Update: School in the summer is worse than the rest of the year.
I know mine doesn't really count, since it's only three hours a day and is only guitar. But still.
A thing that continues to infuriate me that has just made itself more and more aggravating with the fact that it is a Guitar class that I'm taking is a teacher's continual need to lie to their students, to tell them that they're "-so- close," that they've "nearly got it!" when they have accomplished neither. During the school year this tendency rears its ugly head when hopeless math students try to get a hold on the simplest of surface area formulas, to no avail; when frustrated art students attempt at a self-portrait, their drawn faces instead resembling something more along the lines of a stunted vegetable patch: their eyes brussel sprouts, their noses cabbages on wilting stalks of asparagus, and their mouths gaping carrots. Ah, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it can be claimed. One could consider it entirely subjective whether or not one's face does indeed bear some resemblance towards the sad, pitiful attempt on paper, thus giving the art teacher warrant to say that the student has indeed "almost grasped the concept." The concept being the basic maneuver of drawing a nose, or a mouth, or some other regular bodily part. One might even argue that the artist could WANT their face to be butchered in that way, calling it abstraction, calling it art. Yes, I suppose one could.
It's a bit more of a stretch with math. Math is the most straightforward subject, it would seem: You get the answer right/You get the answer wrong. Either or. If that's the case, then why are people getting credit for problems wrong on tests? They could've "almost gotten" the concept, the question, but the fact remains that they didn't. Whether or not the other 99% of the answer is correct is irrelevant; as long as that 1% (or less) is incorrect, than their answer is wrong. That's it. And I'm sorry, but enough with this "effort" shit. No one really falls for it. Kids study for grades, and still, a good portion of them fail. And some kids certainly don't study, getting the top marks. It is impossible to judge on effort; How is one to decide how much someone else is trying? That, of course, is subjective, too. This is why, in my opinion, it should be as simple as it needs to be: You get it right/You get it wrong. You succeed/You fail. Because what it comes down to is that, really. Later on, no one will really care how much you tried, or how much you really wanted to win. It only matters whether or not you succeed, whether or not your efforts or lack thereof pay off.
In guitar class, the instructor continues to spew out these positive enforcements, maybe in some sad way hoping that these encouragements will actually bestow upon the receiver the miraculous ability to do the required task. Maybe the teacher thinks that if at first the student is unable to produce a single clean note from their Em barre chord, perhaps the exclamation that they've "Almost got it!" will help speed up the process. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't help them to simply nod and say, "Yes, you're close enough." They're not. If someone could just sit them down and show them, in a simple enough way, how to MAKE it work, it would. Because they can't be blamed for playing it wrong if no one ever shows them how to play it right.
A thing that continues to infuriate me that has just made itself more and more aggravating with the fact that it is a Guitar class that I'm taking is a teacher's continual need to lie to their students, to tell them that they're "-so- close," that they've "nearly got it!" when they have accomplished neither. During the school year this tendency rears its ugly head when hopeless math students try to get a hold on the simplest of surface area formulas, to no avail; when frustrated art students attempt at a self-portrait, their drawn faces instead resembling something more along the lines of a stunted vegetable patch: their eyes brussel sprouts, their noses cabbages on wilting stalks of asparagus, and their mouths gaping carrots. Ah, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it can be claimed. One could consider it entirely subjective whether or not one's face does indeed bear some resemblance towards the sad, pitiful attempt on paper, thus giving the art teacher warrant to say that the student has indeed "almost grasped the concept." The concept being the basic maneuver of drawing a nose, or a mouth, or some other regular bodily part. One might even argue that the artist could WANT their face to be butchered in that way, calling it abstraction, calling it art. Yes, I suppose one could.
It's a bit more of a stretch with math. Math is the most straightforward subject, it would seem: You get the answer right/You get the answer wrong. Either or. If that's the case, then why are people getting credit for problems wrong on tests? They could've "almost gotten" the concept, the question, but the fact remains that they didn't. Whether or not the other 99% of the answer is correct is irrelevant; as long as that 1% (or less) is incorrect, than their answer is wrong. That's it. And I'm sorry, but enough with this "effort" shit. No one really falls for it. Kids study for grades, and still, a good portion of them fail. And some kids certainly don't study, getting the top marks. It is impossible to judge on effort; How is one to decide how much someone else is trying? That, of course, is subjective, too. This is why, in my opinion, it should be as simple as it needs to be: You get it right/You get it wrong. You succeed/You fail. Because what it comes down to is that, really. Later on, no one will really care how much you tried, or how much you really wanted to win. It only matters whether or not you succeed, whether or not your efforts or lack thereof pay off.
In guitar class, the instructor continues to spew out these positive enforcements, maybe in some sad way hoping that these encouragements will actually bestow upon the receiver the miraculous ability to do the required task. Maybe the teacher thinks that if at first the student is unable to produce a single clean note from their Em barre chord, perhaps the exclamation that they've "Almost got it!" will help speed up the process. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't help them to simply nod and say, "Yes, you're close enough." They're not. If someone could just sit them down and show them, in a simple enough way, how to MAKE it work, it would. Because they can't be blamed for playing it wrong if no one ever shows them how to play it right.