Gettin' Tough! Or Not.
The social media circle in which I travel has been a-twitter this weekend over Joanne Lipman's article, Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results. That circle includes a number of music teachers--my compadres--who were cheering Lipman on, as she praised her old-school, Ukranian-immigrant orchestra teacher, Mr. K., and his tyrannical teaching techniques, like calling students idiots, making them "rehearse until our fingers almost bled," and correcting "our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil."
What a guy, huh? Lipman says: "Today, he'd be fired." She then goes on to make eight suggestions about how to fix education (you knew that was coming). The article is excerpted from her book, Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations. Cue the orchestra for a quick chorus of "What's the matter with kids--and, presumably, their spineless teachers--today?"
I'm well acquainted with the blood and thunder school of band and orchestra directing. I've experienced it as student, colleague and observer. And for a time, as a novice music teacher, it was pretty much what I aspired to be: Uncompromising, demanding, a little intimidating. Not