Ceiling limit Options

[BadStrad]

It would not necessarily be obvious to the teacher - else why would Einstein have got such poor school reports (for example), why would Perlman have been told he would never be a concert violinist after contracting polio?

The early 10,000 hours research (on musicians) placed the achievers as top=soloists, middle = orchestra and the lowest as likely to go on to be teachers not performers. Invariably their successes correlated to hours of focussed practice - so the evidence points to bog standard teachers as not being a great judge of future success having not made it to the top themselves. A top player who works as a mentor/teacher (eg Perlman) knows what's required and has been there too, so might have more idea.

The world isn't full of concert pianists because it takes a combination of determination, hours of practice and the availability of top class mentoring and playing oppportunities to get there. Many people may be capable of meeting the challenge but few are in the right place at the right time to get there as well as having the time to dedicate to practice. The only consistent predictor of difference in attainment in the musicians (in the study) was how much time they'd spent practicing, not fingure length or mythical talent. The vast majority of people do not have the opportunities drive and support to achieve world class status, but those that do, don't rely on the mythical talent - they work their XXX's off (fingers, lips etc).

The ceiling is mostly dictated by external circumstance - there are concert pianists with one arm who beat their physical circumstances, and two armed players who never get to achieve their potential because they only ever had mediocre teachers and so never knew what they could be achieving.

For those not at the extremes of physical and mental limitations the evidence points to "success" being correlated to hard work.

[Lemontree]

....

So true!

[jod]

When it comes to the Concert/professional tip top level then maybe, just maybe there is a ceiling, but until that zenith most ceilings are in the imagination of the teacher and the pupil.

Certainly teachers should not wimp out on their pupils, but try their very best for them and help them to maximise their potential.

Putting ideas into peoples minds that they 'never will be any good' at a discipline' is soul destroying.

Later on in that individuals life if they have not been beaten down by criticism they may reach that goal, but they will still have their childhood demons. Far better to say, this is something that will not come easily to you. You can succeed, but you will have to be determined and will always be working against <whatever obstacle is in the way>.

I really despair at teachers who put pupils down rather than tell them there will be stiff competition, it will be hard, then leave it to the pupil to make the decision.

It demonstrates a lack of empathetic judgement that is really callous.

[VH2]

I was speaking to a music teacher today and we were talking about the 10,000 hour rule where that is the amount of practice one needs to be a master at something. She then said that she didn't agree with this philosophy as she felt some students did not have the ability to go beyond a certain level and eventhough they were diligent and worked hard they could never reach a certain level.

She is right. Everyone has a ceiling. But what seems to be overlooked is that the "certain level" that is the limit for each of us is so far beyond the level that most of us reach in reality that the argument is irrelevant. It may explain why pianists like Horowitz and Argerich were/are so much better than such world-class artists as ... say ... Murray Perahia, but for the rest of us it is of no consequence that there are limits to how good we can become, because we will never approach those limits.

And who is to judge when that level is reached? Certainly not teachers. It has already been pointed out how they had written off Einstein, and he is not the only late-flowering genius. I was told I would fail my GCE O-lvels. I passed all 9, mostly with top grades. Two years later I was told I would fail my A-levels. "You can't cram for them like O-levels". I got straight A's in all 5. (I am not implying that this makes me a genius!!).


It is also not necessarily true that 10,000 hours of practice enables you to "master" something. 10,000 hours of the right sort of practice is supposed to take you to a minimum professional standard. That is not the same thing as mastery. The top performers put in massively more hours, 20,000, 30,000. Just read Lang Lang's biography.

Furthermore the evidence for the "10,000" hour rule is flawed. Only those people that are achieving progress manage to put in that amount of dedicated work. There are no examples of people doing their 10,000 hours and achieving nothing, as those people gave up long ago. (Just playing all your life does not count - it has to be the right stuff). That is not to say that the 10,000 hour rule is not true, just that it has not been given the sort of rigorous test that would satisfy a chemist or physicist. On the other hand the theory that inborn talent explains all is even more badly flawed.

In some ways it must be true or the world would be filled with concert pianists but is there a ceiling limit to one's abilities and how can it be spotted? Would it be obvious for a teacher to spot or would it only become apparent after multiple failed attempts at a piece/exam etc? From a teachers point of view, would you ever tell a pupil that they had reached that ceiling?

The logic here is flawed too. The reason that the world is not full of concert pianists (although there is an oversupply of very good pianists!) is that most people never get anywhere near the standard of which they are capable.

And I would never tell a student that they have reached their limit. For one thing you can never be sure. How can you tell the difference between a plateau and an ultimate limit? You can't.



Looking back on the earlier contributions ... BadStrad and jod say it better than me

[schraeubchen]

How often have I (and I am sure many other forumites) thought, that I will never reach a special goal and after a while of working towards it, changed my mind and found out it is reachable?
There are several references of this in this forum.

I absolutly agree that part of it is having a really good teacher. But it is also the point of going for it and keep away any thoughts of ceiling.

