philoclea

Right. The funny thing is Ramsay talks about the years of work he did learning how to cook, studying Italian cuisine in Italy, etc. etc.

I think the MasterClasses -- or other online instruction -- are mostly great for inspiration and motivation. Someone who is already good at the craft might get more out of it, since they'll notice the finer points of technique. But for most people I suspect it will be passive entertainment, with a few widely applicable insights here and there.

I think it depends on the thing learned.

In dance it's pretty important to learn the basics well from day one. If you learn wrong technique it worms its way into your muscle memory and is difficult to unlearn and replace with something else. (It's also why the most basic dance classes ought to be taught by expert teachers, but that's another hobbyhorse.) And bad technique can lead to injury.

Other fields don't necessarily have a "correct" way, or they do but it's comparatively easy to replace a mistake once we notice it. In some cases, making a mistake and then correcting it can actually fix the right way to do it in one's memory. (Think of embarrassing mistakes we sometimes make when trying to speak a foreign language!)

I'm going to take this question seriously. I worked for a project management company once in a support role. It seemed to me that a lot of what they were doing, and teaching in their courses, was basic common sense. I asked the VP if they weren't charging a lot of money for common sense. His answer? "When people pay for advice, they're more likely to follow it."

There's not really a lot new under the sun. A person can hear the same advice a million times without following it. What people are often paying for, when they pay for online courses or coaches or whatever, is a structure that will make them more likely to commit to doing the good thing -- that they probably know to do anyway.

Other way around: the egg is so-so, but every time I hear the song I'm a teenager again (not that I'm that old, but that's when I was getting to know a lot of classic rock & similar), so it makes me feel young and full of potential.

Unlike... that egg.

Yes, I love this! I try to convince my students to work on something they find interesting, even to take risks in doing so. My experience is that they tend to do better work when the topic reflects their own curiosity, obsessions.

Unfortunately the educational system I work in prioritizes conformity. I don't blame them for having a hard time taking a risk.

This is a useful point. The beginning learner needs more straightforward instruction -- just knowledge transfer -- whereas the learner with a basis of knowledge can spend more time exploring, making mistakes.

The issue comes in when a student is so accustomed to being fed information that they bristle at being asked to think.

This point also suggests a flaw in the online MasterClass format. In a traditional music master class, someone who is already very very good at singing or playing an instrument comes out, performs a song, and then is corrected by the "master." Then they do it again, etc. An online "masterclass" is in fact a lecture-style course, which is really better suited to beginners.

Love this breakdown. And to josephg's post:

When I was picking a dissertation topic I'd suggest things to my advisor and she'd say brightly, "Why don't you go do some research on that, come back in two weeks and tell me what you found?"

I'd go off to the library for a couple of weeks, do the reading, come back and say, "You know I think X is a terrible topic, the scholarship on it all seems to drag."

"Oh yes," she'd say, with a look that said this was the worst topic in the world.

"So why didn't you just tell me that in the first place?"

Then she'd get diplomatic. "You're young, maybe you see something that I don't!"

I realised though that it wasn't just that. Had she told me my idea about topic X was a loser, I'd have thought that my advisor was crushing my creativity and ingenuity. I really had to figure out on my own how much the topic sucked. It had to come from my own discovery, not from her authority.

Anyway, I do this now and it drives my students nuts, because they want me to hand them a paper topic, ideally tell them what books to read, and send them off so they can execute the steps. Meanwhile, I want them to spend time in the messy, difficult process of working things out. I think my process probably results in more failure (at least as far as the grades are concerned), but the good work is so much better.

Hmmm... this has me wondering. I've been writing about teaching and learning for a while (my dissertation and book were on the topic in the early Middle Ages). MasterClass has only been around for five years though, and the Wintour course came online last year. It's possible there were review pieces out. I did do a bunch of searching on MasterClass last year, because I was tempted by it but found it a bit pricey and wanted to know if there was any substance to the courses. Most of what I found were very brief reviews though.

I didn't have space for this in the essay, but the mechanical egg also plays "The Final Countdown" when the eggs are supposed to be hard boiled.

It's honestly not a great way to cook eggs, but don't underestimate the joy of hearing those opening notes in the morning...

Author of the essay here -- I know they say you shouldn't read the comments, but the discussion on here was so thoughtful I just had to create and account and jump in.

Two thoughts to this convo:

1. One thing it took a few years of living in Europe to learn is that what seems like a logical way to learn or convey information is also -- at least partially -- cultural. I'm an experience first kind of gal -- and I judge theories by how well they explain experience. I also think it's a better way to communicate. But here in Europe the standard way of giving, say, a presentation is to begin with all the theory, definitions, concepts, and only then move on to case studies.

It was when I read Erin Meyer's The Culture Map that the whole thing clicked for me. I think it's worth reading the whole book, but here's a quick summary: https://www.mdttraining.vn/post/on-our-bookshelf-the-cultura...

One of her axes of comparison is "principles first vs applications first." It helped me to realise that my preference for applications first was also due to spending all my formative years in North America, being taught this way, consuming media structured this way, and so on.

2. I actually finally bought Salt Fat Acid Heat this spring, started reading it, and just the chapter on salt has already begun making a difference in my cooking. I do think cooking proves you can do something badly, every day, for an entire lifetime, if you don't either get some better theory or carry out a lot of experimentation and remember what works.

However... the reason I bought the Nosrat book was that I was starting to be inspired by cooking again, and what motivated me in that end was the Ramsay course! It gave me that sense of exploration and play again. So I think it's worth paying attention to what increases motivation, especially with something that can become quite a dull chore.