Anti-Empirical Education

[LovePrevails]

[jpahmad]

Hey Antony,

 

  I'd like to hear about some of the techniques you use to encourage/motivate your piano students to accomplish things if they become resistant to the effort. 

[LovePrevails]

asking them if they are interested in the music and if they would prefer to play something else

 

asking them if they are finding it too challenging - sometimes they need to be told if they just stick at it a little longer I'm sure they'll get it

or just try it for 5 minutes and if you still think it's too hard we can move onto something else I won't force you

 

teach them things by ear if they are reading music and not progressing, or vice versa to find out their learning style

 

it really depends on the student. Can you link to the video you made me again?

[shirgall]

I had this problem: My daughter was interested in learning the piano. I got her lessons, set up a decent piano for them to use (with headphones). As soon as it got difficult she gave up.

 

I wonder about the sense of investment. When I used to teach Boy Scouts how to shoot we used to do a rifle merit badge camp for free and we'd have 80% no shows. When we charged $5 it dropped to 20%. Even so, a lot of people that showed up were not invested. They wanted the patch, not the skill.

 

It has been a problem for me to figure out how to get my daughter, and those boy scouts, invested in learning. I try to explain what learning those skills can accomplish, and how good one can feel about oneself when one does accomplish things. I'm not a very good salesman I guess.

[LovePrevails]

that does sound tough, did you get to really udnerstand why your daughter didn't want to learn? was it just because it was too hard?

[shirgall]

I think it was learning curve, as it got very hard to make progress, despite encouragement. She also struggles with Algebra.