[CAUT] Uniform Formal Education

[Cy Shuster]

At North Bennet Street School, we had three instructors rotate through the 
first-year class.  This allowed us to learn a variety of techniques to do 
the same job: key leveling with the stack off, or with it on, using split 
punchings from the bottom, and so on.  We also got to hear explanations of 
concepts from different people.  And yet the goals we were set to were the 
same and well-established, pretty much in line with the RPT exams.

There were twice as many practice pianos as students, and we rotated through 
them, tuning every day on spinets, consoles, studios, uprights, small and 
large grands.  We sure didn't do four a day; we had to have class time! :-) 
But when we got a solid tuning in under three hours (c'mon, remember your 
first tuning?), we could go out to Boston U., Harvard, and the local 
Steinway dealer, to get a larger variety of experience.  It was quite an 
experience to deal with the huge amount of wear on rehearsal room pianos (as 
well as the random assortment of items dropped inside them)!  We tuned those 
pianos for free, and it was a good partnership between the universities and 
NBSS.  We both benefited.

--Cy--

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Root" <carldroot at comcast.net>
To: "College and University Technicians" <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 6:45 AM
Subject: [CAUT] Uniform Formal Education


> Doing four a day teaches speed first, assuming that accuracy  will come 
> with daily practice, worked for me, but can you set up a  formal teaching 
> environment that provides that kind of time and  number of pianos for all 
> students?
>
> We've all been to classes where the instructor constantly tells us  that 
> "this technique works for me."  Are we hoping to get every  technician to 
> conform to one way of doing things, or is there a way  to design this 
> curriculum that allows each of us to try ten ways to  approach a given 
> task before we find the one that works best for us?   The latter seems 
> grossly inefficient, but most of us learned that  way, I suspect, and 
> wouldn't have wanted it to be any different.   After all, this profession 
> seems to attract a lot of independent lone  wolves.
>
> Carl D. Root, RPT
>
> contract CAUT at a 35-piano school.
>