Choral Caffeine: Professionalism Defined

(An excerpt from the article, “Unprofessional Airmanship Redefined” by Robert Mark on May 6th, 2013

Though the following comments are from an article on professional aviators, they are applicable to professionalism in every walk of life – including choral conductors.

Professionalism is a way of thinking about your work. Professionals don’t just understand the tasks they’re being paid to complete, they understand how all the pieces of everything in their profession fit together … and why. A professional (at least to me) understands the subtleties that produce a near perfect product or experience, whether that’s installing new carpeting in a home — clean up after yourselves and make sure everything fits before you leave — or flying an airplane near Virga — slow the airplane before you get too close since significant turbulence is highly probable.

And professionals wear their label proudly because they don’t need someone to tell them what to study next or what rule to follow. They care enough to dive into their careers and learn because they want to be the best.

It’s not a surprise to me any longer that young workers require more precise instructions than we did growing up. I’ve seen it in my graduate students at Northwestern too. But why? Where did we fail them?

Is this need to hold their hands and to be told what to do and what not to do simply fallout from too much technology or is it decades of lousy, indulgent parenting skills coming back to roost?

Ronald Richard Duquette says

May 22, 2013 at 8:31 am

I’d suggest a number of interrelated factors, irrespective of the field. First, the comment about “lousy, indulgent parenting skills” may seem to provide an answer, but it begs the most fundamental issue in parenting – it’s probably one of the most important “jobs” in the world, but it’s one where there’s no training for it (except what we got from our own parents). And that last parenthesis may offer some ideas: I’m older than a lot of parents of kids of this generation, so the forty-somethings who are parents of twenty-somethings today (I’m 61) are themselves the products of a parenting “style” that said, in essence, “do your own thing.” Well, when you haven’t a clue what that “thing” is, and you try all sorts of things over time, confusion is a likely – not a necessary – result. So, now we have the swing back of the pendulum, and we have had “helicopter parents” from the forty-somethings – hovering over their children, demanding impossible things from teachers, administrators, etc. – and all in the name of “everyone is special.” Really? If that’s true, then NO ONE is truly special. Frankly, most folks are kinda mediocre – but not here, not in EXCEPTIONAL America. We need to grow up as parents. We need to stop hounding teachers, administrators, politicians (well, at least about this) to insure that OUR TRULY SPECIAL CHILD (more so than everyone else’s TRULY SPECIAL CHILD) is insured EVERY opportunity to succeed – and by golly, we’re going to hover over everyone to make sure. So kids don’t play out in school yards anymore because they might get hurt/dirty/teased/whatever. Okay; I got all of those; I survived. We’re so germophobic that we’re now discovering our kids can’t shake off opportunistic diseases that would’ve been nothing notable 50 years ago. We’re denying kids vaccinations because we believe every nut case who argues that this causes autism or other awful things – really? We have lost the capacity for sturdiness – in thought and body – and we’re transmitting this disease/disability to our kids wholesale, all in the name of “protecting” them.

Politicians respond to parental worries (magnified by the press) that our kids can’t compete academically at the very tip-top of the game by doing what? Well, here in Virginia, the problem got turned over to bureaucrats (please read “bean-counters”) who know only how to do one thing – count beans. Counting involves adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing – so, we got the Standards of Learning and the accompanying tests to “measure” things. Did they consult with educational experts? None except those who reinforced the idea that the EASIEST (not the best) way of measuring things was by a strict counting system. So what we now have is a system that adds pressure on the teachers to perform in such a way that their future is assured by having a constantly rising number of kids pass – and to do that, they have to “teach to the test” instead of “to the subject”; it now subtracts true creativity and original thought because those aren’t mensurable (wonder why the arts are catching hell and the STEM machine is rolling so well?); it multiplies the likelihood that failures will force more and more reliance on facts, rather than thought; and it divides kids into the SOL “successful” and “failures.” This is insanity. How about giving teaching back to teachers, and being willing to let them teach to the subject. Are there bad schools with horrible teachers? Yes. Should there be certain objective measures of success – such as being able to write a sentence in English without significant grammatical errors, or recognizing George Washington and some of his accomplishments, or being able to locate the United States on a map? – sure – but we need to stop hyperventilating about the entire process and thinking numbers alone will fix it.

