The Ruler On The Knuckles Options

[linda.ff]

I'm now 63, and my mother, who was born 94 years ago, said she had piano lessons for a brief while, and her teacher would rap her over the knuckles with a ruler when she made mistakes. I have no reason to think that wasn't common in those days. But then her teacher also used to send notes home saying Minnie must practise more, even though my mum's name was Winnie, which goes to show the warmth of the relationship on the teacher's part!

But I'm still hearing from quite young children that their own parents have told her the same thing happening to them. I can't actually believe this is true - is it one of those stories like "my music teacher told me I couldn't sing and had to be quiet when everyone else sang" which I still hear every day (and which is probably being said about me, though it's very, very far from the truth)?

Do other piano teachers get told this ruler-on-the-knuckles story still, even about parents who are only in their thirties, and do you think it was ever true? Or is it one of those things that gets into the collective consciousness (like the "you can't sing" story) to the extent that people start believeing it even of themselves?

(Actually I'm prepared to believe the "you can't sing" thing has happened on occasions, but a pupil only has to be not selected for a special choir, because their pitching is dodgy, to interpret it as "you can't sing, you must keep quiet when the others sing", even when they're actually encouraged to keep it up when singing in class)

[katyjay]

Can't answer about parents, but will about myself. I'm 43 now, and had piano lessons when I was a kid.

I didn't have the ruler treatment, but I was on the receiving end of pinches to my arms, slaps on my hands, screaming, shouting, threats (e.g having made a mistake in theory homework, the whole book was ripped up and thrown in the bin with the statement that the same would happen to me if I made another mistake).

I ended up too terrified even to practise for fear of getting stuff wrong, and was scared of worse happening if I told my parents. I eventually got sacked for a lack of progress.

Perhaps not surprising then that I still have serious hang-ups about playing the piano, had real trouble dealing with a piano teacher sitting next to me when I tried lessons as an adult, and took until I was 35 to find the courage to get singing lessons.

[anacrusis]

I didn't experience that, no, but our music teacher at school was incredibly fierce about "recorder day" and got very very cross if we didn't remember to bring them: she was a singer, and had a very powerful voice, and total stage presence, so we were rather scared of her. In particular she got cross when people miscounted, to the point where I refused point blank to play chime bars, knowing I would be unable to keep a rhythm going for the recorder players. Curiously enough, one day she decided to have a go at the class about our manuscript books, holding up mine as an example to us all - only partway through the harangue did it become clear that mine was considered tidy, so I was a wreck by the end of that lesson.

As those who have played with me will know: I still find counting the hardest skill of all.

[Alicia Ocean]

I'm 40-something and am working towards a diploma and so still have a weekly lesson. My elderly teacher keeps a wooden letter opener shaped like a sword in her hand and smacks it on the piano in front of me when she feels moved to. I wonder if it used to be used on fingers? I daren't ask.

As a child I was taught by my father - who never hit me - but his reason for refusing to allow me a proper teacher (he was limited and flawed in what he knew) was abused (in all senses) by the Christian Brother who taught him.

[andante_in_c]

My mother was a fine, natural contralto. But she considered that anyone else who did not have the same natural sense of pitch or vocal quality 'couldn't sing'. I remember watching a children's TV presenter on Play School singing a song and my mother saying 'I suppose they make them sing, even when they can't'. The presenter was singing in tune, and with a good enough quality for the BBC to broadcast it - hardly unable to sing.

No wonder that I have severe hang-ups about singing, as did my father. There's not a lot wrong with my singing voice, but it isn't the natural voice my mum had (or that two of my sons have inherited).

I've met a number of adults who refuse to sing audibly in church because they were told by a parent or teacher that they couldn't sing. It is not a myth, unfortunately, and it still goes on.

[AnnC]

I have had a few children telling me that teacher at school has told them not to sing in choir because they can't (not true).
Currently I have a student on a performing arts degree course who has been told she'll never make a singer by the teachers at the university. Why was she accepted on the course?? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) Because she CAN sing - she has AMRSM grade 4 with another teacher and is making solid progress. Why do these teachers set out do destroy peoples' confidence? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

[Mad Tom]

I have had a few children telling me that teacher at school has told them not to sing in choir because they can't (not true).
Currently I have a student on a performing arts degree course who has been told she'll never make a singer by the teachers at the university. Why was she accepted on the course?? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) Because she CAN sing - she has AMRSM grade 4 with another teacher and is making solid progress. Why do these teachers set out do destroy peoples' confidence? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

Why do these teachers people set out do destroy peoples' confidence?

... because whatever else they might be they are *NOT* teachers.

[DaisyChain]

Why do these teachers people set out do destroy peoples' confidence?

... because whatever else they might be they are *NOT* teachers.

I have an adult learner (aged 65) who I'm trying to encourage singing to note sounds. She said "I can't...I was told by a choir master that I sing too flat so have never sung since." When I asked her how long ago this was, she said "I was about 10 at the time..." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) This belief of not being able to sing has stayed with her all these years. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

We have sung the notes back as we play them on numerous occasions over the past four weeks or so, and ok, sometimes she is a bit flat but on others she can match the tone perfectly.

