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Being inflexible

Ihaveaspergers

Active Member
If a teacher meets someone in a private lesson who has issues with their teaching method he or she will not change anything at all in the method. It seems to me that the teacher is very inflexible. People of say that if I cannot learn by that method I am the very inflexible person. Why is this?

Sure, I am sometimes very inflexible but so are many teachers. This makes me confused. Being able to teach students in only one way without changing anything at all if a student need it is not consider being inflexible. How is this?
The students need to change something but not the teacher? Many teachers should probably receive the diagnosis Inflexibilty in Teaching disorder?

I just want to say this: there are amazing teachers in this world.
 
Education isnt necessarily about learning different subjects.

It's usually about learning to CONFORM. In other words, follow the lesson THIS way, do things THIS way, or else. That's the actual point, it seems.

At least, that's sure been my experience with it. I dunno about everyone else, but I always found that school (including college) just gets in the way of actual learning due to that.

There are good teachers out there, but even they are subject to a broken system.
 
Ever heard the term "people are set in their ways." It takes time and effort to change. Not many would do so. Or if they did would slowly go back to how they was doing things. Its hard for people to change. You have to really make an effort.
 
At least, that's sure been my experience with it. I dunno about everyone else, but I always found that school (including college) just gets in the way of actual learning due to that.

There are good teachers out there, but even they are subject to a broken system.
I was mostly thinking about private lessons.
Yes, school sucks.
People who chose the school system should probably be called inflexible.
I have teachers who want to meet me where I am. This is very rare. We students should me them where they are.
 
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I was mostly thinking about private lessons.
Yes, school sucks.
People who chose the school system should probably be called inflexible.

Ehhh... to be honest, private lessons probably arent any better.

Think about it: Those types of teachers will have already been long influenced by people THEY had as teachers, and when teaching really specific things, there's the "right" way (aka, the way the teacher personally knows) and the "wrong" way (absolutely anything else).

That being said: For some subjects, there really IS a binary right or wrong way to do a particular thing. Learning computers, for instance. You either do it the right way or the machine will literally not function. There's no room for flexibility with that type of thing because the device simply does not work that way. Same with something like learning to drive.
 
Think about it: Those types of teachers will have already been long influenced by people THEY had as teachers, and when teaching really specific things, there's the "right" way (aka, the way the teacher personally knows) and the "wrong" way (absolutely anything else).
But doesn't that make them inflexible?
They probably also need some kind of diagnosis!
 
Both the teacher and the student have responsibilites.

It's up to the teacher to explain and pass on the knowledge in such a way that the student can understand. If the student doesn't understand, then the teacher needs find another approach. A good teacher will be flexible and adapt to the student's needs, but will also pass on effective study skills as well as knowledge, and provide encouragement and support. The student is learning, and the teacher is his/her guid ein this process.

The student also has responsibilities. He/she needs to pay attention and then follow the teacher's instructions, to make the effort to study (obviously), but also communicate with the teacher what he/she doesn't understand. The students needs to genuinely want to learn; no teacher, no matter how good, can teach a student who doesn't want to learn. A weak student who tries hard will often fair better than a smart but disinterested and disengaged one.
 
But doesn't that make them inflexible?
They probably also need some kind of diagnosis!

Not necessarily.

To even be accepted as a teacher of, well, anything, you have to meet certain criteria (unless you're making tutorials on Youtube or something, at which point nobody cares). That's part of the problem with the education system as a whole (which is not just restricted to schools). There is little room to be creative, and it aint just the student that gets restricted by that.

The students needs to genuinely want to learn; no teacher, no matter how good, can teach a student who doesn't want to learn.

This, to me, has always seemed like the greatest failure of the whole system: they make most students want to actively AVOID learning... seeing it as a negative thing. Hell, educational toys for kids usually have to have that educational aspect sort of "hidden", because if you tell a kid it's educational or that it's all about learning, the kid will usually go "bleh!" and not go anywhere near it, as school has ironically taught them that learning sucks.

