Ringing Forums

it's more common than it should be, unfortunately - in some towers particularly if you aren't in the first flush of youth. I don't have any really good solution to suggest - in my experience someone who has allowed the issue to occur in the first place is unlikely to modify their behaviour if you say something. You either have to suck it up or go elsewhere, which is what I've done in the case of one tower - and two other ringers have since followed suit. Unfortunately some towers / ringers aren't interested in bringing people on unless they fit a very narrow profile. Such towers are the walking dead but don't realise it - best to go elsewhere and leave them to their fate.

Whilst one to one tuition helps a lot this learner probably has a strong aptitude for the kind of pattern learning needed for ringing. There is a virtuous circle that can happen when someone responds well to advice and tuition, because it clicks for them as a way to learn and then the teacher finds it rewarding to help them and so on.
Different ringers have different ways of learning and thinking about ringing and (similar to the workplace) it can be that an experienced ringer finds it rewarding to help a less experienced ringer who thinks in a similar way to them, it makes it easy for them to help the learner to make progress.
This is along the lines of unconscious bias and is quite common in many areas in life.
You can try to have an open conversation with the tutor to ask whether you too could have more one to one tuition, or more opportunities to practice your next skill and you might get some constructive feedback on what they think you need to work on to make the next steps, etc.
But you might also find it helps to talk to other experienced ringers who you see regularly and see if there is someone who approaches learning in ringing in a similar way to you, who might find it easy to relate to your learning style and therefore be able to offer you tuition which has faster success for you.

People do learn differently and at different speeds, and you see this clearly in ringing, so don’t be too concerned about the progress of another ringer but do ask what you need to do to be given more chances to practice what you are learning.

there's a fairly widespread assumption that a prerequisite for being a good ringing teacher is being a top-flight ringer yourself. Of course there are lots of instances where that's true, but lots of others where it isn't - and why would it be the case in ringing when it's not true in other teaching? I think it's also important to remember that learning to ring isn't learning a single skill - someone who is excellent at teaching method ringing may be much less skilled when it comes to teaching handling.

One of the important skills of a teacher is to have multiple approaches and to find the one that "clicks" with a particular learner. In my opinion, anyone who can only teach people who think in a similar way to them is not a good teacher.

This seems to have disappeared from the CCCBR website but I think it's an excellent guide to ringing teaching:

Retention of Ringers - Recent Developments in Coaching

Tip 8 seems particularly relevant to this discussion:

Do not show favouritism to any learner

I agree, but there are many people in bellringing who are leading practices and teaching who don’t have specific teaching skills. I was trying to provide context related to the question posed, not saying that this is right.

sure I understand that. But there's really no justification with ART being so well established.

↪Lucy Chandhial
sure I understand that. But there's really no justification with ART being so well established. — John de Overa

I'm not sure, John. People who take up a teaching profession are presumably taught how to 'teach'. ART generally doesn't, it focusses mainly on key mechanical elements of bell handling, control and basic change-ringing. A school teacher doesn't do the job because no one else will, but some ringing teachers probably do! A person might know the subject inside out but if they haven't got the correct demeanor and communication skills it might not go very well! I am an ART teacher and I might be completely hopeless! Perhaps we need to get 'Offbell' in to assess us? But, 99.9% of us are volunteers, and that changes everything!

This looks awfully like teaching people how to teach, and it's only a small subset of the material on the ART website that's there to support people teaching ringing.

you're right I shouldn't feel concerned but I must admit I do feel somewhat jealous that our learner can ring inside to Cambridge major whereas I (having rung for almost 14 years since the age of nine) have never got asked (or even encouraged ) to learn it , I have tried asking our tower captain weather I can be accommodated but usually it's the same old excuse of "we don't have enough " or " maybe another time" which invariably never happens. I'm half tempted to leave this particular tower and move onto somewhere where my needs are catered for and interestingly quite a lot of my fellow ringers have expressed similar concerns, maybe that might be the only answer?

It is definitely a good idea to go to a range of different practices and see which ones can offer you opportunities to develop and which less so. Most people ring at whichever tower is most convenient for them geographically but many also go to one or more other practices either most weeks or once a month and this variety can be very useful. So you don’t necessarily need to leave your current main tower but it is a good idea to join other practices and talk about what you would like to ring.
If you ask your tower captain for a chat about your ringing development, as a one to one chat outside of a busy practice, would you be able to have an honest conversation about what you would like to ring and why you don’t get given the opportunity? Maybe they don’t realise how important it is to you to keep learning new things, maybe they feel that you need to improve something in handling or striking before you can ring more complicated methods, maybe they think people should always learn to ring Kent before they ring Cambridge. Without talking about the gap between what you want and what you get it is hard to know whether you could get more of what you want where you are.