Given that the young human has become more attached to parents over time – remember that in the medieval period, kids were considered adult and able to marry at 14 and 12 (and, in cases of nobility, even earlier, even though nothing would be likely to come of it); that during the Baroque era of Louis XIV and Charles II, they assumed actual power at age 16 (much advised, but still, the king ruled, not just reigned); but now, we have kids who are in their “caves” (their rooms) well into their twenties – well, it’s no surprise that they aren’t anxious to leave home. (And I’m not pointing fingers at anyone else; I’ve got a nearly 22-year-old upstairs as I write.) Things have changed societally and sociologically, in part because of the increasing technology and the pace of that technological change, in part because of a tendency in the species to protect for longer and longer, because we parents fear our kids can’t really hack it “out there” and, understandably, we want to protect them. Perhaps part of the solution comes from letting them fall down when they’re little, and NOT rushing over to pick them up (they’ll stop crying sooner); maybe it means that if Johnny gets an F in English, he just gets told “work harder” and consulting with – not attacking, mind you – the teacher to find out if there’s really a problem other than laziness or inattention to deal with (dyslexia? hearing?); letting the kids go outside and play (and play hard – especially the boys) and finding out that maybe ADD/ADHD diagnoses are because we have so circumscribed children that they CAN’T play, we DAREN’T let them – and recognize some things about our society that aren’t working so well. I could go on, very easily; but the problem is staring at us in a mirror.

Ron

Comments

Marie Grass Amenta says

May 22, 2013 at 9:56 pm

I was very intrigued by the the title of this ChoralBlog…….but I am not sure I agree with this little item. Yes, I do agree with a portion…..know all about your profession, inside and out, prepare before and clean up after….but to me, it goes beyond just that in our profession….it’s not just the mechanics of conducting or singing or playing an instrument or understanding the history of the era of a piece or even the group dynamics of a choir. Here are some things I believe define CHORAL MUSICIANS as professionals :

Be on time, if not early to rehearsals–whether you are conductor or singer—and be prepared, again, whether conductor or singer. Yes, it’s obvious, but many feel *they* are so special and so much The Professional as to not need to do what the peons are expected to do and should be the exception.

Shut up and make music–if you are a singer, shut up and sing, even if you, too, are a choral conductor. Everybody does thing slightly differently but don’t add your two cents when you are one of the choir! If you are the director, don’t bad mouth anyone else while you are rehearsing, shut up and conduct and direct the rehearsal. Don’t diss the director of any local competing group–and don’t allow your singers to diss ’em in your presence, either! Be above it all so no one can ever say you dragged anyone through the mud. *Mud* has a way of clinging to the *mud thrower*.

Don’t believe your own hype–yep, you might be the greatest thing since sliced bread but as one of your singers, I want to know if you want the ‘s’ on the eighth rest–I’m not a mind reader. I wouldn’t have asked if you had told us or if it were obvious, so don’t go ballistic about having your genius misused. Just tell me where to put it and get it over with and I’ll respect you.

Research, keep your own musicianship current and if you don’t know something ADMIT IT–Keep yourself as good a musician as possible–research your repertoire and practice your own instrument regularly. Be a Mensch. And for goodness sake, be consistant!

Save the drama for your Mama–for some reason, some think we are all living in an episode of “Glee” and if there isn’t at least one hissy fit every other month or so, you’re not *really* a professional musician….as if professional musicians are so determined to get perfection, they can throw music at their choirs and get away with it because that’s what professionals do. It makes me tired even thinking about it.

I’ve been writing essays on professionalism and the choral director and may submit several to the ChoralBlog in the next few weeks, Scott. It’s something I believe is sadly overlooked, not just in our education but in our lives because it’s not clearly understood in as part of our Choral Art.

