Glider

Do you think it is reasonable for you to expect a student to make an ‘ideal’ bonsai in their first attempt? Or second, or third, or fourth…?

A basic principle is that people only expend effort for reward. It is a basic rule and it applies to anything with a limbic system, not just to humans. Reward can take many forms, but in bonsai it is a sense of achievement in the process of creation and the beauty of a well formed, healthy tree. For most, that is the only reward as most are not paid for their efforts. We actually put in a lot of effort to achieve this and, as you know, the reward makes it worth the effort.

Due to their skill, experienced bonsai artists can put in less effort and achieve greater reward for their efforts. Students can’t. They have to put in a great deal of effort at first and will not necessarily achieve much reward for it at all.

If, as a teacher, you consider it your role to promote the art, then you have to understand another basic principle that again applies to anything with a limbic system. If a behaviour results in no reward (or a punishment), the probability of that behaviour occurring again is significantly reduced. If this pattern is repeated a sufficient number of times (and not as many as you would think), the behaviour will extinguish. The student will simply stop trying and move on to some other, more rewarding pastime.

So if, for example, you consider sarcasm and derision an appropriate way to make your point in a lesson, you can only reasonably expect your students to become discouraged and eventually, to give up altogether. Nor could you be said by any reasonable observer to be promoting anything.

If a student is putting in the effort, then they are performing a directed behaviour. If their results are not up to scratch, then your job as teacher is to modify the behaviour not discourage or extinguish it. You also have to encourage the student to keep trying, even though their result is not successful or rewarding. As a teacher, you have to have the student’s behaviour to work with in the first place.

How can you encourage continued effort in the face of no reward? Well (apparently), you have two options:

1) You can completely dismiss the effort the student put in to their work and dismiss their result, for example: “What is that? That is wrong. Take the wire off and do it again.”, which boils down to no reward, plus punishment. Moreover what does it actually teach?

Or

2) You can acknowledge their effort and try to modify their behaviour (i.e. redirect their effort), for example “I can see you put a lot of effort into that. It’s definitely an improvement over your last attempt, but you see here, how the wire doesn’t support these bends? You see how it’s not properly anchored, so if I move the branch this way, it won’t hold? Ok, good effort, have another go”.

Can you tell me honestly that these two approaches are likely to be equivalent in their efficacy?

The relationship between teaching and learning is only correlational. You can teach, but you can’t make another want to learn. If you want your student(s) to excel, then one of the best things you can do as a teacher is to encourage a student to want to continue learning. Not surprisingly, to do this, you have to be encouraging.


A further point concerning this response:

This is a Strawman argument. I’m neither promoting nor defending mediocrity in bonsai, I’m opposing mediocrity in teaching. Is it reasonable to suppose that being extremely good at a thing automatically makes one as good at teaching it?

I absolutely agree with your point that mediocrity should be discouraged. It is perfectly reasonable to hold excellence in the highest regard and to teach students to aim for it wherever possible. What I do not understand is why my point that there are more and less effective ways of doing so is receiving such derision.

You are evidently experienced in the art of bonsai, and so I respect your views on bonsai (at least those I have read here and in other places). This does not mean necessarily that I would accept blindly everything you say, but if I had an issue with anything you said, I would address it and present my reasoning with respect.

I am experienced in teaching and research into teaching method and I have presented my qualification in those areas as evidence of that experience. Why then is it any less reasonable for me to expect some respect for my views on teaching and why do you consider it acceptable to respond to those views with strawman arguments and sarcasm?

By all means, take issue, but present a case.

Do you believe your opinion concerning the so-called ‘soft’ sciences in any way reduces the validity of anything I have said here?

If you are a ‘hard’ scientist well versed in logic, then you should know that thinly veiled insults to my discipline do not constitute a rebuttal.

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Experience is knowledge gained immediately after it was needed.