Thread: Depersonalization of shaving

My niece is playing in concerts now and this was on her instructor's website. I guess it could apply to learning the straight too. Not that we are kids. I think depersonalization is important as we learn. Generally we are quick to jump on someone who blames the tool. Maybe there is a psychological reason behind blaming the tool. We are trying to depersonalize the experience as to not give up on the endeavor.


De-personalizing your child’s practice | Sangeeta Swamy, PhD

As Jimmy likes to say"It is the Indian, not the arrow." It is our job to find the capability as well as the limitations of our tools, and then of ourselves.

No doubt. Learning to use a straight....back up....learning to maintain a straight to shave with is a very humbling experience. However, we are here to learn, not to be reminded of failures. Do not get me wrong everyone needs a good ego kicking now and again. Sometimes we do that to ourselves. At least I do that to myself. I am my own worst critic.

Great article Mephisto, I can see how it can be applied to any learning experience, but I'm going to apply it while I am teaching Irish flute and whistle to my kids. Especially my self concious older daughter.


Mick

I read the article a few times over, I'm a bit slow; most of what I have learned in life was by repetition & taking self responsibility for the failures. I cannot agree with this teaching method of Depersonalization as a primary approach to learning, whether it be learning the violin, forging steel or the martial arts.

It was Mick's post, last line, "Especially my self conscious older daughter." , that puts Depersonalization in it's rightfull place, IMO. Depersonalization is a tactic of teaching that should only be used to overcome an obstacle, such as self-consciousness.

A teaching method is directly related to the target audience & course of study. I feel the article tries to make Depersonalization something new in training/teaching, it's not. I also think that using Depersonalization beyond overcoming a learning obstacle, leads to failure in the long run. There will come a time when the student will want more from his learned course of study. He or she will want to surpass his peers, adversaries in competition & life. When that time comes ( it will) and Depersonalization has been his/her ladder to date, he/she will have reached the end of that ladder. The tool has it's limits, the student does not. A student who has felt failure & accepted the responsibility for it, will feel deeply personal about that failure. This is a moment of clarity that must be taken advantage of & hopefully the teacher will have the skills to make this a positive moment on which to build an extension onto that ladder.

I understand teachers, such as the person writing the article (Sangeeta Swamy), wanting to develop new ways of learning; that's a good thing. Just that Ms. Sangeeta Swamy seems to have dismissed the success of all the individuals who learned "the hard way", so to speak; learning to dislike failure at a personal level and pushing forward, not to feel it again and going forward to excel in their skill.

In closing, living is personal & so is dying; our training should be too.

My ramblings, for a nickel.

Thanks for the thread, Mephisto

I have to agree with Hirlau. While there are some children that this would really work well for, in the US it has become a curse. Decades ago a study was done that found that successful people all had great self esteem. Rather than concluding that success causes good self asteem, the experts concluded that good self esteem causes success. There is now a generation out there - I employ many of them - that were raised that nothing was ever their fault. Score was never kept at sports or games. They didn't receive letter grades in school. That might hurt the feelings of any who didn't excel. Everyone got a gold star just for showing up, and above all, nothing that went wrong was ever their fault. They have amazing self esteem, but no skills. They are now trying to get into college and are being told no for the first time in their lives.

I appologize for the rant, I just really feel for these kids......

I do not know the teacher. I do gather that she does not let the students off easy. I think her method is to avoid certain tendencies, such as perfectionism. However, my niece's concert group are not a bunch of slackers. The teacher does not train them to be slackers either. They play concertos by Mozart not Mary Had a Little Lamb. You could not organize a bunch of 4th graders to play Mozart without self-discipline, goal setting and practice. Jesh, my niece has to practice 5 days a week. My sister is a music teacher so my niece does not get it easy at home either. Btw, yes I am bragging, my niece got the solo piece at the next concert.

I'm glad to hear of her success. What type of instrument does she play? I'm basically music illiterate, so what does it mean when you say she ,"got the solo piece at the next concert." ?

I don't like the "blame the tools" thing, that's why I for myself try to get the best tools there is
or at least tools good enough I know they can do the job.
Any failure is on me, it's fun to see how your result gets better and better with time.

It is not so much you are blaming the tool but using the tool to correct the operator.