When should inexperienced bonsai growers shut up and let the experts talk?

[Smoke]

Go start one. I bet Smoke will come and post in it. That it what he wants to see. The trees!

had some fun today, life is way too busy to spend with this place. Lifes much richer than a tree.....

 

[amcoffeegirl]

had some fun today, life is way too busy to spend with this place. Lifes much richer than a tree.....

Awwh- I am happy to hear from you though.

 

[Smoke]

Awwh- I am happy to hear from you though.

Thank you

 

[Paradox]

You think people become 'mindless drones' when they don't have unnecessary difficulties and struggles while learning things like say their electronic engineering degree?

I think there is a difference between memorizing then regurgitating everything out of the book and lectures to pass the class and learning through actual experience and critical thinking. Parroting everything out of the book and lectures only gets you so far and its debatable as to how much is actually learned.

I say this as someone with 2 college degrees (a bachelors and a masters). I can say for sure that I learned and retained more from the hands on experiences and classes that made me engage and actually think about the topic than those classes where we simply memorized the textbook/lectures and regurgitated the information on the test.

 

[JEads]

Maybe I don't have much to add to this that isn't already said, but here are my thoughts anyway:

I am not old (46) but not young either; however, that being said, have a hard time keeping up with the pace of the forum. I lurk almost every day looking for some way I can contribute the expertise I have gained from doing a 2 year apprenticeship with Michael Hagedorn and independently doing bonsai professionally for 2 years. I also like to see the interesting things that new people are doing and the ways that experienced folks are moving the art form forward.

I guess that it is the nature of a public forum to have a huge volume of content that is clogged with fluff and back and forth between posters that is often off topic.

I suppose if I spent more time on here and really was able to contribute or read interesting posts in real time, I would feel less like a dog sticking its head out of the window of a race car.

The posts that I find I have expertise to comment on are often either expertly answered by other people, or so far down a rabbit hole that there doesn't seem to be much hope for return to the OP intention.

Back to the OP question, I think it is difficult for "experts" to be spend their life dumping themselves into material and also find the time to contribute in a meaningful way to a public forum like this.

I don't know, maybe I am just a 46 year old curmudgeon!

 

[Dan W.]

It is the nature of the Internet and life. I don't doubt that half of the people who were members here the first five years don't even keep bonsai any longer. Or they get tired of the arguments, or repeating the same content over and over, or any number of other annoying things that come with an Internet forum. That said, the art of bonsai is almost uniquely well-suited towards a forum format - because you can have threads that last for years, if not decades. And I have always felt that this site plays a unique role as a springboard into the art form - and as a conversion path to get people to go from a Home Depot mallsai to taking an intensive with Boon. Heck, some of the members here have gone on to apprenticeships in Japan. But at the end of the day it IS a social platform, and many of the people who come here are often just here for the camaraderie. I still learn things here every day - it keeps me hopping. The most recent - how to get a tree DNA tested at the University of Utah

Maybe they will come back if someone starts a new "Is Bonsai an Art" thread... (funny how much debate that always stirred when the answer seems so simple.)

I learned a lot early in my bonsai journey from members here. Honestly we learn from both the good advice and by learning to filter the bad advice. So in response to this thread, I say if you have something to offer throw it out there, even if it's simply another question.
I essentially began the seeds of my business here as well. I still lurk a bit and look up old threads on occasion, but really, having kids and several other happenings in life have made it to where I simply don't have the time that I used to (Some of that time may be spent mindlessly scrolling modern social media too.. for better or worse. lol). It's hard to believe I haven't been here since 2017, and that it's been something like 12 years since I first joined! It's nice to see familiar faces (er... handles?) too!

 

[leatherback]

Start a thread for it. Seriously. That would be fun to watch. Let's see everyones' four or five best trees.

Great way to start a pissing contest.
We have the tree thread, without the need to label it amongst the best, with best being very different on different days and different observers

 

[minkes]

Sometimes ”newbie” can be more expert than 20yr. bonsai grower.. I watched and learned a lot from bonsai mirai live and information gained were more than I learned from books and 20+yr. doing bonsai as my hobby. If you learn solid foundations for techniques, soils, fertilizing, species you want to grow etc. and then few years of growing and trying, you could achieve your goals sooner. But like in everything, wise man shut up, listen and learn from others (but others with real and proven results).

 

[Gabler]

You think people become 'mindless drones' when they don't have unnecessary difficulties and struggles while learning things like say their electronic engineering degree?

It depends on what you mean by "unnecessary difficulties and struggles." I would say that there is an optimum degree of struggle that is conducive to learning. Too much and the student will drown in uncertainty, but too little and the student will never learn. It certainly cannot be said that you have learned anything if you cannot solve problems. There is a reason the Socratic method has always been and will likely always be one of the most effective methods to teach.