This is a normal problem, both for the learner, and for the person running the practice, who has to fit something in for everyone in 90 minutes, generally with 2/3 of the emphasis on newer learners to get them to Sunday service ringing levels. The final 30 minutes of our practice is for some method ringing, Stedman Doubles, Plain Bob and Grandsire (with touches if we have a couple of visitors that can help out with the latter), so, unless it is on the Simulator, I have to go elsewhere to ring anything else.

I go to other towers as a newish ringer and often they will ask what I am learning and want to practice. Is it worth emailing a few local ones and asking if they could help you with Cambridge Minor and before going you could always practice with an online simulator. Or find a local tower with a simulator so you can practice. There is all sorts of favouritism sadly. I’ve experienced it but luckily for me it doesn’t affect what I can learn which so far has been quite fair. Good luck!

My point being you are then ready to ring it when the opportunity arises!

Oliver, your situation sounds very frustrating.
You are unusually fortunate to be in a tower where cambridge major is regularly rung, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to change tower.
2 suggestions:

- Aim to ring *well* every time you catch hold. If you are only being asked to ring rounds then try to ring them to perfection. Ask a good ringer whom you trust to give you regular feedback on your striking.

- Ask your trusted good ringer what you should be working on. Maybe Cambridge isn't the ideal goal for this year?

PS. Sorry that probably came across as patronising. My experience included getting stuck against the glass ceiling of Surprise Major for about 5 years. I had to solve 4 problems:
- inadequate bell handling and hence poor striking
- lack of awareness of what position I was in at all times
- complete lack of ability to "see" blue lines in my mind's eye (and therefore inability to memorise them).
- because of my age, a snail's pace of transforming rope time into mastery. I had to turn a monthly opportunity to ring Surprise Major into a weekly one.

These 4 issues were diagnosed by various expert masters and rectified by relevant training and a HUGE amount of homeworkon my part. (Particularly to overcome my poor retention of blue lines.

It may be partially due to the ability and willingness to learn. At a tower where I used to teach, there was a core of long-established plain hunt ringers and no matter how I tried I could not find a way to lead them forward and away from ringing by numbers.. It was a bit like children learning to swim and being reluctant to let go of the edge of the bath! Eventually I gave up! Give me open minds and enthusiasm every time!

You are unusually fortunate to be in a tower where cambridge major is regularly rung, — Rosalind Martin

This is very true. I have to travel 45 mins each way every 2 weeks for 2 half courses of Cambridge Major.

At a tower where I used to teach, there was a core of long-established plain hunt ringers and no matter how I tried I could not find a way to lead them forward and away from ringing by numbers.. It was a bit like children learning to swim and being reluctant to let go of the edge of the bath! — Peter Sotheran

That seems to be common and as such, I don't think can be entirely the fault of the ringers, I think the way ringing is taught is a large part of the problem - letting people learn a difficult skill one way (by bell numbers) and then expecting them to be comfortable ditching that for places is always going to be fraught. And I think the same applies to the Circle of Work.

I have one ringer who swears blind he can’t hear his bell amongst others, and that it takes him several goes to work out who is following him in call changes. Consequently he is very resistant to all attempts to wean him off knowing who to follow, be it through counting or rope sight. However he is the best at setting his own goals, and asking advice - for example earlier this year he came up with a set of four objectives for 2924. We then had a WhatsApp discussion about these. (Occasionally these discussions get onto the group WhatsApp, with other members of the band - some still fairly inexperienced themselves - putting in their views on what works for them.)
If there’s any risk of favouritism here, it’s for the ringer who takes charge of his own learning targets, not the quickest or best. Although I try my hardest to give each of the learners appropriate advice and opportunities all the time, I am forced to respond to the one who asks for help and advice, and the others can get inadvertently left out.
So, I think the morals of that story are for learners (aren’t we all?) to be proactive and to ask for help and opportunities, and for TCs to look out for those who don’t ask.

letting people learn a difficult skill one way — John de Overa

That's not quite true. Ringing is an activity that requires several skills to do well, but for which a smaller, different set of skills can be used to do in a limited way, not very well. The fault is not teaching the right skills in the first place.

The fault is not teaching the right skills in the first place. — John Harrison

That's what I was getting at. I know people who try to stop learners using bell numbers, which I think is futile. What I do is explain the limitations, so they don't fixate on numbers and have a goal to ring by place. So far that seems to be working.

a set of four objectives for 2924 — Richard Pargeter

A slow learner perhaps?:wink:

Oops!