Charlie and I watched a movie last night that I had already seen once but wanted my wife to experience it. It was called “Whiplash”, and one of the featured actors was J.K. Simmons (the wise Farmers’ Insurance spokesperson), who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.
Whiplash is a very tense, upsetting movie about a drummer prodigy at a prestigious music academy who is pushed to his absolute limit by a hard-driving, sadistic teacher (Simmons). The brutality of the “instruction” is stomach-turning and the effect on students is disturbing. In fact, one commits suicide. The culmination of the drummer’s education occurs when he is, seemingly, set up to fail by the instructor but triumphs instead. “The ends justify the means”, I guess.
I’ve done some teaching over the years, but I’ve never resorted to bullying and humiliation to achieve results. It’s just not my style. Then, again, maybe I wasn’t effective enough: maybe I didn’t drive my charges to their absolute best?
I recall being “pushed” by athletic coaches in my youth. I was a natural athlete, to some degree, and I didn’t have to work too hard to succeed. That changed when I went to high school. I ran into a couple of coaches who weren’t satisfied with my natural ability and wanted me to push myself. I didn’t realize at the time (my Mom fibbed my birthdate on my kindergarten admissions application) that I was the youngest Freshman at my high school. Therefore, I was the least mature, and didn’t handle well coaches who got in my face about technique, hustle, attitude, etc. I reacted by quitting the football and baseball teams in a huff. (The sad thing was that they were my best sports!) I eventually got Varsity letters in basketball and cross country, probably because I ran into easy-going coaches who found a way to get the best out of me.
I was a swimming instructor back in the day when I was a lifeguard/manager of a public pool. Success there was measured in avoiding drowning (for beginners), mastery of swim strokes (for intermediates), proficiency (for swim team participants), and lifesaving skills (for Water Safety Instructors). No one ever drowned on my watch and some of my students went on to save drowning kids in pools and at the beach. Mission accomplished, I suppose.
When I hooked up with Charlie at age 25 and inherited her four young boys, I also assumed the responsibility for educating the young lads. For better or worse, I was raised “old school” by my Dad: i.e. carrot and stick. It was the only method I was acquainted with, so it was employed on my youngsters. For the most part, they were willing participants in the adventure, learned right from wrong, learned how to treat their brothers and acquaintances, and learned how to respect their elders. All of this was reinforced by the lessons learned at school, of course. Transgressions were dealt with by corporal punishment, restrictions, and such, which is the way I was taught.
My style generally worked: the four boys all turned out to be good citizens and productive members of society. With some false starts, all of them found their perfect life partner and are now doing well financially and family-wise. They’ve all made mistakes, of course, just like everyone else who has ever lived. Have they made the most out of their lives? I don’t think so, and it’s probably my fault for not pushing them harder in their studies and providing better advice on becoming adults and assuming responsibility for their actions.
I was a manager in a huge bureaucracy for decades and had to pass along my knowledge and wisdom to scores of college-grads who were just starting up the corporate ladder. I never thought of myself as an educator while I was doing my job, but I had expectations of my subordinates which I expected them to meet or exceed. Most of them did, which might reflect on lessons that I passed along or the fact that I hired good people in the first place. That is probably the highest skill of a manager: finding the right candidate in a pool of hard-charging, often exaggerating, hopefuls.
Probably my hardest tutoring job as a manager was trying to pass along basic writing skills to an underling who had experience and academic credentials (a Master’s Degree). Our basic job at the Executive Office of the County of Riverside was to provide the governing body (the Board of Supervisors) with concise reports on budgetary and operational policy issues and make recommendations. My employee was a smart guy who could gather the pertinent information, write it up in a report, and… totally exasperate the reader, because there would be no logical “read” of his report. This guy had a bad habit of disorganization in his prose. I used a lot of red ink editing his drafts, having to circle important thoughts and reposition them in the report to make sense. It was exasperating for me and for him. I basically had to rewrite all of his submissions to the Board of Supervisors so that they could understand what was being asked of them.