 

[leatherback]

they don't have unnecessary difficulties and struggles while learning things like say their electronic engineering degree?

unless you want a society of drones that dont think for themselves

It depends on what you mean by "unnecessary difficulties and struggles."

I think there is a difference between memorizing then regurgitating everything out of the book and lectures to pass the class and learning through actual experience and critical thinking.

Which is why PBL is the default teaching route nowadays on most Dutch research universities.

Problem-Based Learning - Education - Maastricht University

www.maastrichtuniversity.nl

 

[Glaucus]

I think there is a difference between memorizing then regurgitating everything out of the book and lectures to pass the class and learning through actual experience and critical thinking. Parroting everything out of the book and lectures only gets you so far and its debatable as to how much is actually learned.

Well that wasn't really the argument, was it? You realize the whole 'we are spoon feeding people' is a straw man? And that saying that "society of drones that don't think for themselves" is absurd in itself.
Did such a society ever exist? Care to give an example?
It wasn't an argument about passive vs active learning. It was one of tough love and blood, sweat and tears vs learning being too easy.

Maastricht University learning is quite controversial because it is also a cost-saving measure of just putting a bunch of students inside a room with a stack of paper make them study by themselves, without teachers to inspire them.
Additionally, constant group work also has issues as some students get a free ride and learn very little. In a way, this mirrors how the real world works as well, I guess.
We already know how to best teach students. The problem is, it is too expensive to do so. The whole stick about students becoming brainless, not thinking for themselves, that's as old as the Greeks and Romans, and in practice is never really an issue.
I think Germany and India are very known for their more passive learning traditions, where hundreds of people just sit and listen to a lecture.
The best way to learn is to create a safe space, have a good expensive inspiring teacher with the students as often as you can, then chunk knowledge into easily digestible bits and spoon feed it to them. And then challenge them to solve problems, be creative and do something by themselves that is fun with the knowledge that they just learned. Problem is, this is too expensive. Especially when hands on experience means a student works on an expensive bonsai together with a bonsai master, or works on expensive scientific equipment or meaningful samples, together with a scientist with good teaching skills.

Giving students a textbook they won't read, then making them listen in a huge lecture hall with hundreds of people to 2 hour lectures with one way communication only, then giving them a dry exam is not good teaching.
Neither is dividing students in groups, give them a case study, ask for a deliverable that can be evaluated, give them a PhD candidate tutor to supervise them, give them a tutor space to meet, use a computer, access the internet, then have the students rate each other's work at the end, and have a teacher only sign off on the grade at the end. Both are cheap. Both are bad teaching methods all by themselves. Both are used a lot.

Anyway, cryptic posts may be fun to post here. And no one is obliged to hand out free teaching here. So if you think it is fun to be cryptic, no one is going to object. But don't say it is good teaching 'because I had a hard time learning so others should have a hard time learning as well'.

And what people like Joe Harris and Ryan Neil had to endure in Japan is not healthy. When you are a grown ass man and you have to cry because they make things so hard and because what you are made to do makes no sense, something is wrong.
Bonsai isn't some Navy seal training where you try to make your apprentices quit. It is nice that they have fond memories of it now and that they feel it was a spiritual experience of some sort. But them talking about how many Japanese apprentices were there one day, then suddenly quit after being there for many years because they couldn't take it anymore, that doesn't make a lot of sense to be honest.

 

[Gabler]

The best way to learn is to create a safe space . . .

What do you mean when you say to create a safe space? I'm not aware of the existence of any classroom that isn't an extraordinarily safe space, relative to the degree of safety of the surrounding community. Well, except maybe the schools caught in the middle of a war zone, but at that point, they cease to function as schools. For that reason, I assume you're using it in the "woke" sense of the term, meaning something like, "a place where students can be themselves without being challenged about their sense of identity." Is that correct?

 

[Paradox]

Well that wasn't really the argument, was it? You realize the whole 'we are spoon feeding people' is a straw man? And that saying that "society of drones that don't think for themselves" is absurd in itself.
Did such a society ever exist? Care to give an example?
It wasn't an argument about passive vs active learning. It was one of tough love and blood, sweat and tears vs learning being too easy.

