Remember how Mr. Miyagi taught The Karate Kid how to fight? Wax on/Wax off. Paint the fence. Don’t forget to breathe. A coach is the coach because he knows what the student needs to do to advance. A big problem for coaches is that the most precocious students also (naturally) think they know what they need to learn.
If Mr. Miyagi told Daniel that he needed endless repetition of certain specific hand movements to learn karate, Daniel would have rebelled and demanded to learn more and advance more quickly. Mr. Miyagi used ambiguity to evade conflict.
An artist with natural gift for expression needs to learn convention. But she may disagree with the teacher about how much time should be spent learning convention. If the teacher simply gives her exercises to do without explanation her decision to comply will be on the basis of an overall judgment of whether this teacher, on average, knows best. To instead say “You must learn conventions, here are some exercises for that” runs the risk that the student moderates the exercises in line with her own judgment about the importance of convention.
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March 19, 2013 at 11:21 am
Enrique
In addition to the problem of finding the optimal level of ambiguity, I have always what role (if any) a basketball o soccer coach plays when his players are on the court. It would be cool to run a experiment in which players are randomly assigned to teams, but in which only one-half the teams have coaches
March 19, 2013 at 11:25 am
Dennis O'Dea
People have looked at offense and defense in basketball by half, because the teams switch which basket they are attacking at the half, and hence whether the coach is within shouting distanced during offense or defense.
March 19, 2013 at 12:43 pm
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