[Tango-L] Interesting Tango Listing

[Huck Kennedy]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Alexis Cousein <al at sgi.com> wrote:
> On 13/06/2011 22:07, Huck Kennedy wrote:
>>       I agree 100% with everything Lois says above, for private
>> lessons.  But not for a group lesson of strangers at a festival in
>> which every student is different, and has different needs.
>>
> You have a very good point if the audience is, in fact, not
> homogeneous at all.
>
> But often all the "strangers" have many things in
> common because even though they're strangers to the teacher,
> they are not strangers to the others in the audience (and have
> been taught by a small set of local teachers, dance to a
> particular kind of music, have imitated each other's step
> sequences, etc.).

          But the precise premise of this discussion was already
stated from the very beginning, to wit, that we were talking about
scheduling group classes at a large tango festival, where the
participants come from different communities from all over the
country.

          Instantly deciding what the student needs works in private
lessons, and it can work in a local group setting in which all the
students came up together with the same local teacher, and perhaps
imitate each other, as you suggest, but at a festival where people
come from all over the country, with different styles, and different
strengths and weaknesses, it is completely unrealistic (and shall I
add egotistical?  Why yes, I think so) for a teacher to presume he can
march into the room and in 5 minutes discern some magical
one-size-fits-all lesson that everyone in the room needs.   Please.

          The only fair method at a large festival is to announce what
you'll be teaching in as specific a manner as possible, so the
students coming to the festival from all sorts of different
backgrounds can make informed selections.   It's called honest free
enterprise.   Any student desiring a customized analysis of what he or
she most needs is free to schedule a private, which is what most of us
do when we can afford it.

Huck