Not all experts are expert teachers

If my beans are paler and smaller than this harvest, I could blame my bean plants, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything. (Image by Couleur)

Amateur guitarists often get stuck on strumming.

They can teach themselves the basic chords, but they end up with a tense, hooked wrist that yields an equally tense, unpleasant sound.

This is the kind of thing that people chalk up to lack of talent—and it is. The aspiring musician just doesn’t have the natural ability to strum. However, all that means is that the player wasn’t able to figure it out by herself. The problem is easily solved:

1) Instead of attempting to make the stroke vertical, directly down to the floor and up to the ceiling, the player should strum in an arc (out and down);

2) The player should practice in front of a mirror. Having seen so many people play guitar, she will quickly notice that her strum looks wrong and make the necessary adjustments.

It doesn’t require much talent to implement this solution. It does require a willingness to seek support, an openness to feedback, and the trust to try things in a different way—plus the commitment to repeating the procedure until the new approach is established. I would argue that these practices are even more important than talent. However, without a teacher who can spot the problem and address it, a student’s readiness won’t amount to much.

Unfortunately, not all experts in a field are expert teachers. Inexperienced teachers often misread a student’s weak technique as willful disregard of their instruction. They assume that a student who is performing poorly, without apparent talent, is hopeless and intractable. They don’t know, for example, that they can send the flailing strummer to the mirror to correct her technique. They don’t realize that unpleasant tone, lack of musicality, and wrong notes are all things that can be fixed, even from a singer.

A teacher’s role is not simply to explain concepts or tell someone what to do next. They have to delve into the nuances of a performance to help the student improve. Some students can do most of this on their own, and then all the teacher has to do is make a few tweaks and refinements. But following the lead of a talented student is only part of the job. They also have to guide the student who has more potential than talent. They have to have strategies and tactics to solve common problems. Showing someone how to do something a couple of times is not enough. If the student doesn’t get it, that doesn’t mean they’re being stubborn or not paying attention. The teacher has to figure out another way.

We’re not born knowing how to do everything, but we can learn. It’s ironic that students who lack natural ability so often feel that there is something wrong with them. Shouldn’t we expect to lack natural ability when we’re learning something new? And yet, so many of us carry vivid memories of moments in which we disappointed or exasperated a teacher we sought to please.

The best teachers expect struggles and obstacles in the learning process and are prepared with solutions for addressing them. The best students understand that a teacher’s inability or unwillingness to do this is not the student’s fault.

When we realize that not all of our teachers were experts, we might allow ourselves to rewrite a past in which we believed we were unintelligent, untalented, or unworthy. We might discover a bit of compassion for ourselves, and perhaps even for our teachers, too.