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So when I was hiring a full-time teacher to teach my daughter as my version of homeschooling in 1997 and then again in 2007, that was professional and client? I don't get it. I viewed that as employer and employee. What did I lose by not viewing it as professional and client? Because to me, I'm wondering if it is a distinction without a difference or if I short changed my daughter in some way by viewing it in the wrong way.

While Employer and Client both pay the bills, I see significant differences.
Employer knows what job needs to be done and calls the shots about doing it.
Professional knows more about the situation, and directs the process with the client's permission, participation, and cooperation.

A restaurant manager tells the staff when to show up, what to do, and when to leave.
A doctor conducts examinations, makes diagnoses, provides treatment, and ideally sees improvement in the patient's condition.

I think Shy is saying that qualified teachers or piano teachers are more like the doctor in that they have more understanding about what needs to happen for education to take place.

I feel a bit trapped by the way you ask this question, Tyrone, because of the way you worded it about what you did for your daughter. In actual fact, we weren't there for the interview to know what happened exactly. I'd rather discuss the idea minus anything you did.

I work as a professional with clients these days, while my original profession was as a trained teacher, first in classrooms and then one-on-one. In my current profession, clients want me to provide a service. I know how to practice my profession, how I need to work, and also what kinds of cooperation I need from them. If the client tries to tell me how to do my job, or won't cooperate, then it prevents me from doing my work properly, and it affects the quality of what i can produce. As a teacher, the cooperation is even more tight, with the teacher taking on the leadership and guiding role. You may want your child to succeed in what she is learning, but a competent teacher will know how to get there, including the role of the parent and the student. The person hiring the professional may have little knowledge about the profession.

I was going to compare this to an employment situation, but ran into a snag. I've read papers on management, and in general, if the person hired have expertise and experience, they should be given independence - over-management will hamper success of the department and of the hired senior person(s). So some of the same things may apply.

Also (thinking) in employment you have a whole organization, with different "teams" and "team members" playing different roles. It has to be more controlled from the top down. You simply don't have that kind of relationship in private lessons. And in class lessons, the employer is the institution, not the parent.

In my relationship with my piano teacher, I definitely see it more as a professional/client relationship, and hopefully over time, if she really likes me and me her, I would hope our relationship includes more of a mentor/mentee relationship. Even she said that she would be kind of like a consultant to me, I suppose because I’m an adult that knows what I want in terms of goals. I personally don’t see our relationship as an employer/employee relationship and hope she doesn’t either. That just seems a little less personal than I’d like it to be.

I not only see employer/employee label in relation to teaching piano as impersonal, but diminishing of the credentials of the teacher and giving a lot of weight to the student as the employer. I have always viewed it as a mentor/mentee relationship as I am there to pick my teacher’s brain. I’ve never asked how she views it. She is really my educated, experienced coach 😊 (bless her heart, not an easy task)

Everyone deserves respect regardless of the nature of the relationship. Are there people who feel they get less respect from their employer? That's sad and is a situation which should be addressed. When I hire people for my company, they are all professionals. Some of them have PhDs. I just don't see the distinction there between employer-employee and other. Say I hire a fulltime teacher for my daughter. Or my local school system hires a teacher for the children in the school. It seems people are saying there is a difference in these two scenarios. I don't see it. I the local school system hires a teacher for the children in the school. They are an employer hiring an employee. If I hire a fulltime teacher for my daughter, I am an employer hiring an employee. The only difference in my mind is that in the case of me hiring a teacher for my daughter, a teachers union doesn't get involved. But otherwise, it seems the same to me. And if it is different because the degree of respect or disrespect, well that something that needs addressing.

My sister is a full professor at a major university. Yes, she is faculty. Yes, it is now difficult to fire her because she has tenure. But does this make her less of an employee of the university even though she has a PhD? That's what I meant earlier about a distinction without a difference. It seems that a lot of the issues people have with these terms are the "baggage" that comes with the term that is not inherent to the definitions themselves of either "employer" or "employee."

EDIT: I just walked over to my sister (who is a professional psychologist and psych professor, BTW), and asked her how she views her relationship to the one paying her, and she said definitely views the university as her employer and herself as an employee of the university.

