Arthur Kratzmann

Arthur Kratzmann (1925-2015) was an Australian teacher and later professor of education who spent most of his adult life working in Canada.^[1][2]

Arthur Kratzmann
Born	1925 Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia
Died	2015 (aged 89–90) British Columbia
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Teacher
Known for	Teaching and influence on Joni Mitchell

Biography

Kratzmann was a precocious student in rural Queensland and already held a teaching job of his own in a one-room schoolhouse when he was 17 years old.^[2] In 1943, when he turned 18 and was old enough to enlist, he enlisted in the Australian Air Force which sent him to Canada for training. He trained to be a pilot and married his wife, Mary, in Canada before he was 19. He describes earning his wings late enough in the war that he didn't experience front-line risks.

Kratzmann and his wife lived in Australia for three years after the war but returned to Canada where he returned to teaching in Viking District (near Kinistino) Saskatchewan.

Kratzmann taught English composition to Joni Mitchell when she was in seventh grade.^[3] He could see she was a potentially talented writer but limited by conventions and undue respect to well-known poets and authors. He describes challenging her to transcend cliché, and Mitchell credits his challenges as having a profound and lasting influence on the rest of her life. Twelve years later she dedicated her first album to him.

Kratzmann was invited to surprise Mitchell with an award at a celebration of her career in 2001.^[2] He described waiting in the wings during an on-stage interview that preceded his surprise appearance and hearing her describe the profound influence he had on her.

Kratzmann would eventually earn his bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a PhD before becoming a professor at a university in Alberta.^[3] Kratzmann would rise to be the dean of education at the University of Regina. In 1981 he accepted an appointment as dean of education at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.^[4]

References

1. "Interview with Arthur Kratzmann Print-ready version". ABC Radio National (Australia). June 2008. Archived from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 31 October 2020. Oh yes, yes. I didn't know much about her. You see, we left Saskatoon, and I was working as a professor at the University of Alberta later, and a colleague of mine came back from Toronto and he brought a copy, a weekend copy of the then Toronto Telegram, and there was a whole page spread, really dedicated to me. It was... Joni was singing at a nightclub up north of Toronto, in York, and this gentleman named Cobb, the journalist, interviewed her, and they spent all of their time really talking about me and her association with me, in Saskatoon.
2. "The teacher and the debt". The Age. 15 December 2002. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2020. Her name was Roberta Joan Anderson. The world would come to know her as Joni Mitchell. The world also would come to know, through Ms Mitchell's disclosures, how important Mr Kratzmann, Queenslander and son of a sharecropper, was in planting the seed from which Ms Mitchell's talents flowered.
3. Paul Wells (30 October 2020). "Tracing the remarkable rise of Joni Mitchell". Maclean's magazine. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2020. In his 2017 biography Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, Yaffe writes that Kratzmann handed back one of young Joan Anderson's compositions, about a stallion white as snow, marked in red pen: "Cliché, cliché, cliché."
4. "Knowledge Network Board appointment" (PDF). Staff Bulletin University of Victoria. Vol. 2, no. 21. 23 January 1981. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 November 2020. Kratzmann, recently appointed Dean of Education at the University of Victoria, is an expert in education administration and organization. He has also served as the Dean of Education at the University of Regina.