Maastricht University learning is quite controversial because it is also a cost-saving measure of just putting a bunch of students inside a room with a stack of paper make them study by themselves, without teachers to inspire them.
Additionally, constant group work also has issues as some students get a free ride and learn very little. In a way, this mirrors how the real world works as well, I guess.
We already know how to best teach students. The problem is, it is too expensive to do so. The whole stick about students becoming brainless, not thinking for themselves, that's as old as the Greeks and Romans, and in practice is never really an issue.
I think Germany and India are very known for their more passive learning traditions, where hundreds of people just sit and listen to a lecture.
The best way to learn is to create a safe space, have a good expensive inspiring teacher with the students as often as you can, then chunk knowledge into easily digestible bits and spoon feed it to them. And then challenge them to solve problems, be creative and do something by themselves that is fun with the knowledge that they just learned. Problem is, this is too expensive. Especially when hands on experience means a student works on an expensive bonsai together with a bonsai master, or works on expensive scientific equipment or meaningful samples, together with a scientist with good teaching skills.

Giving students a textbook they won't read, then making them listen in a huge lecture hall with hundreds of people to 2 hour lectures with one way communication only, then giving them a dry exam is not good teaching.
Neither is dividing students in groups, give them a case study, ask for a deliverable that can be evaluated, give them a PhD candidate tutor to supervise them, give them a tutor space to meet, use a computer, access the internet, then have the students rate each other's work at the end, and have a teacher only sign off on the grade at the end. Both are cheap. Both are bad teaching methods all by themselves. Both are used a lot.

Anyway, cryptic posts may be fun to post here. And no one is obliged to hand out free teaching here. So if you think it is fun to be cryptic, no one is going to object. But don't say it is good teaching 'because I had a hard time learning so others should have a hard time learning as well'.

And what people like Joe Harris and Ryan Neil had to endure in Japan is not healthy. When you are a grown ass man and you have to cry because they make things so hard and because what you are made to do makes no sense, something is wrong.
Bonsai isn't some Navy seal training where you try to make your apprentices quit. It is nice that they have fond memories of it now and that they feel it was a spiritual experience of some sort. But them talking about how many Japanese apprentices were there one day, then suddenly quit after being there for many years because they couldn't take it anymore, that doesn't make a lot of sense to be honest.

The fact that in the last 5 to 10 years, people seem more inclined to believe conspiracy theories and what see and read on social media rather than actual evidence indicates to me that critical thinking is a lost skill and we are becoming more a society of drones.

Sorry if that's too cryptic for you but otherwise would result in going down a rabbit hole we don't want to venture into.
So let's just leave it at that please

 

[Glaucus]

I am saying it tongue in cheek. I myself never had problems learning. But when they teach you how to teach they really hammer down the point that some students are insecure. So the first step any teacher should try to achieve is create an environment where everyone literally feels safe; safe to make mistakes, safe to ask questions, safe from bullying. And not all these things you can control. If a student is worried about being deported. If a student is worried about their parents fighting. All these things are bad and prevent learning. That the world outside the class room isn't always safe and never will be is really something different.

In that context, if we prioritize teaching the 'inexperienced bonsai growers' then asking if they should 'shut up so the experts can talk' is already near what we should not do.
That said, for a forum like this one to be successful, it is essential to have bonsai experts willing to spend time to share. So in that respect, that should also be considered.

SO yes, good schools are woke and bad schools are not. Everything has to be 'woke', btw. Don't let people tell you there is a woke ghost acound the corner about to grab you.

 

[rockm]

Teaching styles are what they are. In the end, it is not the teacher. It is the student. Motivated students learn in any environment. They read, they talk to others, they experiment and learn from mistakes and disasters (I've had a few of those). They are hungry and determined to find things out.

Back in the day (yeah, here comes an old fart rant) when we had no Internet. it took a lot (and I mean A LOT) of legwork to get any knowledge. Between walking to school uphill both ways, and killing my own meals , I read every book on bonsai I could get my hands on, went to exhibits (I'm lucky I live near a world class, public, free collection) and talked to people who had been doing bonsai. I had a hunger to learn. (BTW, a huge motivator in that search was getting a nice, established bonsai that cost a lot of money. Losing such a tree would have resulted in my being kicked out the house by my wife.) I was willing to go out and shake knowledge loose. I found people who had visible results with their trees and listened to them (I still do). I lost trees, I damaged trees, I broke a few in half trying to wire them wrong etc. Mistakes teach more than success.

The Internet has been both a boon and a curse. With the vast amount of information available online, it has lead to a lot of laziness--well, not really laziness, but the capacity or motivation to look beyond the keyboard for knowledge. It has also lead to a deafening crosstalk of experts and idiots, leaving the students to sort things out. Asking to see someone's trees can be a way to separate those two.

 

[Glaucus]

The fact that in the last 5 to 10 years, people seem more inclined to believe conspiracy theories and what see and read on social media rather than actual evidence indicates to me that critical thinking is a lost skill and we are becoming more a society of drones.

