The "Me" generation- who is really to blame?

I thought I'd share with you an entry for my Teaching Journal I'm doing for one of my key subjects as part of my course. It was brewing for quite some time and I felt I needed to get it out. But more importantly, I wanted more people to read it rather than just my lecturer. I expect there to be some disagreement on this, and that's fine, but perhaps this is one of the great problems facing teachers today in how to deal with students.

 Funnily enough, this entry is not inspired by events at my observation school, but rather at rehearsals for my musical. I write it here because I feel it reflects a dilemma that music and performing arts teachers, especially, face. How much is too much?

 When I was going through High School, I was never the best performer in my year level. I was never asked to play solos for big important events and I was never singled out for praise in my playing. I had to really work to get decent performance grades- and this continued on into my days at the Flinders Street School of Music (a branch of TAFE). I'm not complaining at all. In fact, I liked it. If I didn't feel like I had worked to get something, then I rarely tried, knowing it would be there.

 But what about those students who were always in spotlight? The ones who were marked as "special" by the heads of Music and Arts? The ones who never seemed to practice, yet always got the A's and the plaudits. The ones who said "I just looked at this song this morning, let's see how I go..." and then pulled another high mark out of their back passage. I despair for them. They will never know, until it's too late, their talent means little without the attitude to match it.

 Never being particularly special in the eyes of my teachers meant I had to practice and study hard. Sometimes for little reward. I remember in my TAFE years, working on a Schubert song for nearly a year (a very long one called "Viola") and slaving away at the intricacies of it. I also made sure I got a brilliant singer who would smash it vocally out of the park and push me to improve. On the night of the performance I played well enough that I thought I'd probably pull off a credit. Nope. I got a P1. Why this particular one stuck out in my mind was that I knew I had done the work and my teacher at the time (who had very little time for me as a player) even commented how I had gotten under the skin of this rather tricky song. I knew I wouldn't get top marks but it still felt like a kick in the guts. Of course, the usual suspects got their distinctions and high distinctions playing much harder pieces than my own- but that did not bother me surprisingly.

 Today's heads of Music (or Arts) face a serious dilemma that no other head of department faces- promoting the school. I am pretty sure that the head of science isn't asked at a week's notice to provide some entertainment for a school function ("Just line up your year 12's and have them recite the periodic table"). Naturally, the head of music is going to pick the people who play the best and can dazzle a crowd. The 8th grade pianist who plays a flashy piece by Gershwin will always get picked over the 5th Grade pianist doing some minor movement from a Beethoven sonata. Even if not explicitly said by the head, the message that comes to that first student is clear: "You are the best, and always will be".

 Reality checks are needed. I'd love to take all the top music students in the state and sit them down with a couple industry insiders to spell things out for them. Talent is a valuable asset, but so is your attitude. The arrogance I see from the current crop of senior music students (and drama students) is staggering. Partly I blame the teachers and partly the parents. "Oh you are so supremely talented. You'll get work no matter WHERE you go." No you won't. You might get opportunities that aren't available to others but if you come in all swagger and "look at me", you will soon be put in your place (and unless you majorly adjust this attitude, you won't be asked back no matter how good you are at playing). To that end, I'd like to suggest a few things to these students.

1) Once you make a commitment, stick to it. I have given up more lucrative work because I had already made a commitment that was pretty hard to break without majorly inconveniencing the people I was working with. Can you imagine what would have happened to a production of "Footloose" if I had turned around not 6 weeks before opening night and said "sorry, I've got a better offer from State Opera."? or a similar thing less than six months later with "The Producers"? The fact is, it probably cost me some work with the Opera company but my reputation for being a committed person is intact and I still get work.

2) If you're needed, be there. If you've made the commitment to be at several rehearsals a week then, barring accidents or illness, you are there. If, after you've made that commitment, you suddenly start finding the work piling up, then tough. Make a calendar, make a study routine or work schedule. If you know you can't do it, don't commit to it.

3) Everyone starts at the bottom rung of the ladder. At some point early on, you are going to do a gig that is poorly paid (if at all). The venue will be lousy, the performances only marginally better than the venue. Welcome to the entertainment industry. By shunting those gigs off to other performers what you will eventually find is that they will earn the "cred" while you sit there in your ivory tower looking down your nose at everyone waiting for the phone to ring. It won't. And by the way, you need to do quite a number of these lowly gigs.

4) Your attitude gets noted. People talk to one another. A lot. Having sat on audition panels and received calls from other musical directors I can safely say that a sentence that goes "[insert name here] is really talented, but lousy at commitment. You'll never see them at rehearsals" is quite common. To be fair though, so is "[insert name here] is a brilliant team player- shame they aren't talented". Neither is a particularly good look.

 So who really is to blame for all this? Is it the students? Is it the parents? Is it the teachers? The answer is all three. As teachers, we rarely have the time to set out the realities of life after high school. We cocoon students in a bubble and wrap them in cotton wool never letting them get a sense of failure and that is sad. This is not, by the way, a recent development. It wasn't until I left high school 22 years ago that I found out the brutal truth of the industry and even then I only did that when I went to a national music camp and several players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra let us in on what it really takes to "make it". Since then, a lot of people my age have had children who are being even more protected than those from my generation.

 Do I have a magic solution to all this? Not really. But maybe teachers should occasionally choose the good-but-not-quite-as-good students to play. Make them work towards a gig that isn't being assessed. Put them in the spotlight and encourage them. Remind the bright ones that talent is only half the battle. It's a bitter pill to swallow sometimes but a necessary one.

 As parents, we should be encouraging our children for sure but reminding them that hard work and good attitude reaps rewards (and also that failures happen in life, and that they can often help us more than the successes). Surely THAT is more beneficial than just roundly praising their every move (I feel I should add at this point that a balance is needed here- encouraging and supporting yet also letting them know when they need to improve and do better. I'm certainly not condoning belittling children all the time either.)

 The more we prepare them for both the good AND the bad side of life on this planet, the more rounded a person they'll be. Is it really so hard to come to this conclusion?