[TANGO-L] mediocre teachers

[H Dickinson <hyladlmp @YAHOO.COM>]

Roberto asks why are there teachers teaching beginners
to walk in certain ways that he finds difficult and
unhelpful?  And why teach the dreaded 8 count basic?

Well, one reason is that an excellent teacher will
have formed a coherent philosophy of teaching dance,
and will use various teaching tools and elements that
suit that philosophy, and then make them work.  A
mediocre teacher can do ok with someone else's
coherent philosophy and make many parts of it work,
and will drop the bits that they can't make work.  A
bad teacher will often take someone else's coherent
philosophy, make it utterly incoherent, keep the worst
parts of it, and mangle them.  I have seen excellent
teachers teach ideas and methods that sound and feel
terribly wrong to me, yet they make it work and their
students somehow end up very good.  However, if one of
those students goes on to become a bad or mediocre
teacher, their students (ie., the second
generation)will suffer dreadfully.

I have taken classes in which the 8-count-step-thingy
(which we all so dread) was used as a valuable and
helpful teaching tool.  In such cases it is usually
referred to as a "salida" and explained that it is
valuable because it sort of encapsulates the basic
"irregular grammar" of tango--cross foot system,
entering and leaving the cross, shifting weight both
with and without your partner; it can be used as a
very nice intro to ochos, as well.  I have taken
classes (and followed victims of such classes) where
it was taught as the "basic", almost the be-all and
end-all of tango.  The difference is not so much what
was taught, as how it was taught, what thought went
into the teaching and philosophy behind the teaching,
and so on.

The bad and mediocre are always with us.  The sad
truth of the matter is that most people in the world
are, by definition, average.  This alas is true for
teachers as well.  And, there are many wonderful
professional dancers who are amazingly talented as
performers and social dancers, who have no talent
whatsover for teaching.  In order to follow their
vocation, their love, which is to dance, they must
make money by teaching.  So they teach--badly.  All
that we can really do is to gently reach out to
beginners and let them know that there are
alternatives, and that the learning process is
eventually worth following through.  If/when they
don't listen, we hope they survive, and let it go.

I have seen "crusades" against bad teaching, bad
dancing, poor floor craft etc come and go.  They
create lots of anger and self-righteousness, maybe
enlighten some people, maybe alienate some others, and
don't have much overall effect.  What does have an
effect is quiet leading by example, being open about
what works, the sort of ongoing non-glamorous daily
prescence that creates slow steady changes.  AT least,
I think it does, maybe I am being optimistic.

Hyla



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Send "Where can I Tango in <city>?" requests to Tango-A rather than to
Tango-L, since you can indicate the region. To subscribe to Tango-A,
send "subscribe Tango-A Firstname Lastname" to LISTSERV  @MITVMA.MIT.EDU.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------