> If a manufacturer doesn’t care how their pianos are prepared once > they ship them out, there won’t be any changes at the dealer’s end. Manufacturers do care, but their options and resources are limited. Same goes for dealers. I think we need to look closer to home, i.e., local PTG chapters. Conventions and regional seminars are great, but they will only reach a limited number of technicians. Local education is the neglected element in raising the education bar. I would like to see a curriculum of 12 monthly lessons, required to be taught by every chapter on a regular rotation and separate from regular meeting times. The standardized curriculum would cover all the elements of the PTG exam, at the minimum. Secondly I'd like to see a national campaign to highlight regulation as a part of regular piano service. We tell our customers to tune at least once a year. We need to also promote a regulation within the first 5 years of a piano's lifetime. People know that equipment needs to be maintained, so the promotion of regulation wouldn't be foreign. It would be nice if manufacturers and dealers would pick up the tab for piano prep before the piano goes out the door, but I can't see it happening. And expecting it would just give technicians more reason to bash the builders and retailers. It's the customers and the service technicians who need to be responsible once the piano is in the home. Finally we need to be patient. Concert technician level competency comes with good training, experience, and good mentors. If every piano owner not only had the piano tuned once a year, but regulated at least once in the piano's lifetime, there would be lots of work for everyone, and even beginners would get the experience they need to improve their skill level. One of the main aspects of the PTG exams in not only to test competency, but also to instill a quest for continuing education as a part of a community of professionals. Richard West PS I agree that this should be a PTG-L thread. Oh, well, if only we lived in a perfect world, universal health care included. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091124/f9967034/attachment-0001.htm>
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