaching is not (or should not be) an end in and of itself, or at least not a worthy one. I think Boulanger and teachers of her caliber show that that’s just not the case.
I was thinking about that—a clause for respecting teachers with great students, should they have them. It still gives people the right incentives.
You’ve got things the wrong way round. It is the quality of the teacher’s students that tell us whether we wish to study under her. The teachers own achievements are a proxy which we resort to because we need to decide now, we cannot wait to see the longer term effects on last years students.
Another proxy is the success of the teacher in getting her students through examinations. This is a proxy because we don’t really want the certificate, we what the achievement that we think it heralds. We can assess the strength of this proxy checking whether success in the examinations really does herald success in real life.
I agree with the conclusion of the original post but find the argument for it defective. The key omission is that we don’t have a tradition of rationality dojo’s, so we do not yet have access to records of whose pupils went on to greatness. Nor do we have records that would validate an examination system.
Notice that the problems of timing are inherent. The first pupils, who went on to real world success, prove their teachers skill in an obvious way, but how did they choose their teacher? Presumably they took a risk, relying on a proxy that was available in time for the forced choice they faced.
Yes, precisely. The issue isn’t how we can become a better teacher, or find one to study under. The first question, that MUST be asked before all others, is: what does it mean to be a good teacher, and how can we define the relevant differences between teachers?
Once that question has an answer, we can begin searching for ways to make ourselves better match that defined meaning, or in signal traits in others that indicate they’re likely to match that definition well.
Concepts like “has students that will accomplish great things” aren’t useful for a variety of reasons. And once someone has developed a reputation for being a great teacher, they’re likely to attract students with a lot of potential (assuming there are working metrics for potential that are actually consulted, as opposed to rich people simply buying a place for their talentless children). The reputation alone would result in the teacher’s students doing better than most.
Evaluating the teacher requires that we have some way of determining, or at least guessing, what a student’s performance would have been without the teaching.
Isn’t teaching itself a skill? So what that she was a bad musician, she was obviously a first rate teacher (independent of the subject that she taught).
As long as we determine how much of their students’ success is attributable to the teacher, it seems reasonable. It seems we could make those sorts of judgments by:
comparing the success of the students of a teacher with the success of students of other teachers having equally talented students (e.g., compare Boulanger’s students’ success with that of students of contemporaneous Fontainebleau teachers); or
when successful people have typically studied with many different teachers, asking them how much of their success they attribute to the influence of their various teachers.
I do find cases like this surprising, though. What was it that she was able to teach to her students that she could not put to use herself?
She gives a pattern of feedback that makes the students practice well? In the sense that she gives positive feedback she functions more as a motivator than as a teacher. Her skill is teaching, it’s only happenstance that she teaches music; has she taught shoe polishing or finger painting she would have produced the best shoe polishers and the most skilled finger painters.
Perhaps she doesn’t have many complex skills but has strong fundamentals (think Tim Duncan of the NBA Spurs). She might make her students practice the fundamentals which will allow them to do more complex work as they get older.
Finally, she might have knowledge more advanced than her skill. She might not have the hand eye coordination or the processing speed to play sophisticated music but she might know how it’s done. Imagine a 5 foot tall jewish guy that loves basketball. He’s not gonna make the NBA. It’s simply not gonna happen. However, he might understand the game better than many NBA players. Likewise he might be the best basketball coach in the world even though his athleticism (and hence his basketball playing skills) is less than that of NBA players. Likewise the teacher might have had a strong theoretical understanding but not have had the ability to put her theoretical knowledge into practice.
The first thing that comes to mind is maybe she’s able to teach students how to practice more in their youth than she did.
That’d work at least.
I was thinking of Nadia Boulanger, with Astor Paizzolla as the distinguished pupil. Piazzolla was trying to be a classical composer, but Boulanger said his classical music was lifeless, it was his tangos that had fire.
Perhaps the multi-talented young pupil faces perilous choices about where to focus his energies. Whether the older great teacher can warn effectively against the common errors probably depends on having a breadth of experience, perhaps having put in many years as a mediocre teacher, following up pupils and noticing how things worked out. The teacher’s own youthful errors might be uniformative even if severe.
Yeah, definitely surprising, but genius in any form is surprising.
There is an essay here by a former student that gives a sense of how she taught. And Philip Glass describes her as the decisive influence on him in this article, which also talks about her teaching a little.
Here’s an interesting passage from Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music:
It was Nadia’s manner rather than her materials that was unique. Her intensity, her emotional involvement with her students, her broad knowledge of music in general, and her ability to project her own passionate enthusiasm for each detail as well as its over-all form, were the qualities that made her extraordinary. Her electric personality brought a distinctiveness to everything that Nadia did. In this, lies what one reviewer called “the difference between good teaching and great teaching,” for in the latter “the student feels that the teaching enacts an extraordinarily intimate and demanding relation between the teacher and his subject, a relation such that the teacher’s sense of his subject is indistinguishable from his sense of life.”