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Yep. This is why it's so important to involve one's students in auditions, exams, or festivals where they're evaluated by a third party.

It's also important to remember this bit of advice I got from one of my professors in college:

Do not measure yourself by your worst students. They will find a way to fail despite a teacher's best efforts. Do not measure yourself by your best students. They will find a way to succeed despite a teacher's worst efforts. Measure yourself by the middle, because those are the ones for whom a teacher makes the most difference.

The trick is that transfer students can fall into any of those categories, and it's often difficult to tell which of those categories a student is in until you've worked with them a bit. Interviewing can help. Knowing something about the previous teacher can help. But there are no guarantees.

It boils down to that saying - everyone's crazy except you and me, and I'm not so sure about you.

There must be many subcategories of bad teachers.

One might not result in the student learning much of anything.

But another may be very good at imparting skills to the student, only the skills are incorrect or injurious. These hardworking and well-intentioned teachers learned the wrong or obsolete methods from their teachers, and do an unfortunately good job in passing them on.

While I agree with most of what your professor said, this part just doesn't ring true. When things aren't being taught (correctly, or at all), the student is not going magically know how to do things.

By "succeed," I want students to realize their full musical potential. A bad teacher won't be able to do that.

So who determines what is correct?

To AZN Piano:

What qualities do you pocess that makes you a superior teacher?

Do you think that maybe these transfer students have bad habits because they just don't want to do piano and are forced by thier parents? It's not always bad teaching. There are poor students as well.

AZNPiano isn't online at the moment but I'll take a stab at answering...

First of all I do not understand what you mean with the word "pocess". Process perhaps? but it doesn't make much sense either.

In any case I don't think AZN is saying that he's a superior teacher (and knowing him personally I know that he doesn't brag), but that he can see so many missing things and knowledge to the transfer students that it's something that seems to be attributed to bad teaching.

Thing is this: If you check with a student and he doesn't seem to have a clue on what on earth is an interval (for example), but has had a few years of lesson, then something's amiss. If you mention sight reading and offer a level 1 work, that the student has no clue what to do with then there's obviously a problem that isn't a lack of studying, but a lack of offering the chance to the student to simply know about it...

If this makes any sense...

possess not pocess, pretty easy to figure out....just a spelling error.

Sorry... I'm the last to talk about tpyos... Didn't think of that!

I know that already. Don't forget about bad parents, too!

Ha! Remember the last time somebody brought that up? Apparently some teachers don't teach intervals.

What DO they teach then??

I addressed this, but it might have gotten lost in a too long post


* (referring to one story told in this thread)

Finger numbers?

Actually, students can get quite far without learning intervals. They can just learn the letter names and press down the correct keys. Obviously, the concept of M3 vs. m3 eludes them, and they won't gain an appreciation for why the melody sounds good, or why certain passages sound "ugly" on purpose.

Wow. I knew there were a lot of ignorant teachers, but are they really THIS ignorant? You've seen people that teach this way?

To answer your questions:
What incentive they get for being better than average? Answer is nothing but a "good job" from me, a well-rounded education in piano, a chance of not to hate piano in future (remember Nikolas sister in law who played Rach 2 and never touch piano again? I am trying to produce students who is opposite of that). I educate parents that CM is just a tool, it is "not everything" about piano education.

I am totally agree with you that the program doesn't foster excellence, but it promotes passing only. However, it is not my decision to pull any of my students out from the test just because I think so. I always educate the parents of what is my most honest opinions, and let them decide themselves.

So, no, they are not getting any tangible incentive to be better than average, mostly I educate them to value what is intangible because that is something that no one can grab away from them once they master a certain concepts.

I really like your question. This is probably the best question asked in this thread.

I do not have the "correct" answer to your question, but I can offer my opinion:

What is the best meal plan?
--Paleo
--Clean eating
--Mediterranean
--Low fat
--Low carb
--Vegetarian
--Vegan
--Raw Food
--Gluten Free
etc......

Each of those meal plan sounds okay and standard to me. Problem is, would I be happy to be only vegetarian? Is my kitchen equip to cook only raw food? Can I get clean meat from my local grocery store if I opt for "clean eating"? All these has to come into factors. Sometimes I think a good teacher should have the recipe for all of these plans ready, present it to parents, have them choose from it and teach accordingly. A good teacher also should know the pros and cons of each plan and present it to parents without bias and have them decide themselves.

Those are the realities, PP. This is why I was upset when you were suggesting that one should not bother teaching such students, because students taught this way will assume they have been learning properly, and won't understand why they are having problems with what the new teacher is giving them. It is not fair and it should not happen. That is why AZN started this thread.

I have an answer to your metaphorical question:

The counterpart to a teacher in your metaphor would be a doctor, nutritionist, or dietitian. I would expect this person to understand how the human body works, how food works (nutrition), and I would expect this person to check my health and history and then apply that knowledge to my needs.

I can see a self-medicating individual grabbing a packaged diet at random, because he is an amateur taking stabs in the dark. But I would not expect a nutritionist to do so.

In the same way, a good teacher will have knowledge of what skills and knowledge are needed in order to play the piano, and will be observing her student while guiding and using that knowledge. Even if that teacher ascribes to a program, hopefully underneath it all, the teacher is using that knowledge as her actual guidelines for guiding the student.

I made the same point and was ignored...