Everybody has that one teacher who changes his or her life forever. And it seemed like we heard from all of them after Joanne wrote about Jerry Kupchynsky, the toughest teacher in the world, in the New York Times.
Even before the print newspaper landed on people’s doorsteps, e-mail messages began pouring in from readers reminiscing about the English professor, the soccer coach, the bandleader who pushed them beyond their limits. They spoke of that one person in their childhood who forced them to achieve more than seemed possible, whom they cussed and whined about back then—and whom they wished, more than anything, they could thank now. They lovingly described the tyrant who once put them through living hell.
“My wife and I choked up over breakfast this morning. It got me thinking about every teacher, coach, even parents of friends, who connected with me when I was growing up,” wrote a Boston lawyer. “It’s funny how the ones who were the biggest pains at the time are the ones I recall most vividly all these decades later.”
For an elderly retiree, Mr. K’s story evoked “a journalism professor I had at Iowa and Kansas.” For a prominent attorney, it was “my tough-as-nails soccer coach at Stanford.” For a New York woman it was her son’s ninety-seven-year-old cello teacher, who “often brings Eli to tears, but no one inspires him more.” As a New Jersey woman who sent the piece to all three of her college-age children wrote, “They may not have realized it yet, but we are all influenced and touched by some teacher in our lives.”
The outpouring following the Times piece surprised us both. And then it hit us: Everybody needs a Mr. K. Especially today—when it isn’t just kids but grown-ups who have been raised on a steady diet of praise and trophies—a little toughness goes an awfully long way. Those who have endured a Mr. K of their own can handle just about anything. They’re tougher, more resilient; they laugh just a little bit more. If ever there was a living, breathing, yelling embodiment of the old adage, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” that would be Mr. K.
And this was the impetus behind our journey to write Strings Attached. We feel uniquely privileged to be able to tell Mr. K’s story. We grew up together. Melanie, Mr. K’s daughter, was a child violinist who began performing at the age of four; Joanne was a violist whom Mr. K plucked out of the beginner class and groomed to be a worthy enough musician to play with his own daughters. We spent much of our childhood performing together in a quartet that also included Melanie’s younger sister, Stephanie.
As musicians who rehearsed together constantly, we learned to play in sync, to read each other’s nuances and body language, and to trade melodies seamlessly from one to the other and back again. We went our separate ways after high school. Melanie became a violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, while Joanne became a journalist and magazine editor in chief. But we were reunited more than two decades later at Mr. K’s memorial concert, and found ourselves right back in sync, right back in that familiar rhythm—not just on the concert stage, but long afterward, in our very distinct reminiscences about Melanie’s father. This book is, in effect, a duet.
If Mr. K wasn’t a real-life character, somebody would have had to invent him. A Ukrainian-born taskmaster, he yelled and stomped and screamed. But he also pushed us to dream bigger and to achieve more than we ever imagined. What’s remarkable is that he did all this while enduring a life of almost unimaginable tragedy.
His is an unforgettable story about the power of a great teacher, but also about resilience, excellence, and tough love. Mr. K’s subject, of course, was music. But the lessons he taught his students are universal.
It’s hard to imagine a Mr. K in today’s world. Parents would be outraged; administrators would be pressured to fire him. Yet he was remarkably effective. His methods raise the big issues we grapple with now ourselves, as parents. Are we too soft on our kids? How do we best balance discipline with praise? How hard do we really want our kids’ teachers to push them? And if our kids do complain, how do we know when—or if—to interfere?
The latest research on kids and motivation, it turns out, comes down in Mr. K’s corner. Recent studies have turned conventional wisdom on its head, concluding that overpraising kids makes them less confident and less motivated. Psychologist Carol Dweck, for instance, found that fifth graders praised for being “smart” became less confident, while those told they were “hard workers” became more confident and performed better.
Similar findings have transformed our understanding of business success. In his 2008 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion that true expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice. He cited examples—Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for one—and credited the work of the Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Ericsson’s initial work was based on a study he did not of executives—but of violinists.
Ericsson expanded his research to the business world with a 2007 Harvard Business Review article, “The Making of an Expert.” He and his coauthors identified three key steps that all experts take, including those 10,000 hours as well as deliberate practice with a teacher. Perhaps most significant was the third step:
The development of expertise requires coaches who are capable of giving constructive, even painful, feedback. Real experts… deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance.
In other words, real experts don’t want soft teachers: They want tough ones. Unsentimental ones. Ones who give them “painful” feedback.
We couldn’t imagine a more accurate description of Mr. K.
That research helped us to answer a key question: What was it that made Mr. K so effective? But, as we were writing, a business executive asked us what turned out to be an even more important question: What did Mr. K do that made his students effective?
“Any kid can be pushed to excel,” said the executive, the CEO of a big U.S. company. “What I want to know is, what happens when the teacher isn’t there any longer to push them?”
Too often, he said, he hired applicants with sterling résumés who turned out to be poor performers. They were incapable of taking initiative on their own. How, he wanted to know, do you raise kids to be self-starters?
The CEO got it right, we realized. That was the key to Mr. K’s success. It wasn’t about what happened in his classroom. It’s what happened once his students left the classroom. Whether his students became musicians or doctors or lawyers, they shared one trait in common: They pushed themselves. They didn’t need anybody else to do it for them. It dawned on us that perhaps it was no mistake that one of Mr. K’s most frequent admonitions was “Discipline yourself!” His students, whether consciously or not, took him at his word.
“Discipline. Self-confidence. Resilience. These are lifelong lessons,” as one of his old students told us. “Whether we stuck with the music or not, it stuck with us.”
Mr. K was without a doubt the toughest teacher we ever met. But his legacy is proof that one person can make all the difference. And that legacy endures. Its power was clear when, after his death, forty years’ worth of former students flew in from every corner of the country, old instruments in tow. They were inspired to take leave of their busy lives because they never forgot the lessons he taught them. And they were determined to thank him in the best way they knew how: by playing one last concert together, this time for Mr. K.
The outpouring of emotion—from students, colleagues, and those who read about his story afterward—made us understand how universal is the appeal of that tough teacher who can set us straight on what matters in life. Mr. K may be gone, but with Strings Attached, we hope his lessons will live on.
—JOANNE LIPMAN
New York City
—MELANIE KUPCHYNSKY
Chicago