Say Yes To What? A response to the recent Metro Parent article 11/1/12

In Sue Campbell’s recent Metro Parent article Say Yes To Music Lessons, the lack of mutually supportive conversation about the many approaches to music education saddened me. While I think it is fantastic to describe the options available, parents want facts, not opinion based in judgment and collegial partisanship. Because of this, Campbell’s article reads as biased, and I am pressed to understand how it helps parents make an informed choice?

photo by Hada Salinas-Pereyra

These two comments seemed particularly unhelpful: “Violin can be an option for young children, but it’s a very disciplined instrument [Fara] Heath cautions”(12). And Rachel Portnoy Bradley’s “I always shudder a little when a parent says, ‘I’m going make him play violin'"(12). The root of the word Discipline is from the Latin Discipula which simply means "student". The verb Discere means "to learn". The word discipline, however, is often confused with punishment or forcing, which the speakers and author of Say Yes To Music Lessons seem to have fallen victim to. There is no place for forcing or punishment in modern pedagogy.

Discipline means giving life to learning, a kind of learning that opens the door to creativity. Creativity blossoms when a container has been lovingly built over time, from which inspired artistry can eventually be expressed. Because playing the violin or any stringed instrument is an embodied, sensorial, cognitive experience, it requires a whole approach to create meaningful learning, making early childhood an auspicious and objectively proven time for creating meaningful knowledge of the musical language and the embodied expression of it.

In the Suzuki ECE classes, children learn in a loving, interactive, age appropriate way how to discipline or bring their body and mind to life in a way that will help them creatively express their thoughts and feelings through the musical language. Suzuki Early Childhood students experience the sights and sounds of different instruments to support both parent and child as they mutually choose an instrument that they will start after age 3. And because we are human, learning to play a stringed instrument at any age is a long-term process that is an ever maturing journey through the creative process where the full range of human emotions (including fun) are experienced as part of the whole approach to music education.

The comment Sue Campbell made under the auspices of "many music educators" agreeing to starting a child on an instrument at 4 or 5 years of age; and the views cited above by Heath and Bradley, are opinion. None is fact. 

There are many children who are ready much younger depending on their early childhood music education experiences. There is objective proof that babies can experience and understand complex rhythms, however, children who grow to be 4, 5 and 6 years of age who have not interacted with complex rhythms have difficulty understanding them. When students begin at age 4-6 without interactive early childhood music classes, they can experience difficulties hearing and understanding the complexities, so the teacher might suggest they wait until they are older, as Sue Campbell also did. 

It's time to move out of this paradigm and into one of deeper understanding of how musical knowledge is created. Music is a language and like any language, waiting until a child is 4 or 5 or older, doesn't make it easier to learn. 

My own comments in Campbell's article were perilously close to being out of context, so I also wonder about those of my colleagues? I hope for Metro Parent to find a way to represent all aspects of music education without maligning any one or supporting another. There are as many ways to succeed as there are different parenting philosophies. And it is my hope that parents will find the philosophy that best suits their educational goals for their children.

Catherine Whelan