When I was reading the give and take between Ed Sutton and Ron Nossaman on the subject of putting the archives into a more comprehensible(Wikipedia/Pianopedia) type format something began itching around in my brain that I remembered reading on the CAUT list last fall during the discussions of a CAUT designation. IMHO Israel Stein's letter on how people learn or don't learn and why was rather illuminating and apropos to this discussion. I found and copied it here for those who care to avail themselves At 11:00 AM 11/11/2007, Ron Nossaman wrote: "Yes, they're the very people who say this is how it's done because this is how I was taught, and will resist further education to their dieing breath". Hmmm... Sounds very much like the guy who figured out the best way to "improve" a Steinway sostenuto system and refuses to hear any reasonable objection from those who have to work with those things every day. Yeah those people who learned in school to weigh various options and fit the solution to the problem just don't come anywhere near that level of genius. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... They were too often taught incompetence, and have practiced it with dedication and diligence ever since. Plenty of these people have educational certification of some sort or another, which is apparently no dependable indicator of capability in practice. Realistically, I don't think people can be taught anything. They can be exposed to information, and either learn or not, as they are either capable or willing. The information can come from a structured "educational" environment, or through the curiosity and personal research efforts of the student. Capability is the easy part (we can all learn), it's the willingness that's tough. Those unable or unwilling to learn can still be trained, or programmed, to do fairly complex tasks without understanding what they're actually doing. I expect we all fit this category in some instances. The fact is that anyone incapable of learning without being taught is doomed to run their programming forever because they'll never overcome their education - or rather someone else's education that was installed in them. Also, credential and qualification are not synonymous and never were. And anyone incapable of receiving instruction and seeing the value in others' knowledge is doomed to run their own programming that they have installed in themselves through their often erroneous conclusions. As for example the rather ignorant description of the educational process we find above. In my close to thirty years experience in first formally learning and then occasionally teaching piano technology I have not seen anyone trying to "install" learning in someone else. You expose people to knowledge. You guide them when they go astray. You show them possibilities. If anyone has ever been to any of the classes that I organize you will see that students are given the opportunity to discover what there is to be learned and provided answers to their questions as they arise - from a variety of instructors, each with a different perspective. hey learn with their eyes and hands - not with their ears. And with the available guidance, they manage to figure out things that eluded them for years - you can see the light go on... Your description of the educational process above, Ron, is typical of the myopia of many of the self-taught who never see anything but the inside of their own brain. Fortunately for us all, many of the self-taught understand the value of knowledge they can receive from other and seek it at every opportunity - rejecting what does not work for them and assimilating the rest best they can. And yes, sometimes they too get it wrong. Don't get me started about the value of follow-up... Information doesn't just spring out of nowhere. Someone somewhere must have an original thought or observation to start a learning process that there is no one to teach at the first generation. So the notion that someone can't learn without being taught is indeed nonsense. It has to start somewhere. And I wonder how many people spend months and years reinventing the wheel to learn the basics of the piano craft and screwing up countless clients' pianos in the process (thereby contributing to the low esteem and the low pay that this thread started out about) when they could learn the same in maybe a year's time - given some competent instruction - or a couple years' apprenticeship, and then go on to develop a much higher level of skill and expertise from a firm foundation. Perhaps on to some innovations of their own. I wonder how far David Stanwood would have gotten with his system if he would have spent all that time and energy trying to teach himself the basics of how to tune and regulate pianos - instead of learning it all from Bill Garlick in about 7 months (that's about how long it should take for a person of normal intelligence willing to put in some time - it ain't rocket science). It still seem to me that the widest variety of methods and approaches I was exposed to - without being told which is the best - was in my time at the North Bennet Street School. From a variety of teachers - with diametrically opposed approaches. Some of them I still use. Some I have rejected as inappropriate for the circumstances in which I find myself working. Some don't fit the way my mind, eyes or hands work. That is the value of a good formal education - exposure to a variety of knowledge, in an atmosphere of feedback, discussion and analysis - leading to understanding rather than just "rote training". Most (not all) of the stuff I hear and read from some of these "self taught" guys (and Mr. N is one of the worst in that regard) suffers precisely from this lack of varied perspective. They see things from one pair of eyes - their own. Never engaging in the give-and-take that a true student/teacher relationship is based on, from which both learn. Perhaps that's why some of these folks have such a jaundiced view of the educational establishment - they seem to universalize their own miserable experience which may have been caused in part by their own unwillingness to perhaps listen to someone else's voice but their own... Israel Stein Mike -- Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. Vince Lombardi Michael Magness Magness Piano Service 608-786-4404 www.IFixPianos.com <http://www.ifixpianos.com/> email mike at ifixpianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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