In all my years of school, way back when, I think I only twice met anyone that ACTUALLY had even a slight interest in whatever was being taught... 99% of the students just wanted to go anywhere else, having learned to despise all things educational. And I'm thinking that quite a few, much like myself, were given a permanent aversion to certain topics (math and history, in my case).
 
My eyesight is going and at first I read this as 'Being Inflatible'

air-dancer-inflatable-costumes-dancing-square.gif
 
I guess only the straight A students like school.
Seriously, the whole diagnosis thing is messed (I wanted to use another word) up. Aspies are said to be the problem instead of the real problem. Some of us can learn if we do it in our own way but only if we do it our own way.
How is needing to learn things in a specific way a disorder? "Normals" are not disordered but we are they say. Everyone has issues in my opinions.
Why don't people try to meet the students where they are? Not doing that is extremely diaordered to me.
Here we go again you say. Another thread about how aspies are not allowed to be themselves at eg private lessons. Perhaps you are right but...I want to know the truth about why some can have a disordered behaviour and not be called disordered.
Who are the disordered people? Most singing teachers in my opinion. My teacher is very good. Sure even she has issue but she can teach and help me.
Not many want to meet the aspies where they are. Perhaps this is the thing. We are disordered as we cannot meet the teachers where they are. True. It is an issue for us but on the other hand not helping a student seem kinda disordered.

Can anyone please tell me what a disordered and inflexible person is?

My eyesight is going and at first I read this as 'Being Inflatible'

View attachment 64780
This looks very interesting.
 
It depends on the subject, I think, but generally, in private lessons, the teacher should cater to the needs of the students. I teach piano privately and almost every student is taught differently because I take my cues from the students. It doesn't mean they don't learn piano, but it does mean they learn piano using different methods, with different music, and at different rates.
 
I teach piano privately and almost every student is taught differently because I take my cues from the students.
Is this difficult? Many music teachers seem to be afraid meeting the student where he or she is.
Why are most teachers afraid of doing that?
Perhaps this is why many aspies find private lessons so difficult and frustrating. What we often struggle with is when a teacher don't meet us where we are.
Perhaps this is all about: I was taught playing piano with one method and I suceeded so it will work for all people.
What I would say is this: only using one method even if it doesn't work is all about inflexibility. How is this not a disorder? Most music teachers seem disordered and inflexible.
 
Is this difficult? Many music teachers seem to be afraid meeting the student where he or she is.
Why are most teachers afraid of doing that?
Perhaps this is why many aspies find private lessons so difficult and frustrating. What we often struggle with is when a teacher don't meet us where we are.
Perhaps this is all about: I was taught playing piano with one method and I suceeded so it will work for all people.
What I would say is this: only using one method even if it doesn't work is all about inflexibility. How is this not a disorder? Most music teachers seem disordered and inflexible.

when I attempted to get my teaching certification to teach music in the public schools, I spent a semester attempting to learn Max Reger’s Clarinet Sonata. The teacher I had at the time was Italian (as well as the clarinet professors I had as an undergraduate at a different university.

There is a passage in the first movement that is to be played pesante (very heavy and with a dark tone.). I could never satisfy this teacher with the sound and effect he wanted. He finally got exasperated with me and ragged on me for not sounding heavy enough and not sounding German. My response? “Sir, how am I supposed to make this sound like a German clarinetist when all of my previous teachers, including yourself, were, and are, Italian?”

The look on his face initially was he was going to keel haul me, until he realized who I studied with as an undergraduate, then burst out laughing. “Ya got me, man!” Was his reply.

However, the poster has a point. A lot of times, the teacher is trying instruct the student on how to play a piece in the same manner on how he or she learned the piece, all the way back to how the composer wanted the composition to sound. A lot of times, a new interpretation of a piece gets trashed simply because “that’s the way it’s always been performed!”

Unfortunately, the recording industry hasn’t helped. Music is one of those disciplines where the performance is never exactly the same over each live performance. I had a roommate some years ago tell me a live performance is not valid because it doesn’t sound exactly the same as what was recorded and mixed down in the music studio.

And we spectrumites that are musicians are inflexible? Yeah, Right!
 
