The Efficient Music Teacher (The Musician: Vol. 21, No. 1)

Over the years, I have accumulated articles from magazines like The Musician. I believe we have much to learn, and unlearn, from the past. It is thought-provoking when looking at our view of specific topics versus the view of the masters and master teachers of the past. This particular article on being an efficient music teacher was written by the musician, composer, lecturer, writer, and editor, Thomas Tapper. This is the fifth article in this series and I am still searching for the first four and the ones that follow.

The Efficient MUSIC Teacher:
Part V – The Efficient Lesson Hour

There are more factors in the lesson hour than we ordinarily consider. And we ordinarily fail to consider them because, like most other things in daily life, we take them for granted. Some of these factors are minor and individual; others are major and common to every lesson period. I asked a teacher distinguished in the highest degree for skill in her calling, what these essential major factors are. Here is her reply:

1. Punctuality.
2. Concentration during the lesson period.
3. Definite assignment.
4. Definite demand based upon the assignment.

“I regard the definite assignment and the definite demand to embrace everything,” she said, ‘‘but I have included the first and second items so as to be certain they shall not be overlooked.”

The Definite Assignment (Given By The Music Teacher)

Nothing is efficient that is not explicit even to its details. If anything in the process of education should be explicit, it is the list of items which enters into the lesson assignment, every one of which should be so well understood by the pupil that he can go to work intelligently and discover for himself what the teacher knows he must discover.

On the part of the teacher a definite lesson assignment will consist of a clear and precise statement of everything to finish, item by item, and in order.

It should also include, to the extent that judgment dictates, the method or system by which each item of assignment may best be performed.

A distinguished theory teacher, explaining how rapidly he was compelled to work with his class, said that he regretted his inability to discuss with his students the best way to go about working and perfecting the lessons which he assigned. He recognized that a lesson assignment must be definite as to the factors requiring the pupils’ attention. And he also recognized that the best way to go to work, the straightforward order of procedure which shall insure direct and satisfactory results from a minimum of work is quite as desirable and necessary an accomplishment as the musical phase of the work itself is. But having no time in the rush of the lesson period, he has to let this go by and trust that the pupils’ sense and experience will, like love, “find a way.”

Now, taking pupils, by and large, we must reckon with some degree of inertia in them as in ourselves, and we must also reckon upon the tendency to inhibit initiative.

What percentage of pupils, left to their own resources to find the best way to work, ever find it I do not know; but doubtless the number is infinitely smaller than it would be if we could devise a means for including it (a study of the best way) in our assignment.

Perhaps, then, we may say that:

1. Some teachers recognize that a part of the lesson assignment should be devoted to methods of procedure.
2. A few give it their exact attention.
3. Most give it none.
4. Consequently, most pupils, like Topsy*, just grow up.

State the lesson factors. No doubt should exist between teacher and pupil as to the assignment. Hence,

1. Make the assignment.
2. See that the pupil writes down the assignment.
3. The pupil works on the assignment and brings it back to the teacher.
4. The teacher demands the assignment.

So much for the teacher.

What about the pupil’s part?

If it is desirable that the pupil shall have from the teacher an itemized assignment list, he must be willing and even anxious to be able to go out of the room carrying not the slightest shadow of misunderstanding as to what he is to do. His motto must be:

Stop,  Look, Listen, and Ask Questions

When the pupil goes home knowing exactly what he is to do, he will go home happy. But the teacher may not have the time to tell him how best to go about his study. And frankly, it does not always require a supreme order of intelligence on the part of the pupil to investigate the matter for himself with some degree of success.

Let us assume that the pupil takes a theory lesson today due a week hence. Before he leaves the teacher he asks himself or the music teacher.

1. What must I bring next time as finished work?
2. How many items?
3. Is the assignment clear enough for me to go about it intelligently?

Then he goes home and takes account of stock.

1. Six examples, free counterpoint.
2. Four modulations worked out, four voices, keys clearly specified.
3. Analysis of Beethoven sonata, Op. 7, first movement.
4. Study of chapters so and so in Form book.

Any pupil who can specify his work in such items certainly knows WHAT he has to do.

Does he know HOW he should go about doing it?

(Executing The Definite Assignment)

The [cook], who, setting out to make a cake, has to stop in the midst of things to borrow a cup of sugar over the back fence (i.e. from a neighbor) is not a type of the highest efficiency. We would not praise her over much if we discovered that she has no definite place for cooking utensils. Sometimes she gathers them in the parlor and against that she cannot find them at all. And we should not expect her to go about baking the cake without the ingredients in hand. Or to begin doing it, say, after 10.00 P. M. All of which means that the cook and the pupil must first be provided with :

1. An assignment and a recipe.
2. The necessary equipment.
3. A place favorably adapted in which to make the cake, or the lesson.
4. The proper time to do the work.

Bad home managers never keep up [their] equipment. Hence the sugar over the back fence. Not a few students and teachers are the same—they are under-equipped. Properly equipped to perform the theory lesson assignment above the pupil needs all the textbooks involved, pencils, paper, erasers, reference material and the like. Let him once in his life sit down and count the items of this equipment. Then let him repeat the motto of the Boy Scouts “Be Prepared.” From that day on he will increase in wisdom.

To have all work equipment ready at home in a good place and at a predetermined time requires thinking about these things as Preparation. As a teacher assigns the lesson matter to the pupil, so the pupil assigns to himself equipment, time, place, and purpose.

It is easy to understand that the youth who burns (or who hopes to burn) with the fire of genius should feel above these systematic notions. No efficiency lecturer has ever escaped being asked if efficiency is not unnecessary for the genius. The answer is, “No.” Every genius the world has ever seen has gradually built his own scheme of efficient action. Nonetheless, it is efficient because it is his own.

All the truth of the matter is that we succeed in proportion as we learn to overcome conditions, and, conversely, we fail in proportion that we permit conditions to overcome us.

When the pupil needs an eraser on the task before him he is 100 per cent efficient in equipment if it be actually at hand. If it be upstairs in a pocket of his other coat, he is 100 percent efficient in possession, but zero in preparation.

To fix the time for study and the place for study, to know exactly what the music teacher assignments call for, and to have everything at hand with which to do the task constitutes the best way for accomplishing any particular task. And there is no other way. It appears simple and childish to specify the items, but the youth who cannot so run his study period is infinitely more simple and childish. Which no doubt has his feelings.

But what are feelings for?

(This topic will continue in the February issue [I am still looking for this continuation of this article about being an effective music teacher to add to my library!])

* This is a reference to the character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “[G]rowed like Topsy” became a humorous way of describing how something developed without any particular intention or plan.

Check out some other posts:

• Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar Begins With The Thumb
• Organizing Practice As You Learn To Play Guitar
• From Sketch Of A New Esthetic Of Music
• The Efficient Music Teacher (The Musician: Vol. 21, No. 1)

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Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.