Marie

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Ronald Richard Duquette says

May 22, 2013 at 8:31 am

I’d suggest a number of interrelated factors, irrespective of the field. First, the comment about “lousy, indulgent parenting skills” may seem to provide an answer, but it begs the most fundamental issue in parenting – it’s probably one of the most important “jobs” in the world, but it’s one where there’s no training for it (except what we got from our own parents). And that last parenthesis may offer some ideas: I’m older than a lot of parents of kids of this generation, so the forty-somethings who are parents of twenty-somethings today (I’m 61) are themselves the products of a parenting “style” that said, in essence, “do your own thing.” Well, when you haven’t a clue what that “thing” is, and you try all sorts of things over time, confusion is a likely – not a necessary – result. So, now we have the swing back of the pendulum, and we have had “helicopter parents” from the forty-somethings – hovering over their children, demanding impossible things from teachers, administrators, etc. – and all in the name of “everyone is special.” Really? If that’s true, then NO ONE is truly special. Frankly, most folks are kinda mediocre – but not here, not in EXCEPTIONAL America. We need to grow up as parents. We need to stop hounding teachers, administrators, politicians (well, at least about this) to insure that OUR TRULY SPECIAL CHILD (more so than everyone else’s TRULY SPECIAL CHILD) is insured EVERY opportunity to succeed – and by golly, we’re going to hover over everyone to make sure. So kids don’t play out in school yards anymore because they might get hurt/dirty/teased/whatever. Okay; I got all of those; I survived. We’re so germophobic that we’re now discovering our kids can’t shake off opportunistic diseases that would’ve been nothing notable 50 years ago. We’re denying kids vaccinations because we believe every nut case who argues that this causes autism or other awful things – really? We have lost the capacity for sturdiness – in thought and body – and we’re transmitting this disease/disability to our kids wholesale, all in the name of “protecting” them.

Politicians respond to parental worries (magnified by the press) that our kids can’t compete academically at the very tip-top of the game by doing what? Well, here in Virginia, the problem got turned over to bureaucrats (please read “bean-counters”) who know only how to do one thing – count beans. Counting involves adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing – so, we got the Standards of Learning and the accompanying tests to “measure” things. Did they consult with educational experts? None except those who reinforced the idea that the EASIEST (not the best) way of measuring things was by a strict counting system. So what we now have is a system that adds pressure on the teachers to perform in such a way that their future is assured by having a constantly rising number of kids pass – and to do that, they have to “teach to the test” instead of “to the subject”; it now subtracts true creativity and original thought because those aren’t mensurable (wonder why the arts are catching hell and the STEM machine is rolling so well?); it multiplies the likelihood that failures will force more and more reliance on facts, rather than thought; and it divides kids into the SOL “successful” and “failures.” This is insanity. How about giving teaching back to teachers, and being willing to let them teach to the subject. Are there bad schools with horrible teachers? Yes. Should there be certain objective measures of success – such as being able to write a sentence in English without significant grammatical errors, or recognizing George Washington and some of his accomplishments, or being able to locate the United States on a map? – sure – but we need to stop hyperventilating about the entire process and thinking numbers alone will fix it.

Given that the young human has become more attached to parents over time – remember that in the medieval period, kids were considered adult and able to marry at 14 and 12 (and, in cases of nobility, even earlier, even though nothing would be likely to come of it); that during the Baroque era of Louis XIV and Charles II, they assumed actual power at age 16 (much advised, but still, the king ruled, not just reigned); but now, we have kids who are in their “caves” (their rooms) well into their twenties – well, it’s no surprise that they aren’t anxious to leave home. (And I’m not pointing fingers at anyone else; I’ve got a nearly 22-year-old upstairs as I write.) Things have changed societally and sociologically, in part because of the increasing technology and the pace of that technological change, in part because of a tendency in the species to protect for longer and longer, because we parents fear our kids can’t really hack it “out there” and, understandably, we want to protect them. Perhaps part of the solution comes from letting them fall down when they’re little, and NOT rushing over to pick them up (they’ll stop crying sooner); maybe it means that if Johnny gets an F in English, he just gets told “work harder” and consulting with – not attacking, mind you – the teacher to find out if there’s really a problem other than laziness or inattention to deal with (dyslexia? hearing?); letting the kids go outside and play (and play hard – especially the boys) and finding out that maybe ADD/ADHD diagnoses are because we have so circumscribed children that they CAN’T play, we DAREN’T let them – and recognize some things about our society that aren’t working so well. I could go on, very easily; but the problem is staring at us in a mirror.

Ron

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Choral Caffeine: Professionalism Defined

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