Legally, a university hiring a professor and a school hiring a teacher are more likely to be an employer/employee relationship, but where a parent hires a piano teacher for his child, whether or not that relationship is an employer/employee relationship, or contractor relationship or some other kind of relationship is much less clear. It is highly unlikely to be an employer/employee relationship in my country and in many commonwealth countries. Employer/employee relationships tend to have a stronger element of control by the employer. The person who hires a piano teacher also does not pay the usual employer/employee payroll taxes required because the teacher is not on the employer’s payroll.

It’s not just about the “baggage” that may be tied to an employer/employee relationship. If I were to hazard an educated guess as to what kind of relationship a piano teacher has with the person who hired him/her, I think it would be similar to that of hiring a doctor or lawyer or other service provider.

I guess if we’re not concerned about the legal relationship, we could call it whatever kind of relationship we want, really.

Where do I start? 😢

That's so sad.

Sad, but more common than you think to get very little respect and even less impact at a corporate level. I manage multi-million dollar projects, and have worked in my industry for 30 years. I know I produce quality. Respect? Nada.

Respect and impact are different things though. I think one can be respected, yet not have corporate level impact in a major company.

Not talking about the corporate world here, but I assure you my employers would not know the word respect if it bit them on the bum. There are reasons why I’m still there but I wish I wasn’t. Anyhow, I still believe a teacher is a professional providing a service and definitely not an employee. I think if you started telling a teacher how to do their job, which is what the employer/employee comparison implies, then a good teacher would be saying goodbye to your business.

TS, you responded to a number of people but not to me, which is too bad because I was trying to define the actual working relationship. That included differences within employment relationships themselves. So trying again:

It has nothing to do with respect. If you hire a professional for a service, that professional knows what is involved in his job, how to shape and organize it, and also what the client's role is (depending on the nature of the work). Do do his job properly, the professional must have control over what he is doing, including to a certain degree, a kind of guiding role for the client. As well, unless in related professions that dovetail, clients literally don't understand much about the profession. This also makes it risky for clients, since it's hard to tell whether you have hired the right person. It make the whole thing quite tricky. I wrote in the other post that in fact, wise institutions hiring a professional would also give this kind of leeway, though some managers make their companies inefficient by trying to control what they should not control.

It is all about the professional being able to do their job properly. In my present work, if someone contacts me and shows signs of wanting to control how I do my work, I walk out (metaphorically) because not only will it be unpleasant to work for them, but it could compromise the quality of my work. A decent teacher will know how to get the student to where the student ultimately needs to be, what he needs of the parent (if the student is young), and of the student. He also will not be able to explain his whole methodology or reasoning, unless the parent is another musician or teacher. You just can't go about it the same way.

The terms "employer / employee" and "professional / client" may be red herrings.

I think that sums it up well.
I do not consider my child's teacher an employee or service provider (of mine), although I pay for the work she does.

There is always a personal component that can not be contractually regulated. Ideally, the teacher is both authority and role model. A person the pupil looks up to and enjoys learning from.

But this can not be claimed, neither from the paying parent nor from the (adult) student. Both have to make an effort for this relationship to work.

Mariner, the first step is probably to have an idea of what you are looking for. I suggest something like: for my child to get the skills needed to be able to play music on the piano, and have a reasonable chance of enjoying the process. "play music on the piano" expands into getting an understanding of music (some elements of theory - like recognizing chords, notation, time), and technical skills. Enjoyment, (imho), comes from having those skills so that eventually you can do more and more on your own. It is not a "cheap shot" instant "impress the parents and kiddie" super easy to play trickery. Once you have such a thing in your mind, you can also start listening for this, and watching for it, if you get to attend a trial lesson.

I might ask a prospective teacher what his goals and hopes are for students (or something like that), how he would like them to work, what his expectations are, or something like that, and carefully listen to what he says. You might also ask him his background in music and in teaching - that seems a reasonable question.

For the original questions:

The fact of performance experience might (?) make a difference in terms of a practical broader picture of music, but does it actually matter for a beginner student? I don't get the "where" part.