[Jane S]

Unfortunately, the corporal punishment approach to teaching was all the rage when I was learning. I was lucky, and my own piano teacher was lovely, and used encouragement and constructive criticism, which was unusual nearly 50 years ago. My own classmates who were lucky to go the same teacher, all loved her as much as I did. Those who went to less patient teachers would be smacked regularly. I came across something similar very recently, which really shocked me. Yes it clearly did happen, and in some cases might still be happening.

[briantrumpet]

I remember hearing an interview from a world-famous pianist - I think it was Imogen Cooper - who said she went to Paris when she was 12 (without her parents) to study the piano, and had the most fearsome teacher who used physical punishment on her. But she also said that she was sort of grateful that she had this treatment, bacause in some way it did help to make her the pianist she is today. (I think I've remembered this more or less correctly.) Certainly interesting, if also unsettling.

[corenfa]

I had a teacher who used to scream and shout at me ("You're not moving your hands right and that's why this is so d____ loud" - Grade 5 List B piece, 1980-something, Leopold Mozart allegro moderato ) and who told my parents that I was only in it "for the attention".

For years I wondered why she'd been so nasty, but some years ago I realised that at that time, she would have been 20 - perhaps not even that. I was not by any means the usual child piano student - by this I do not mean that I was a prodigy or exceptionally talented, but I would always want to know why I had to do something and wouldn't just do it "because she said so". I think that she didn't know what to make of this and she didn't know how to deal with me. I don't think that this excuses her treatment of students, but I have a little bit of empathy for her.

[linda.ff]

I have an adult learner (aged 65) who I'm trying to encourage singing to note sounds. She said "I can't...I was told by a choir master that I sing too flat so have never sung since." When I asked her how long ago this was, she said "I was about 10 at the time..." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) This belief of not being able to sing has stayed with her all these years. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

We have sung the notes back as we play them on numerous occasions over the past four weeks or so, and ok, sometimes she is a bit flat but on others she can match the tone perfectly.

Oh, I'm not suggesting that it doesn't happen and never has; but in this day and age I think most primary teachers are a little too sensitive to just slam the door on pupils like that, yet you hear constantly that this is what they've said. Rather like "oh, we didn't really do much music in our school" when I know for certain that the school in question had a very lively music department.

Maybe in some cases the pupils have been discouraged by a minor set-back and it has built up into their own minds as a complete embargo on their singing. I used to listen to all the children in our primary classes (singing all together but I would have my head near them) and touch each one lightly on the head or on the shoulder according to whether or not they were somewhere nearly in tune. This was NOT to tell some children they couldn't sing, quite the opposite - I would then try to put the "head" singers together in a group to make them all the more confident and ask the "shoulder" singers fist to listen to them, then to join in but not to sing so loudly that they couldn't hear everyone else, and said that next year I confidently expected that quite a lot of the "shoulder" singers would have found their singing voices and would be there among the "head" singers. It was, I said, likie swimming and riding a bike, and it came to different people at different times. The important thing was to KEEP singing and keep listening and keep trying. The point was that if you got someone who hadn't found accurate pitching yet, and sat them close to those who had, there was more chance that they would pick it up from them.

I can well imagine, though, that this could be interpreted by some child as Mrs ff having told them they couldn't sing and not to sing when the others were singing, which is why I often take this kind of comment, particularly from someone in their 20s or younger, with maybe one grain of salt.

[Claudia's Mum]

Someone (aged 50) told me only yesterday that the reason he won't allow his children to learn a musical instrument is because he was rapped on the knuckles with a ruler when he was learning the piano as a boy. He now has such an awful association of music lessons with fear and punishment that he won't let his children anywhere near a music teacher which is very sad.

[tonedeafmum]

I am in my 30s and was never hit by a piano teacher. She did however bend my fingers back on themselves if I consistently played wrong notes (which I did.) This had nothing to do with why I gave up piano as soon as I possibly could. I was regularly slapped by my dancing teachers (whom I worshipped) and counted myself lucky because they told me that their teachers used to beat their legs with a thick cane!

Strangely enough - the only physical contact with teachers that bothered me was my singing teacher's insistence on holding my hand over her stomach to feel her breathing. For some reason that make me feel very uncomfortable.

And yes - I was told I could not sing. I was a Saturday girl at a very successful stage school and they did not believe in giving us false expectations. Didn't stop me though - I'm still second loudest at church!

Worst musical moment was in a primary school music lesson when a teacher hit me on the head with the stick for her triangle. My head rang! I did, however, like that teacher - if people weren't paying attention when she was conducting she would start stripping her clothes off.

Aargh! Looking back - I'm obviously damaged for life. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[linda.ff]

And yes - I was told I could not sing. I was a Saturday girl at a very successful stage school and they did not believe in giving us false expectations. Didn't stop me though - I'm still second loudest at church!

Literally "you can't sing" or just "you're not one of the ones we will put into the group we're training specially as singers"? World of difference there. After all, everyone can sing as long as they have lungs, a larynx lips and a tongue. Some just can't sing very well and possibly never will be VERY good but if you're keen enough, there's usually room for a very little improvement.

So which was it - "you can't sing" or "we're not including you among the singers in this instance"? They really aren't the same, and in a stage school if they haven't got the time to help you improve but just want to use your singing talents if you have any, the latter is not quite as unreasonable as it first sounds. "You can't sing" or "You're not destined for a singing career"....?