Today's video attempts to answer a question I've been thinking about since a couple of provocative social media posts asked it:
These days there are a lot of so-called "drum teachers" on the internet. Are we SURE that's a good thing?
I responded at the time, in the comments. But now that months have passed and I've had a chance to reflect, I decided to make a video about it.
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The most recent version of the debate started with two instagram posts - one, in my opinion, well-meaning, and the other, well, not.
The first asked innocently what people's opinion was of the fact that practically anybody could now hang a shingle and call themselves a "drum teacher". Spoiler alert - I was in a minority in the comments for taking the position that maybe this wasn't such a bad thing.
After conducting a quick poll, I decided not to respond to the second directly, because even though it directed venom at some of my friends and colleagues, my audience felt dignifying it with a direct response would have been a bigger error than leaving the negative comments unrebutted. (Sorry - I tried and failed to say that in simpler words.)
But despite the...shall we say..."unstatesmanlike" way the argument was presented, it's not a completely crazy critique. And here it is:
Should drummers have a certain minimum level of skill before they feel confident teaching.
So in the video, it's these two valid critiques I take on:
-Is the low bar to calling yourself a teacher on the internet a net good or bad?
-Should there be a minimum level of skill before one looks oneself in the mirror calling themself a "teacher"?
And as you'll see in the video, answering these questions is deceptively difficult.
For starters, what do we even mean by "should"? Are we saying we want to create a governing body, or accreditation agency, to evaluate people before they become teachers? Or maybe just that "charlatans" face the power of ridicule in public.
And say we did have an arbiter of who measured up and who didn't. How would we evaluate what "measure up" means? Does that mean you have to be a touring pro? Or on the cover of Modern Drummer? Or maybe you need a gear endorsement or two. (Did somebody just turn up the heat?)
Finally, once we had our "test", where do we put the cutoff? Because something like "top 50 in the world" is arbitrary and relative. As I say in the video, if everybody could suddenly play like Justin Tyson or Ron Bruner, that wouldn't make that level any less impressive, but "top 50" would become "top 4.5 billion".
And yet, I think we probably should have standards about teachers, if I put myself in the shoes of a parent choosing a teacher my child, who really wants to be good at this.
So I propose what I consider a pretty "intuitive" standard...
...but, again, who's doing the deciding?😉
Hope you guys enjoy this one.