A lot of students take music for a few years to try it out. Not that many students go on to become professional musicians. Some former students might now be doctors, or accountants, or new mothers running a flower shop. Does that make him/her a less good teacher? What about the "ambitious" teacher who will kick out any student "without talent", push kids past where they should be for the sake of "reputation"?

Do you, as a parent have the knowledge to judge whether that is good or bad? What about "how" the teacher uses such books, or "why"?

I think you mean "reading". I don't know, when I started, whether I would have been able to judge the "how" part. I do have some definite ideas now.

(I would hope that the answer to "repetitive middle C's" would be "immediately" ) I'm not sure how I feel about that question, the way it's worded.

I imagine this question might be a red flag to a few teachers. First, quite a few do not like this method, for reasons often stated on this site. Secondly, if a parent seems to want what they used to be used, probably in the same way, this might be a "difficult parent to work with".

Given the circumstance, this may be a very good question to ask.

Do you have a judgment about this? Why are you asking this?

Not sure about this one. I think a better one would be to ask how the teacher would like a parent to work with the child at home (if he expects this), what he would like the parent not to do, what his expectations of practising are - what kinds of problems he would like to know about and similar. With less questions, the teacher might volunteer this.

About getting an idea via recitals (someone's suggestion) - a bit like AZNpiano's reaction. Like, what if a teacher rehearses the same piece for 6 months, only has his best students perform, does this tell you anything about the teaching?









10. Do you do a trial lesson?

I think this is too narrowing defining employers and employees. As I said, I hire professional with PhDs who know how to do their job. My sister's university hired her, a psychologist with a PhD, who knows how to do her job (teach students and do research). I completely don't understand the idea that employers only hire employees who need to be told how to do their job. And unless you are going to redefine the relationship that teachers have with schools or professors have with universities, I don't get this at all.

In the US, there is actually a distinction made between professional employees who are paid an annual salary (and do not need detailed directions on how to do their job) and hourly "non-professional" employees who are paid wages by the hour. There's even a tax and payroll distinction. In all my talk about employer/employee above, I've been referring to professional employees. Certainly, I'd consider teachers to be professionals.

It's completely ok for employees to walk out. Not everyone wants to work for a university. Not everyone wants to work for a school. Not everyone will want to work for my company. That's why there is a marketplace. Employers hire those who work well for them. Employees go to work for those employers that are most compatible. That people leave because they are unhappy for any number of reasons, including that they think their employers are giving them instructions that are too detailed or do not respect them, is unfortunate, but a major feature of our free market.

I think keystring captured the essence of this perfectly. The bottom line here, for me, is that I would have absolutely no wish to teach a child whose parent regarded me as their employee.

And this is fine. Although my sister does work for her university, I'm sure there are also others that would refuse and have refused to work for a university because of the implied relationship. Similarly, I'm sure there are teachers who would refuse and have refused to work in a school because of the implied relationship. I've met some of these people before. These people often start their own companies. That's what I did.

Almost the purest essence of a free market. No one is indentured to do anything they don't want to do or work in any sort of a relationship they don't want to have.

When I hire guys from the home depot parking lot to do work at my house, I tell them exactly what I want them to do. I will monitor their performance and make sure that what is happening is what I want to happen.

When I hire a GI doc to perform a colonoscopy, I give my consent for him or her to do the job, and I will not offer further guidance. Why would I? I am minimally involved; I have no idea what's going on in general and especially during the procedure when I am unconscious. If I don't like the GI doc, I will go to someone else next time, but I still won't meddle in the work.

When I work in my personal private practice, of the potential clients who contact me, I serve only the ones that I want. I work with families to establish goals and processes for communication about progress, payment, scheduling, and all that stuff. The best outcomes are when we all work together. When things go south, I will make a referral to another clinician and be done.

When I work at my day job, I do what I am supposed to do. When I am no longer willing to do what my employer wants me to do, then I will find a different job. If at any time I fail to perform what my employer wants me to do, I imagine that my employer will take appropriate steps to correct my performance or to counsel me into other employment.

I still think a piano teacher is most like me in private practice.

It's the kind of relationship that's different. This has nothing to do with Phds or (lack of) respect.
A piano teacher does not work for you, he works with you.
That's a subtle difference that matters a lot (in my opinion).