On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Alexis Cousein <a...@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 _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l