Is this difficult? Many music teachers seem to be afraid meeting the student where he or she is.
Why are most teachers afraid of doing that?
Perhaps this is why many aspies find private lessons so difficult and frustrating. What we often struggle with is when a teacher don't meet us where we are.
Perhaps this is all about: I was taught playing piano with one method and I suceeded so it will work for all people.
What I would say is this: only using one method even if it doesn't work is all about inflexibility. How is this not a disorder? Most music teachers seem disordered and inflexible.

I don't think it's difficult. And I teach a lot of autistic students, they send them to me because no one else wants them. Difficulty with flexibility can often be because of low IQ. I'd say most teachers are afraid of doing something unfamiliar that may not work and would even prefer to beat a dead horse. And it's not a disorder because it's normal and it's a trait.
 
Yes, many lessons of all kinds are boring and unimaginative and don't cater for varying learning styles. Honestly, many teachers aren't imaginative or very flexible. In relation to learning needs of people with autism, really it boils down to us having to work a lot of things out for ourselves.

I find resources and information myself these days, the internet is a great resource, blogs in particular, so many great user friendly blogs by experienced experts are available, who needs teachers who can't adapt?
 
This, to me, has always seemed like the greatest failure of the whole system: they make most students want to actively AVOID learning... seeing it as a negative thing. Hell, educational toys for kids usually have to have that educational aspect sort of "hidden", because if you tell a kid it's educational or that it's all about learning, the kid will usually go "bleh!" and not go anywhere near it, as school has ironically taught them that learning sucks.

In all my years of school, way back when, I think I only twice met anyone that ACTUALLY had even a slight interest in whatever was being taught... 99% of the students just wanted to go anywhere else, having learned to despise all things educational. And I'm thinking that quite a few, much like myself, were given a permanent aversion to certain topics (math and history, in my case).
This, to me, has always seemed like the greatest failure of the whole system: they make most students want to actively AVOID learning... seeing it as a negative thing. Hell, educational toys for kids usually have to have that educational aspect sort of "hidden", because if you tell a kid it's educational or that it's all about learning, the kid will usually go "bleh!" and not go anywhere near it, as school has ironically taught them that learning sucks.

In all my years of school, way back when, I think I only twice met anyone that ACTUALLY had even a slight interest in whatever was being taught... 99% of the students just wanted to go anywhere else, having learned to despise all things educational. And I'm thinking that quite a few, much like myself, were given a permanent aversion to certain topics (math and history, in my case).
Yes, this is often the case in schools which have classes or 30 or more students and take a 'one size fits all' approach to teaching. With such numbers, individual needs are not met. Students can get bored and frustrated, and come to hate learning. Again, a good teacher will know how to motivate a student and teach them in such a way that leaning is a pleasure, and not a chore, but the school system doesn't facilitate this. Also, students are forced to take subjects they don't like or aren't so good at, it's easy for them to lose confidence or become frustrated or just give up. I think that, while students obviously need basic knowledge, maths and reading skills, there are some subjects that shouldn't be forced on them, such as languages for example.
 
Putting the ideals of teaching aside, I can speak briefly about it from a financial standpoint. When you're a private teacher, most often you're being paid by hour, doesn't matter who you're teaching. So, it's simply more cost- and time-effective to teach every student in the same or similar way. If you have a special student with different needs and feel no purpose for the job other than it paying your bills, you're obviously not going to expend the additional effort and resource simply for one 'snowflake'. It's much easier then to teach a typical student instead. In my experience, most private teachers already have lessons prepared for specific levels and preparing additional lessons and changes in lessons costs time that no one will pay for.

With a student that needs a different way of teaching you need to spend hours upon hours first working out the way that will be effective, essentially relearning the topic, then preparing the lesson and tweaking it when necessary. In comparison typical student requires only minor tweaks here and there like choosing different kinds of exercises at different times.

