DAY TWENTY SIX

Have you ever tried teaching someone a skill? 

 

They say that the best way of understading a thing is to try to teach it. I can attest to that, up to a point. I have 'taught' stuff, or at least led workshops and given presentations - I even trained as a teacher but never pursued it as a career - and yes, the amount of preparation one needs to do, which is in a ratio of about 10:1 between background and content actually delivered does mean that you take a deep dive into a subject. You also have to think about how best to get that content across, which means thinking about other factors such as the time available, the setting, age and prior knowledge of the audience and so on.

 

In saying all this, I have never tried to teach a skill; the teaching I have done has always been about passing on (at least that was the intention) knowledge, insight and understanding. The only two exceptions was when for fun I ran a workshop in tying knots, which now I come to think of it was part of training course I was attending about training other people, and when I tried to teach my children the rudiments of woodworking. They were predictably bored by the whole thing after a few minutes. Moral of that story, let the pupils come to the master when they are ready!

This all comes to mind because I have been watching YouTube videos in one of my regular attempts to improve - more accurately, get started - with drawing and sketching technique. As I mentioned in this post here drawing, sketching, painting always seem a bit beyond my abilities.

The people on YouTube are a mixed bunch. Some are clearly professional teachers who have been required to prepare and think about the best way to get across the points they want to make. Through their experience of trying to teach others in real life they have prior knowledge of the kinds of assumptions, mistakes and questions which beginners are prey to and can address them on screen. Their videos are concise, organised, and the words match the action - what they describe is what they are actually showing you.

 

Then there are those who clearly want to teach but haven't really thought about it as much as they perhaps should have done before touching the record button. They tend to ramble a bit, don't always have the words to match what they want to say, and the viewer has to do quite a bit of mental sifting and shifting in order to make the sense of things that the tutor should have made sense of for them.

And then there's the third group, people who have both skills and a passion for their subject and who want to share it. Unfortunately many of them think that posting a tutorial is the best way to share it and  get people to engage with them. I'm not so sure. The problem with this group is that their presentation can be a bit chaotic - I've just watched one that never got to the point - and can even border on simply showing off. They also have the problem of unconscious competence (discussed in an earlier post) in that they've gone beyond the point of actually being aware of what they are doing when drawing, and still less are they able to describe the processes they are applying, certainly not to a beginner.

In a closing-the-circle kind of way, these people might benefit most from trying to teach people in real life as it will force them to consider their skill and artistry and what it is they are in fact doing when making a line, drawing a house or whatever. They might realise there is more to teaching something than actually just demonstrating it.

 

Bu here's the thing I find most interesting: For me at least, it is the personality of the presenter that seems to matter most. I can forgive all sorts of presentational mistakes if the person seems sincere, or passionate, or even just quirky in some way. Equally I can be put off by the clearest presentation if it appears too slick, too well presented in fact. 

 

In general I like things (and people) to be a little rough around the edges and not too perfect. There are few areas in life where we actually need perfection, and in matters of art, craft, and making, it may actually be a barrier sometimes. It may suck the personality and humanity from an object or interaction. This is not an excuse for settling for shoddy or second-rate work, but it is wise counsel about the need to allow and learn to appreciate imperfection sometimes.

Remind me to write about wabi-sabi in more detail.

Onwards...imperfectly.

Picture credit: Golavachevskiy by Alexey Venetsianov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons