Difficulties with college music professors

[estlhope]

Hello! I am having some problems with the music department at my college, and I'm not quite sure what to do. I used to be a member here under a different screen name a looooong time ago, so I thought I would come back and see if you guys had anything to say. I'm sorry this is so long!

Claudia, who is the piano teacher/theory teacher, is about to drive everyone nuts. She doesn't actually teach the class. She gives us a chapter in the book to read, then when we get to class, we never talk about what we've read, we just sit there, and "practice musicianship". Which means that we do rhythm patterns, and practice melodic dictation, or something like that. We had our first exam yesterday, and she didn't give us the study guide until the day before the exam. There have been two days so far where on the syllabus schedule she gave us, class was cancelled. Instead of actually cancelling class, she gave us packets of things to do, and we had to all still go to class, and do the practicing musicianship stuff. There were also two days that were on the syllabus as review for the exam, and they never happened. It was more of the same practicing things. The only thing that even had to do with the exam was her passing out the study guide on Monday. After the class on Monday, every single member of the class left fighting either large amounts of anger, tears, or a combination of both. All of us. This isn't just something that I'm trying to deal with, it is all of us.

Tasia is the choir/voice/music history professor. In music history, it is really frustrating, because the way she teaches assumes a rather large amount of prior knowledge. I'm doing ok, because I had a wonderful teacher. But the other four people in the class aren't doing so well. She talks down to us if we don't know the answer, or if we do know the answer, but don't phrase it in the exact same way that she thinks it should be said. Like, today, we were talking about Stravinsky, and what made him different. I said that he composed in many different genres throughout the seventy years of his career, and that was one of the things that made him different from Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. She jumped all over that, and spent five minutes talking about how I couldn't put them in that box, and how dare I say something like that. Didn't I know that they all wrote lots of different genres, depending on what the specialty was... They all wrote symphonies, and operas, and concertos, and sonatas... Then, the very next sentence out of her mouth is about how Stranvinsky was different because he wrote in so many different musical styles throughout his career, and this is what made him different. Today, she kept us more than 10 minutes late because she still had things she needed to say, or something. She has this massive list of things to get through in 50 minutes. I don't know that we could cover it all if she just read us her notes. She gets upset with us if there is more than three seconds of silence after she asks a question, and starts yelling at us for being uprepared, and not participating in class. So, it is a fairly consistent thing for us to be kept in class late. People are late for other classes/work pretty regularly because of her. We all got an email from her yesterday with an assignment in it. We have to write a five page research paper. She gave us the title of the paper, a list of sources we have to go through, and detailed instructions about how we are going to go through them, and the kinds of notes we need to take in order to sucessfully write this paper. This five page paper that we found out about last night is due at 8:00 am on Monday morning. You heard about the Impressionism project that she assigned us. What kind of professor is able to randomly, and at will, assign major projects like that? Especially since this is an undergrad class, that is worth two credit hours... I don't mind doing the work, but I budget my time very carefully because I have a lot to do. I don't have all the time in the world to just drop everything to do random large projects for music history.

So, I guess what I wanted to get your opinion on is what should I do about all of this? All of us are having significant doubts about being able to survive the next two/three years with these two people. They are the only two professors in the music department, so it isn't like I can go talk to the department chair. The next person in the chain of command would be the Dean of Academic Affairs. I don't know if it is appropriate to go directly to him, or if this is just one of those things that we are all going to have to deal with, or what. I understand that being a music major is a whole lot of work, and requires more than most other majors. I really do get that. I'm not complaining about all of the hours of work spent on lessons for one credit hour on my transcript. I'm not complaining about the extra money I have to pay for lessons, concerts, and music. I get that it isn't like English where you write a paper, and you are done. But these seem like significant issues of teacher/student relationships, and respecting the guidelines about what a class should entail, and all of those sorts of things. Especially for history, which is a two credit hour class. Since it is every single one of us feeling this, I kinda feel like it has gotten to the point where we at least need to be heard. Tasia is up for tenure this year, and Claudia is up the year after. I don't want to do anything to screw around with their job prospects. I don't want this to be us against them, so i realize that the timing here isn't really great... But at the same time, this has been a major battle for two years, and it is only getting worse and worse. I just don't know what to do anymore.

[faulty_damper]

Wow, and welcome to the world of academic music.

Here is what I wanted to do with one professor at my current school: get him fired.

