I agree with you about Taran. Conceiving of human ability as a matter of (inborn) talent instead of (learned) skill is both lazy and harmful.
Shotokan karate instructor Elmar Schmeisser has a great quote about intermediate students getting to the point where their ability to identify their mistakes far outstrips their ability to correct them. He says it's like carving a cube into a sphere; the first few cuts are easy, but every corner you remove generates a bunch of new corners. Although to an outsider you may look like you've got a pretty good sphere going, all you can see is corners! He identifies this as a crucial time for the instructor to encourage perseverance.
My father, a highly effective choral music teacher, didn't have much use for the notion that some people can just sing and some can't; for years he taught in a school system where choir was mandatory for all the 6th graders, and he almost never ran into anyone who couldn't successfully learn to sightread in a year. After the one mandatory year, most of his students signed up for choir year after year, and many became music teachers themselves. Those students are in their 70s now and they still have choir reunions.
I agree with you about Taran. Conceiving of human ability as a matter of (inborn) talent instead of (learned) skill is both lazy and harmful.
Shotokan karate instructor Elmar Schmeisser has a great quote about intermediate students getting to the point where their ability to identify their mistakes far outstrips their ability to correct them. He says it's like carving a cube into a sphere; the first few cuts are easy, but every corner you remove generates a bunch of new corners. Although to an outsider you may look like you've got a pretty good sphere going, all you can see is corners! He identifies this as a crucial time for the instructor to encourage perseverance.
My father, a highly effective choral music teacher, didn't have much use for the notion that some people can just sing and some can't; for years he taught in a school system where choir was mandatory for all the 6th graders, and he almost never ran into anyone who couldn't successfully learn to sightread in a year. After the one mandatory year, most of his students signed up for choir year after year, and many became music teachers themselves. Those students are in their 70s now and they still have choir reunions.