[carol*piano]

She is right. Everyone has a ceiling. But what seems to be overlooked is that the "certain level" that is the limit for each of us is so far beyond the level that most of us reach in reality that the argument is irrelevant. It may explain why pianists like Horowitz and Argerich were/are so much better than such world-class artists as ... say ... Murray Perahia, but for the rest of us it is of no consequence that there are limits to how good we can become, because we will never approach those limits.

And who is to judge when that level is reached? Certainly not teachers. It has already been pointed out how they had written off Einstein, and he is not the only late-flowering genius. I was told I would fail my GCE O-lvels. I passed all 9, mostly with top grades. Two years later I was told I would fail my A-levels. "You can't cram for them like O-levels". I got straight A's in all 5. (I am not implying that this makes me a genius!!).

It is also not necessarily true that 10,000 hours of practice enables you to "master" something. 10,000 hours of the right sort of practice is supposed to take you to a minimum professional standard. That is not the same thing as mastery. The top performers put in massively more hours, 20,000, 30,000. Just read Lang Lang's biography.

Furthermore the evidence for the "10,000" hour rule is flawed. Only those people that are achieving progress manage to put in that amount of dedicated work. There are no examples of people doing their 10,000 hours and achieving nothing, as those people gave up long ago. (Just playing all your life does not count - it has to be the right stuff). That is not to say that the 10,000 hour rule is not true, just that it has not been given the sort of rigorous test that would satisfy a chemist or physicist. On the other hand the theory that inborn talent explains all is even more badly flawed.

The logic here is flawed too. The reason that the world is not full of concert pianists (although there is an oversupply of very good pianists!) is that most people never get anywhere near the standard of which they are capable.

And I would never tell a student that they have reached their limit. For one thing you can never be sure. How can you tell the difference between a plateau and an ultimate limit? You can't.

Looking back on the earlier contributions ... BadStrad and jod say it better than me

Aha - the return of Mad Tom...

[VH2]

Aha - the return of Mad Tom...

Is that meant as a compliment? I admit to being influenced by his Blog, and plagiarizing some of his old posts.

[carol*piano]

Aha - the return of Mad Tom...

Is that meant as a compliment? I admit to being influenced by his Blog, and plagiarizing some of his old posts.

Hilarious. If you still want to post, it's a free country, but there's really no point trying to pretend you're someone else.

[mel2]

Aha - the return of Mad Tom...

Is that meant as a compliment? I admit to being influenced by his Blog, and plagiarizing some of his old posts.

Hilarious. If you still want to post, it's a free country, but there's really no point trying to pretend you're someone else.

Pots and kettles! Well spotted though- this one slipped under my radar. You haven't seen sueHM around recently, by any chance? That was only supposed to be a temporary departure...

[ExpressYourself]

She never left but it would be inappropriate to expose her new pseudonym! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Seer_Green]

She never left but it would be inappropriate to expose her new pseudonym! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[carol*piano]

Pots and kettles!

Fair point! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Gizzie]

Have you ever worked out how many hours practise a day 10k hours takes to reach? I did. For a 10 year old child to reach 10k hours before they're 18, it takes 3.4 hours practice, every day, from the moment they start.

Now assuming, that for the first year a child learns, you're lucky if they get in 30 mins every day, that gives you
182 hours off the total.

If they're good, they might start doing an hours daily practice for the next couple of years, giving you a total of 730.

Add that to the first years total, and you have 912 hours completed. That pattern of practice, is more or less what my daughter did, although it was, in reality, five days a week, rather than seven if I'm being honest, got her 138 in her grade 6 flute.

Now, if she wants to get in 10k hours of practise before she's 18, she now needs to do 9088 hours.

Over the next five years, that equals to almost five hours daily practise. She'd get RSI!!! Although I do imagine kids in specialist music schools do that sort of practise. Btw, there is not a chance that she'll do that level of practise, it's an hour, and that's it. If I tried to get her to do more, she'd probably do something very nasty to the flute (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

However, for a really musical child who wants to be a musician, 3 or 4 hours practise is achievable. You simply can't stop them practising.

My point is that I doubt people reach a ceiling - it's more likely that they haven't completed anywhere near the amount of proper practise required to progress.

Both my children's teachers tell me that it's a pleasure teaching my children because they do the practise that they've been asked to do and covered the areas that have been specified. I think that if students do this, and they have a good teacher, they will progress.

[Maizie]

Have you ever worked out how many hours practise a day 10k hours takes to reach?

The 10,000 hours thing derives from the traditional length of an apprenticeship - 5-7 years of full time work!

[MNW]

I also tried to work out how much practice would be needed for BB and concluded it was impossible, even more so on a wind instrument. He has his first day at Purcell today and I'm going easy on him with only 40 mins today. Tomorrow he's supposed to do 2 hours 40 and he'll definitely do 1 hour 40 (at school) but I just can't see how he could fit in another hour. We are going to go through reeds very fast.