He's a famous concert pianist who is extremely well-regarded within the music community, even the faculty at Juilliard admire him.  However, his high-recognition doesn't make up for the fact that he sucks at what he was hired to do: teach.  He has a terrible personality, unfriendly, un-serving, hostile to fellow faculty and even his own students...

But because he has such world-wide renown and fame, his students admire his ability to play and follows his "instruction" very well, even to their own detriment.  Did my classmates become better pianists?  Quite the opposite: they injure themselves often, practice 30-40 hours a week or more, and their musicianship skills decline and they sound terrible when they play.  I don't even associate with them anymore because they  can't see past their own noses or at what they've become.  And I could have been one of them because he was my teacher the first semester.

I wanted to get him fired so that the school would hire someone else who was better qualified to instruct.  But it turns out that he wasn't originally hired to teach, he was hired as music director of the school which included automatic tenure.  He didn't last this position and a new director took his place the following year.

This upset some faculty members, especially the other piano faculty - they wanted to get him fired from his position.  And so in the beginning, there was much conflict.  But soon, one of the professors, knowing nothing can be done about it, started to suck up to him; she VERY much admired him.


So what could I do?  I wanted to start a petition to get him fired but he was already tenured.

So what can you do?  Talk to the dean.  Start a petition detailing the issues you've had and have other students sign it.  Even though you may not benefit from it, future students at your school may.  If you have so many issues now, imagine what would happen if these instructors were guaranteed a teaching position for the rest of their lives, and imagine how many students would have to suffer if you didn't at least make an effort to stop it.

[rc]

So these two are the only ones teaching at that school, so you can't get away from them...  Have you tried confronting them about your problems?  It's a long shot, not always easy, not always successful, but at least worth a try.

Is it possible for you to transfer to another school?  It's not convenient, but far preferable to dealing with abuse, wasting two years away.

I haven't been to post-secondary, but I've had some experience with difficult people.  Sometimes I've been able to reason with them, but most often I find I can just walk away - leave 'em completely behind.  Not once have I regretted that, whatever they had to offer I've been able to find elsewhere without sacrificing my sanity and self-respect.

[thalberg]

Well, estlhope, I have sort of an encouraging story for you.  There was a similar situation at my undergrad--one teacher was causing all her students a lot of misery.  Same story as what you described--inconsistent policies, last minute huge projects, horrible ways of dealing with students personally.  Lots of anger and lots of tears even from the most sweet and level-headed students.

Well, lots of people wrote letters to the deans office, and it took a while, but she got fired.  I was sad to see it happen because she's a human after all. However, the band she conducted had students deserting it left and right, and she had the clarinet section down to one person!

Honestly, I really think you should do something.  Go and talk to the dean personally and ask advice as to how you should handle it.  He may tell you to write him a letter so he can show it to the right people or have documentation.  Or he may have some other approach.  But do something.

I also think that transferring schools should not be out of the question.  School is too important and expensive for you to settle for this kind of education and experience.

I settled for certain things in my education and I really regret it.  Better to have a year out of school than a year wasted on bad schooling.   This is experience talking.

[jazzyprof]

First, talk to other students in those classes to find out if they feel the same way you do about these professors.  If a significant number share your sentiments, you should get together and list all your grievances.  Also list some ways you would like those professors to treat you...for example, not keeping you for an extra 10 minutes after class since you have other classes to go to.  Then arrange for a bunch of you to meet with each of the professors.  Perhaps you can all show up at their office hours.  Then you can very nicely tell the professors you'd like to give them some feedback about how the class is going.  You might begin by mentioning some things you like about the class.  After that you all can talk about the things you don't like.  Don't do it in a confrontational style. 

Believe it or not, your professors do care about you and want to see you do well.  They may be so passionate about their subject that they can't understand why people would not want to sit an extra 10 minutes after lecture to hear even more fascinating stuff and do more drills!  Some professors are quite clueless about how to teach, how to manage a class, and what constitutes a reasonable workload.  But they really mean no harm.  They get no pleasure out of torturing you.  So, please, help them become better teachers by giving them feedback.  They really haven't done anything that demands a report to the dean at this stage.  If you went to the dean and said "yeah, my teacher made us come to class on two days when her schedule said class was cancelled" what do you think the dean would say?  Most likely he'd say "you mean your professor is so interested in your education that she even holds classes on off days?  I'd better give her a promotion and a raise!"   
 

[elspeth]

Isn't there a system in place for feedback anyway?

