Quite obviously, josepp learned his music in the manner of a religion, and believes that only the "true faith" may be taught, and that everyone must know and believe his faith.

To explain economics to a graduate student, he would start the lesson with the explanation that the elasticicy of the supply-demand curve is the partial derivative of the quantity demanded by the market with respect to the price set by the supply, just as Dr. Samuelson did on the first chapter of his widely acclaimed Economics textbook.

This "method" simply ignores that since the graduate student majored in philosopy and English literature, what (s)he really needs to know is "there are one hundred pennies in a dollar" since the immediate functional need is to be able to make change at the pub/tavern where the student finally found a first job. (The teacher must also recognize, in this cse, that the student is probably anticipating the opportunity to move out of his parents' home - at age 39 - and may not be thinking too clearly.)

Any decent "teacher" has the task of presenting new information in terms that the student can relate to something that the student already understands; and the teacher must avoid the attempt to teach technicalities incomprehensible in the context of the studen'ts existing understanding before the student is prepared for, and capable of understanding, the new information. The lesson must fit the student's needs.

This does occasionally lead to incomplete understanding by the student, and an occasional technical error.

A proper response to the student's statement would have been the simple reply that "technically there is a C# that is the enharmonic equivalent of the second semitone above C♭ on equal-tempered instruments." Then, after you've brought the student up to understanding of enharmonic substitutions, you might be able to demonstrate the mathematices of derivation of the numerical value of the coma so that student will comprehend when the equivalences are inappropriate and how much (or little) it matters in the kinds of performance of interest to that student.

Since a conversation of this sort, unless with one of person's own students, is unlikely to occur other than in a pub/tavern, understanding will demand (many?) more than one pint each, for both student and instructor. Depending on the quality of the brew, by the time the lesson ends they either will reach the point of believing they have achieved true understanding or there will be a pub riot, either of which - in some circles - is deemed part of a satisfactory lesson plan.

John