In my thirty-year career at the County of Riverside, that was probably the closest that I came to going nuclear on an employee (a la the Whiplash music instructor). Fortunately for the employee, he was nearing retirement and I didn’t have the guts to fire or demote him. He certainly had topped out in the bureaucracy as far as I was concerned. If I’d had more time with him, in his earlier years, I could probably have crafted him into a decent writer. On the other hand, one “can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear”. The guy had limitations, probably as a result of being doused with Agent Orange in Vietnam. Sometimes, as a manager, you just have to play with the cards you are dealt.
At around the time when it was my turn to retire, my son Tim and wife Shanon welcomed into this world their third child who was named after their grandfather… Craig! So, we shared a bond from the beginning. And it just so happened to turn out that Charlie and I (mainly me) did a lot of babysitting and mentoring of the young lad in his first five years. Tim and Shanon lived in the same community and I had lots of time on my hands, so Craig and Craig were almost joined at the hip for five days a week. I taught the little tyke how to talk, walk, swim, do all of the rides at the local amusement parks, become observant, talk with sarcasm, get along with his classmates in pre-school, and have empathy towards others. Sure, his parents helped, too, but Craig and I developed a strong bond because of the adventures that we had together.
Craig has turned out to be a fine man: I’m very proud of him.
I would like to say that I’ve had similar good results in mentoring my four-legged friends but… who knows if they even understand what I’m trying to get them to do.
For a number of years, I had a horse named Louie. He was great guy when I got him, about five years old and proficient in most equine skills. I would like to think that I developed him into a great trail and arena performer, but the truth is that he probably just endured me. We worked a lot with cattle, and he would do pretty much what I desired (in terms of herding and sorting out cows), but I’m thinking that he went mostly on instinct, as he was a quality-bred quarterhorse. The dude would show me who was Boss when I came to the large corral to throw a rope over his neck and would simply wander away from me, making me work hard to catch and saddle him. He was schooling me, for sure. If I didn’t have carrots or something else to bribe him, I could be in for five minutes of jogging and cornering the beast.
Dogs, on the other hand, seem to want to please. They know where their next meal comes from and they don’t want to upset the natural order of things. I’ve found that teaching our five Boston Terriers basic commands, tricks, and behaviors is fairly simple. At least that’s what I thought until I ran into Vinnie, our latest. He’s a bit stubborn and has some personality issues that probably stem from mistreatment/lack of socialization when he was a puppy.
I am using the Koehler Method on poor Vinnie, which is similar in some respects to the techniques employed by Professor Fletcher in Whiplash. More stick than carrot, if you follow my drift, in the effort to focus his attention on his master (me) while out on a walk. After a couple of weeks, Vinnie is walking loosely at my side, under leash, pretending to be subservient to the Boss. However, when another dog appears in the distance, Vinnie focuses on that object and loses the bond that we had a few minutes earlier. If we get too close to the other dog, Vinnie gets amped up in a scary way, barking and lunging. I absolutely hate this kind of aggressive behavior in other people’s dogs, so steps are going to have to be taken to put the kibosh on these antisocial antics.
The local dog trainer who is guiding me in this training feels that I am not being strict enough with Vinnie and not following the Koehler Method to a tee. I’m not, I will agree, because some of the training techniques involve caging the dog and starving it of food. Sure, I agree that this would result in a more amenable student, but I have a problem mistreating an animal that I love. Mister Softie, that’s me, I suppose.
I’ve ordered a special collar for Vinnie that will “go off” (i.e. vibrate and make noise) when he begins to throw such tantrums. Hopefully, the both of us can work through this problem without much further ado. I would hate to have to employ a shock collar; it would make me feel like a Nazi Brownshirt, clubbing bystanders who fail to cheer “Heil Hitler!”.
The shame of this is that Vinnie and I are best buddies: he follows me everywhere, naps in my lap while I watch TV, comes to me when I call from another part of the property, sleeps with me at night and, lately, walks obediently next to me on-leash most of the time. On a scale of 100, he’s a 90 right now. Can we get to 100? Will we still be BFF’s?
Like the pushy music teacher in Whiplash, I just need to get Vinnie over the nextobstacle togreatness.
Just try a bit harder, Son. You can do it!