The system at my university was brilliant - I was reading physics, not music, but the principle goes. Mid-way through every semester, every lecturer HAD - it was the university rule - to give out a feedback form to the students studying their subject. The form asked for comments on the subject, the lecturer, the course material, the facilities provided for us to help us learn, and space for our own comments. These would be collected in and given to the department secretary who would collate all the results, type them up, file a copy with the university, send a copy to the head of department, and to the lecturer. In our department at least, a week or two later, the lecturer would then spend a lecture talking to us about the feedback. It would go up on the projector so we could all read it - and you knew it hadn't been edited because you could see your own comments, all they did was put stars over any bad language -  and we would talk through with the lecturer what was good, what was bad, why the bad stuff happened (if there was a reason), and either why it had to be that way or what both the lecturer and department were going to do about it, and what was expected of us to help the bad things improve. If anything came out in the feedback that was so serious to make that forum inappropriate, an announcement was made to us that something had come up that was being dealt with at a higher level and we were kept informed of what it was and how it was progressing.

If there isn't some mechanism for student feedback to be heard by the department and appropriately dealt with, then you are studying in an establishment with fundamental organisational issues, quite apart from your specific issues with these two teachers.

I think you should approach the Dean or someone in authority and make your feelings heard calmly and through the proper channels. But I also think you would be justified in considering changing schools - and if you do, make sure you write to the Dean to explain why you felt compelled to do so. Thalberg's absolutely right, your education is too important and too expensive to fritter away through something like this.

[mattgreenecomposer]

Wow,  If this wasn't the story of my life!!!!

I am soooo sorry you have to deal with incompetent music teachers.  There is nothing worse, and it is such a shame that in today's music schools things have gotten this bad.  I had so many problems with faculty that just plain out "sucked" at what they do.  If I could go back in time I would have never gone to music school and saved me a ton of money.  On a positive note, there are good teachers in Universities but they are just rare.  Its a shame because they usually get covered up by some bureaucratic BS. and never get to where they should be.  Its your responsibility if you want to learn to "hunt them down."

The most important thing to realize in the college setting today is this:  The purpose of college has been flipped on its side and is NOT TO GET YOU A JOB WHEN YOU GET INTO THE REAL WORLD!
Yes it's true, I had a proffesor tell me that once directly.  Its to get you in and out like a McDonalds and get your $money so you can pay for the football team in most cases to raise the money for the school.  This means it is not there job to teach you what you want to know or are there to know. (harmony, thoery, technique etc).  I know that sounds pathetic but I've heard it from the horses mouth.

The petition thing "fualty-damper" mentioned definately helps.  I had that done at my school and many students signed it and I talked to the head of the music department.
Good Luck.

[estlhope]

Hey everyone! Thanks for all of your advice. I've been talking with the other people in my class, and we are working on a list of things that need to be dealt with. I have a good friend who is a professor, but not in the music department, and she is helping in a mediator type role right now to advise us. We have all tried talking to the professors themselves before, and it doesn't do any good, so I've been told that the next step is to talk to the chair of the division. We'll see how that goes. At my school, we do have feedback forms that we fill out, but not until the very end of the semester. The professors can't see the comments unless there are more than ten people in the classes (I go to a pretty small school, just about 1000 students). They never, ever show them to us, and we never ever talk about them. So the feedback forms are only helpful sometimes.

wish me luck!

[quantum]

Strength in numbers!  If there are numerous people dealing with similar hardships you do have a right to speak up.  While not unusual (if such things happen not too often), the issues you mentioned are beyond the norm for professors of any subject. 

I once had a class that was taught by who many (students, TA's, university staff) considered as one of the worst profs in the Fine Arts faculty.  Everyone knew him - even people in fine arts departments - because he was continually reported for his antics.  In his class he spoke English, but you couldn't understand a single sentence.  He would race through a list of 20 or so names or terms you had to know in a few seconds and not even stop to spell or clarify.  All 10 TA's of a large class once all walked out in protest of what he did to a student.  I don't want to mention Dr. James *cough* name but, he was up for tenure and we are all glad he wasn't granted it. 

----

Brush up on your argumentative skills.  If a situation comes up again where you are questioned to your stance you have to defend it!  If a prof pounds you because they think they know all you have to stand tall and believe in your answer and defend it to the death.  Doesn't matter who is right or wrong, it's who can defend their stance most convincingly.  This is also a trait that is looked for on academic papers so it is a good one to have.