Sorry if that's too cryptic for you but otherwise would result in going down a rabbit hole we don't want to venture into.
So let's just leave it at that please

Well this is a huge problem. But it is more about a multi-billion dollar company with an army of PhD grad computer scientists creating algorithms, run on a cluster with millions of time the computing power of your first personal computer, specifically designed to trick the psychology of ordinary people. And there being literally zero government regulation on what they do. So I would agree that social media are literally infecting people with conspiracy theories and potentially a form of contagious mental illness for which we don't really have a name yet.
This will become a huge controversy in the next 2 decades.

There is literally zero education or critical thinking you could teach in school that would make people immune to this type of algorithm abuse. And it just happens to be that conspiracy theories get the most social media engagement from people, so that's what the algorithm are optimized for. Definitely, it can help. But the idea that we can educate people to think more independently, and then they can stand up against fast food advertisements and then not get overweight because as a smart and responsible individual, they know how to resist unhealthy habits despite being exposed to, seduced by, and given the easy opportunity to eat too much and unhealthy the entire day , has already been proven false. With social media, it is so much worse.
So the 'personal responsibility through more education and critical thinking' won't ever work. In the end, we can learn a lot, think for ourselves. But we are also emotional animals shaped by evolution.

Teaching styles are what they are. In the end, it is not the teacher. It is the student. Motivated students learn in any environment. They read, they talk to others, they experiment and learn from mistakes and disasters (I've had a few of those). They are hungry and determined to find things out.

Motivated students aren't the issue. They will learn. With or in spite of good teachers, opportunities or education practices. What determines if a system works is for the average student that's maybe isn't not so motivated, or that would be motivated by certain things, or that are motivated but face challenges. And are at risk of losing their motivation. And getting unmotivated students to become more motivated. You can say 'but those then shouldn't go to college'. Maybe. But it was about judging an education system as being good or bad.
And bringing it back to bonsai, do we want bonsai to be something easy and casual that anyone can dabble in? Or do we want it to be a very exclusive club with only very dedicated people, who spend decades learning and growing their trees to make them pieces of high art. I have heard it being said that in Japan, actual bonsai was actually a very common thing. It was just people keeping a tree in a pot. And the image of bonsai we in the west have is actually a tiny percentage of people taking the bonsai practice way too far to something it wasn't really supposed to be, trying to make it a true art form and true tradition. And not some Japanese peasant in the 1800s, keeping a stick in a cheap pot to at least decorate the entrance to their home somewhat.

 

[Dan W.]

What do you mean when you say to create a safe space? I'm not aware of the existence of any classroom that isn't an extraordinarily safe space, relative to the degree of safety of the surrounding community. Well, except maybe the schools caught in the middle of a war zone, but at that point, they cease to function as schools. For that reason, I assume you're using it in the "woke" sense of the term, meaning something like, "a place where students can be themselves without being challenged about their sense of identity." Is that correct?

I can't speak for Glaucus, but my idea of a safe learning space is one of mutual respect. The best learning experiences I've had were with teachers who gave respect and therefore were respected, while the worst experiences were with teachers who demanded respect but gave none.

 

[rockm]

I can't speak for Glaucus, but my idea of a safe learning space is one of mutual respect. The best learning experiences I've had were with teachers who gave respect and therefore were respected, while the worst experiences were with teachers who demanded respect but gave none.

Mutual respect on the Internet? Um, prolly not...and FWIW, one of the best teachers I ever had was one who demanded respect, but was stingy with returning it. If you're looking for a 'safe' space, the Internet ain't it. Also FWIW, in-person, one-on-one lessons hardly ever have overbearing teachers. Quite the opposite.

 

[Gabler]

SO yes, good schools are woke and bad schools are not. Everything has to be 'woke', btw. Don't let people tell you there is a woke ghost acound the corner about to grab you.

My personal experience has led me to believe otherwise. The supposedly good (and woke) schools I attended (I graduated from undergrad in 2017, and grad school in 2021) left me woefully underprepared for the real world. Living in a bubble of safety makes you soft, or at least it made me soft. I could hardly handle my first real job after school, and it's not like my boss was unreasonably apathetic or cruel. It was just much harder than anything I had ever encountered as a student.

So the 'personal responsbility through more education and critical thinking' won't ever work.

It's working quite well for me. I've gotten two bonuses this year at my new job, since I've quit lamenting that life isn't fair and assumed responibility for the things that happen to me, irrespective of whether those things are actually my fault. When I started to assume responsibility for the bad things happening around me, good things started happening around me. I can't quite explain why, but I'm glad I took the advice, because it's really working.

 

[Paradox]

@Glaucus
we are just going to have to agree to disagee.

I apologize to the OP for allowing the side discussion to derail the thread.