Teaching Magic, Ethically, what and how much.

[MEK]

I have been involved with lifelong learning for many years both as teacher and student. I am considering teaching a class of grandparents simple tricks they can amaze and then teach to their grandchildren. These would be simple tricks that have been demonstrated and published many times. Still, I am a little concerned even at this level about exposing how a trick works. Of course, magicians through the centuries have revealed some of their secrets and there is a popular market for magic books and dvds that anyone with money can buy. So where is the line to keep secret or reveal?

[Laura]

(This ended up being longer than I intended, so I summarized at the end for those with short attention spans)

I don't have a definite, line-drawn answer here, but I can draw out a few points to express my opinion, and draw an inference from that.

I know I am innately uncomfortable with public TV broadcasts of any trick. I know it also particularly bothers me when any show divulges the big stuff-- the kinds of tricks that are currently in use by professional magicians. Although I find it interesting (naturally!), I don't think it's right to take the oomph out of a trick and create an opening for audience members to possibly seem jaded on the subject, or to give the magician a hard time, should the opportunity arise.

I know I am innately comfortable with one-on-one learning from magicians. If I wasn't, I wouldn't've joined the club. I think this is because, for one-on-one learning, the magician is given the discretion of whom s/he is teaching, and even if the person ends up like those who would have seen the trick revealed on public TV, it's connected to only one initial person, which offers a small amount of damage control even if that person were to spout off about the trick.


This boils down to a few factors for me:

* Whether the magician is able to exercise good discretion with those he is teaching. (Public TV couldn't get any worse, right?)

* The amount of profit, monetary, social, and emotional, that the magician could lose by sharing a trick.

* The motivation and intent of the learner, which ties in with what he has to gain from learning the trick.


For public TV audiences, no discretion is able to be exercised, automatically creating a problem audience. It takes the special spark of magic and makes it banal by introducing it to a primarily banal audience. "Why are you watching that show?" "I just want to see how they do it. And nothing else was on." You wouldn't offer to show someone a trick who said s/he wanted to learn it because "I have an hour before Seinfeld comes on. It's either this, or doing my laundry."

Furthermore, the magician as profession stands to lose the most from public broadcasts. A jaded audience member might not go and see a show; someone who is jealous might not be socially receiving to magicians; and an unimpressed or uncooperative audience is a recipe for a bad mood.

What the TV-watching person has to gain from seeing a program on magic is generally minimal. Maybe for some members of that audience, it will initiate or reignite an interest in magic and cause them to seek out somewhere to learn to perform. But more likely, they go, "Oh. So that's how they do that," and the thought ends there as they absorb, but don't really get anything out of it more than an interesting watch. If the average response were different, we'd have a lot more magicians running around, trying to find people who hadn't seen the same program.


MEK, in the situation you bring up, I'd like to offer my analysis:

That whether you are able to admit specific students at your discretion is important; you can access whether you think someone will be a stick-in-the-mud, or is genuinely excited about magic and performing it. One might -learn- to perform from grandchildren, but end up entertaining friends as well. You already have your sector narrowed down to grandparents, which is significantly less worrisome than "anyone who walks through this door!" A small class size is a good idea, too.

You also are able to exercise discretion in which tricks you would be teaching. I think it's a valid question to ask whether you think the persons you would be teaching would be likely to witness these tricks as performance (even if it's published or performed, it doesn't mean they'll encounter it). It seems to me that if your class is cooperative, they'd be positive social connections for you, and for magic. Would you be happy, doing this for them?

What the people you're teaching have to gain will vary, but if one generalizes, and assumes that, indeed, they will in fact be using such tricks to teach their grandchildren, you're looking primarily at emotional and social profit for them. Part of what is 'wrong' in divulging secrets is of course that magic can lose its spark for some people, hurting both the magician and the person watching. In the case of what you're saying, you'd be giving grandparents an important tool to use to connect with their grandchildren.

Sometimes it's difficult to interact with people, even if you love them. Someone in the situation of whom you would be teaching might say that he or she doesn't know how to keep a child's interest, or doesn't have a lot of spare money for presents. He or she might have a memory of a relative performing a trick for them, but, having never learned the trick, be unable to pay it forward. It might even be the case that learning a trick makes that person feel special, important, or more confident. All in all, the people you would be teaching, I would say, have a lot to gain, if you can confirm that they are learning to perform.

The one thing I don't agree with is that the grandparents should teach their grandchildren. You'd be hard-pressed to find very many grandparents who don't adore their grandkids to death, and they would be heavily biased in exercising their discretion. Kids are unpredictable by nature and with the propaganda and themes expressed on TV today, they're a very risky group, the younger you go. They can also be easily pressured or persuaded to tell all of their friends.


Hehe. I know it's really long, so...

TL;DR*: I think you have to ask yourself how much you, magic, and your students would have to gain from this experience. Write up the pros and cons, and go with your gut. It seems to me that it could be both an ethical and greatly positive experience for all involved, as long as you're okay with who you're letting in the door and why they're really there. Also, if I were to give the class, I would stress the importance of -not- telling the grandchildren outright, but perhaps nurturing their interest in magic by taking them to see shows, or buying decks of cards made for children's tricks.




*Stands for "Too long; didn't read."