[CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?

[David Love]

Sorry Israel, but I think your comments are very out of line with the kind
of professionalism you so often espouse.  

While I can't and won't speak for Ron, I took his meaning to be very simply
that education doesn't necessarily confer expertise and neither does lack of
formal education mean a lack of expertise.  The world is full of individuals
who hide behind degrees or "factory training" and who, much as you may not
like to admit, consider their training to be the last word.  Not every
mentor knows what he or she is talking about and the trade is replete with
certain mythologies often perpetuated by the very individuals who are
supposed to know better and if not, at least be willing to ask the
questions.  Not everyone has a Bill Garlick to rely on for training.
Similarly, there are many in the trade who lack formal training and are
highly skilled and innovative individuals.  While I may look at the source
of the degrees hanging on the wall in my doctors office, it's probably more
important to know if he graduated first or last in his class.   

While we can all benefit from education and training in terms of the number
of dead ends we may go down or the speed with which we learn our craft,
there is neither a guarantee that education and training will create
competence or, more to the point, lack of it suggests that we lack
competence.  

I have very little formal training in Piano Technology and what I do have
certainly didn't get me to where I am in the field today.  Most of what I
learned I learned on my own, reading articles, seeking advice and input from
others with greater expertise than I had, to a lesser extent attending
classes, conventions and conferences, experimenting, doing and redoing.  In
all honesty it may have been a slower process than attending, say, the North
Bennett School to gain my foundation.  But continuing self-education in any
field is necessary.  It is especially so in ours where formal avenues are
not as available.  I certainly don't feel any great lack in my understanding
or expertise in most areas of piano technology for having the gone the route
that I did.  The number of people who call me for advice on a variety of
subjects and the interest people have in the presentations I have given
would suggest that others feel the same way. 

While Ron certainly has strong opinions about things, so do I, and so do
you, for that matter.  You certainly don't hesitate to express them and I
think you don't expect a personal assault for doing so.  Interestingly,
while you criticize Ron for what you think you know about his attitude about
education, he is a prolific contributor to this list on a variety of
subjects, some conventional, some not.  He has published articles in the PTJ
and taught classes at conventions.  He has invested a great deal in
soundboard and other design issues and shares his experiences generously.
He has acknowledged his debt to others in the field who have also worked
hard to push the piano industry forward.  

While I agree that there are many in the field who are not particularly
competent, some of those are highly experienced and highly credentialed.  I
don't think you can blame them or the totally untrained incompetents for
what you view as low pay and low esteem in which people in this trade are
held (something I don't agree with, btw).  A highly skilled technician is of
tremendous value to a highly skilled musician with a high set of demands.
Most piano owners don't fall into that category and so have no way to really
assess your value.  If you want to raise the esteem and pay of those in the
trade, spend your time educating piano owners, they're the ones who write
the checks.  More to the point, that there are incompetents in the field (as
there are in any field) makes those who are competent even more valuable.
I'm certainly not selling myself short to my customers, and I have more work
than I can handle.

While your work in continuing education is appreciated and of great value to
those entering and continuing in the trade, I think you should be careful
about interpreting the discussion about education in terms of your own
personal investment and biases.  I think you owe Ron an apology, and a
public one at that.     

David Love
davidlovepianos at comcast.net 
www.davidlovepianos.com

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Israel
Stein
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2007 12:52 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?

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