Musicians Union warning: When teaching, don’t touch

thekingontheviolin says:

I think you are missing my point. The student’s playing is poor. The teacher’s playing and teaching are worse. This video is put out by the Musicians’ Union of England.

I am trying to point out that whilst it is laudable to combat all kinds of abuse there is the danger of “throwing out the baby with the bath water”. It seems as if touching has been scapegoated so that its removal from teaching instruments will deal with abuse which it will not in my opinion. Furthermore, I still maintain that touching, manipulating the posture,and finger placements are vital ingredients to teaching the violin and strongly disagree that verbal instruction is a better way. Non abusive teachers are being forced to abandon basic teaching techniques due to abusive teachers abusing physical touching which is not automatically to be seen as sexaul or violent.

We in this country have had to concede defeat in development of high quality violin playing which is now predominantly ex Soviet or Chinese and this kind of move will further weaken our tools as teachers. As to your suggestion that I should seek professional help, you should consider that the whole video has been produced in a highly manipulative way (another kind of abuse) choosing to render the student as looking what I termed “gay” and “seductive” and the teacher as “angry” in order to make its point. However, the point which the video is trying to make is simply wrong in my opinion. The video is coming from a position of fear and is attempting to protect both students and teachers from allegations which could be damaging to teachers and their employers. It is not addressing the issue of abuse whilst maintaining that it is.

It cannot be stated enough that all abuse is wrong but erroneous phoney solutions will only further complicate the highly complex and emotive issues at stake. Any good violin teacher and any good student knows that the spoken word is not enough in establishing the finger placements of both arms satisfactorily and from more than 40 years experience of teaching at all levels from beginner to soloist this remains my considered opinion.

I also maintain that the majority of teachers are good people and we are moving dangerously close to a position whereby abusive teachers have caused through their exposure a kind of statistic equation which is false viz as it is statistically possible to be employing abusive teachers this potential must not be manifested…TRUE! followed by as we do not know who is a potential abuser and who is not we will have to make the assumption that any teacher is potentially abusive…..FALSE! followed by let’s stop touching (to be on the safe side) and hey presto the problem is solved. MADNESS!

Teachers who are not abusive and do not have the potential to be abusive should not be handicapped and penalised as potential abusers because statistics have revealed that there have been tragic cases of abusive teachers damaging their students.

Peter says:

I think that all my instrumental teachers had physical contact with me, showing me how to hold my hands, arms, back, head. At no time did I, nor do I now, think that any of it was inappropriate. So either I was / am a completely clueless victim, or else my teachers weren’t a bunch of lecherous paedophiles, (or both).

But why not take this a logical step forward. Some teachers abuse their students verbally. Most don’t, of course, but that is not an acceptable counter argument. So I suggest that verbal interaction between teacher and student should be avoided. Lessons should be conducted through mime.

Gerhard says:

For instance think of Alexander lessons without touching, and perhaps without verbalizing as well. Hard to imagine how the message should come across. Quite a challenge for a master mime in any case.