[tritones]

I came across this shortly before beginning my degree in music and it completely changed how I approached learning new pieces. When I tried to explain the technique to another pianist, they were confused as to what was 'new' about it. I guess they never had a teacher say "play it over and over until you can play it without mistakes".

Now, my wife is completing her education degree and I see a lot of this approach being implemented in K-12: identify and focus on weaknesses; use your strengths to enhance your weakness; spend time on the big problems; balancing holistic approaches with concise methods, etc. All seem obvious and yet I didn't have a single teacher in music or otherwise suggest any of them to me.

[wildrhythms]

I find it hard to believe a pianist (or any trained musician) has never heard of playing something over and over again without mistakes...

[nkuttler]

This attitude contributes to the problem: many teachers at a higher level don't even bother to teach this stuff because they think everybody already does it.

[tritones]

You misunderstand. Their teachers used better methods than just "do it again but better".