For a typical student, if I have a lesson prepared, it takes between maybe 10 to 20 min to prepare myself for the lesson. For a special student, I need to spend additional hours researching their learning methods, then applying these to the lesson, then tweaking the lesson - and it's often difficult at that. It's all capitalism, really, and if you count your time as resource you invest in a student, then it's more effective to invest in a typical student, since you invest less while getting exactly the same (monetary) gain. At the end of the day, teaching a special needs student can at times give you as little as a pound per hour and teachers have to eat too, you know.

Additionally, there is always a specific program that you have to teach that leaves little room for creativity really. Not only that, but very often only very specific answers are considered as viable on official exams - these basics are always created by the government and the teacher is always limited by these unless they are teaching a hobbyist.

Sure, there are teachers that see teaching as their life purpose but those are few and far between. Most are just people, with jobs they tolerate to pay bills. Most don't really care that much about their students either. Most, also, are quite lazy and try to do the easiest thing for the greatest gain, as is in human nature.
 
Yes, this is often the case in schools which have classes or 30 or more students and take a 'one size fits all' approach to teaching. With such numbers, individual needs are not met. Students can get bored and frustrated, and come to hate learning. Again, a good teacher will know how to motivate a student and teach them in such a way that leaning is a pleasure, and not a chore, but the school system doesn't facilitate this. Also, students are forced to take subjects they don't like or aren't so good at, it's easy for them to lose confidence or become frustrated or just give up. I think that, while students obviously need basic knowledge, maths and reading skills, there are some subjects that shouldn't be forced on them, such as languages for example.
And then we see the meltdown!
It is really interesting: I actually met an aspies who never had a meltdown.
He was probably more into shutdowns.
 
Putting the ideals of teaching aside, I can speak briefly about it from a financial standpoint. When you're a private teacher, most often you're being paid by hour, doesn't matter who you're teaching. So, it's simply more cost- and time-effective to teach every student in the same or similar way. If you have a special student with different needs and feel no purpose for the job other than it paying your bills, you're obviously not going to expend the additional effort and resource simply for one 'snowflake'. It's much easier then to teach a typical student instead. In my experience, most private teachers already have lessons prepared for specific levels and preparing additional lessons and changes in lessons costs time that no one will pay for.

With a student that needs a different way of teaching you need to spend hours upon hours first working out the way that will be effective, essentially relearning the topic, then preparing the lesson and tweaking it when necessary. In comparison typical student requires only minor tweaks here and there like choosing different kinds of exercises at different times.

For a typical student, if I have a lesson prepared, it takes between maybe 10 to 20 min to prepare myself for the lesson. For a special student, I need to spend additional hours researching their learning methods, then applying these to the lesson, then tweaking the lesson - and it's often difficult at that. It's all capitalism, really, and if you count your time as resource you invest in a student, then it's more effective to invest in a typical student, since you invest less while getting exactly the same (monetary) gain. At the end of the day, teaching a special needs student can at times give you as little as a pound per hour and teachers have to eat too, you know.

Additionally, there is always a specific program that you have to teach that leaves little room for creativity really. Not only that, but very often only very specific answers are considered as viable on official exams - these basics are always created by the government and the teacher is always limited by these unless they are teaching a hobbyist.

Sure, there are teachers that see teaching as their life purpose but those are few and far between. Most are just people, with jobs they tolerate to pay bills. Most don't really care that much about their students either. Most, also, are quite lazy and try to do the easiest thing for the greatest gain, as is in human nature.
Money issues? Might be true but....most piano teachers just want their students to become concert pianists. Then they teach by forcing the students to play etudes or crazy czerny without any understanding at all.
Repeat Czerny exercices a lot and you will become a concert pianist.
I guess just repeat something is not workng for me. The worst is the singing teachers who just ask me to sing while they play the piano. My current teacher says I need ear training so she makes me sing first with piano and then without. She says it's not an aspie issue at all. The aspie issue is communicating what you need and understanding what you need.
My teacher also uses acting techniques. Singing is all about taking you speaking voice into singing.
What do you think is the aspie issues? Don't we just say that everything an aspies struggle with is an aspie issue?
The question is always: wjat is asperger's syndrome?
I say this: having issues that you must work with in a very concrete way. Aspies ussually have difficulties with working memory so don't woek with too many things at once.
 
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