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Positive Piano Teaching May 12, 2011

Posted by contrapuntalplatypus in Childhood, Music, Teaching.
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“How can you stay so positive?“

Last year I wrote a post entitled “Nix the Negativity, Please” and I thought the above would make an excellent springboard for a discussion of the opposite – being positive 🙂

Last Wednesday, I was talking with the mother of two of my students. Let’s call her Katy, and her two boys Joel and Travis. Joel is the oldest of the two boys; though highly talented at math and other logic-based subjects, he finds kinesthetic activities – like tapping or moving to a beat – far more difficult. Travis, on the other hand, is the epitome of the “right-brained” child: dance, gymnastics, art all come to him with great ease.

We’d just had the lesson, in which both boys had made good progress and passed several of their songs. Katy and I were chatting in the car on the way to the bus afterwards, and all at once she burst out with, “I don’t understand it! How can you stay so positive?”

“Well, I really love teaching…” I ventured tentatively.

“No,” she elaborated on her theme. “It’s more than that. If it were me teaching them, there’s no way I could truthfully say ‘That’s great, you’ve made so much progress on this piece.’ Of course when I help the boys practice I try not to be critical, it’s my job as a parent to be encouraging. But listening to them from the other room, I could hear so many things wrong with their playing – and all I could think was “That really sucked, how could you mess up there again, why can’t you get it?””

Part of what fueled it, of course, had been a week of frustrating practice with Joel. I’d assigned him a simple metronome exercise, and asked Katy to help: tap along with him, one beat per metronome tick, then fade out and let him take over. Then two beats per metronome tick, alternating right and left hand (just like playing the bongos).

It had driven her crazy, or nearly so. “I just don’t understand how he can’t get it. He tries to tap along, but he’s *waiting* for the tick and taps after it, too late. I don’t think he’s getting any better. Travis finds it easy, of course.”

“Actually, Joel was much better at it this week – at least with me,” I assured her. But she remained skeptical. “It’s great that you can be so positive about it. But I really wonder if he’ll ever learn it.”

*******

A week later, I was back at Katy’s house for the boys’ next piano lesson (in which they both did quite well, passing most of their pieces and showing a lot of improvement on the others.) In the car after the lesson the subject of Joel came up. “I have to say,” ventured Katy, “he does seem to be getting better at the rhythm thing. He found the metronome exercise a lot easier this week.” (Her expression told me she’d found it much easier as well. ;))

“That’s great!” I responded. “And then,” she went on, “we were sitting in the car, driving, and there was pop music playing with a heavy bass beat. And all of a sudden I saw him moving to the beat – and tapping along! ‘My teacher said I needed to practice this,’ he told me.” (I was astounded to hear this – even I hadn’t expected him to practice in his “free time”, and in such a creative way!)

And I realized I had my answer…this is why I stay positive. Not because I’m self-deceptively optimistic or naive or walking through life with stubbornly rose-colored glasses, but simply because I’ve discovered two general truths about learning:

1. It is pretty much possible for anyone to learn any skill, no matter how “bad” they seem to be at it at first.

2. Intelligent, persistent practice generally pays off much faster than anyone imagines it will.

Our society, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, puts far too much emphasis on the myth of “talent.” Note that I’m not denying there’s such a thing as – let’s call it – “aptitude”. Obviously everyone finds some things easy and other things not so easy; that’s universal. But the idea of “talent” – that you’re endowed with a particular genetic heritage which makes you good at some things and bad at others, and will determine everything from your hobbies and interests to your career path – is absolutely a myth.

It’s amazing how much resistance to this idea I’ve gotten from fellow musicians in particular. (There was a piano forum in which I stated, very seriously, that anyone could achieve concert-level performance ability with enough persistence and a good teacher. I was thoroughly laughed at, but I still stand by that comment.) Perhaps it’s because we have a bit too much invested in this idea of talent? That we, as musicians, were showered from On High with an ineffable, special, divine talent which mere drudgery alone will never match? That if (horrible thought!) anyone could match our achievements under the right circumstances, maybe we’re not such amazing, “gifted” people after all.

Well, of course, we are…just because we’re human. 😀 But not because of our so-called talents. Because we are all incredibly adaptive, creative beings who can learn to do pretty much anything we’re interested in, and who can’t be pinned down by labels like “klutz” or “tone-deaf” or “unmusical.” (Or, for that matter, “dyslexic” or “hyperactive” or “slow” or “autistic” or “unimaginative”…or any more of the Negativity-labelled pigeonholes adults will often try to stick children into.)

…And really, what more reason does one need to be positive? 🙂

– The Contrapuntal Platypus

Beyond Carrots and Sticks: How to Motivate Children (Or Why it’s Not Necessary) January 17, 2011

Posted by contrapuntalplatypus in About Me, Childhood, Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Teaching.
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My response to Amy Chua, Part 2

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain

Student: (sarcastically commenting on a challenging piano exercise I’d assigned): “Oh, fun, fun.”
Me: “Maybe it will be fun – why not? You haven’t played it yet, so how do you know for sure it won’t be?”
Student (after a moment’s reflection): “You win.”

********

Last week I wrote Part 1 of my response to Amy Chua’s article on “Chinese parenting” featured in the Wall Street Journal. A storm of controversy followed Ms. Chua’s article; in the intervening week her book has been released and she has given several interviews, such as this one, which help to “moderate” the tone of her WSJ piece. Ms. Chua emphasizes the book is more a memoir than a parenting guide and that she is not trying to tell others how to raise their children. Yet, even in the interviews, she still makes some sweeping claims about “Asian” vs. “Western” forms of parenting. It’s these statements I’ll be responding to now.

In particular, one quote from the article leapt out at me.

Western parents romanticize the idea of pursuing passions and giving your kid choices. If you give a 10-year-old the choice to pursue his or her passion, it’s going to be doing Facebook for six hours. I don’t think it’s going to be playing the violin or doing any school work very seriously.

Ms. Chua, it seems, is convinced that Children Are By Default Lazy. If they do have “passions” – perhaps to play an instrument or win a sports competition – these are transitory flickers of desire which will soon fade, leaving nothing but TV-seeking apathy behind. Children don’t have the planning or time management skills to work towards a long-term goal. Above all, they aren’t interested in learning, because learning is Hard Work and couldn’t possibly be fun. Hence they must be forced to learn, as they certainly won’t do it on their own.

Is this the case? When I think back over my own childhood, here’s a small sample of “fun” activities I remember:

– Going to the local library with my mom, picking out armloads of books and going to a nearby park to read beneath the trees. (In the following years I would read thousands of books).
– Drawing maps of various fictitious countries described in the books I read (The Phantom Tollbooth, “Ponyland”, Narnia…)
– Learning various math concepts from my mom (before their introduction in the school curriculum): place-value, negative numbers and tessellations.
– Playing soccer from age 6 to 14.
– Major roles in four school plays: Titania (Midsummer Night’s Dream), The Goose (Charlotte’s Web), The Wicked Witch of the West (Wizard of Oz) and the First Witch (Macbeth).
– Taking piano lessons through Grade 12 (and flute until Grade 11; I also played in a youth orchestra.)
– Making a large hooked rug for my room.
– Writing a short story which won first place in a city-wide competition, as well as dozens of poems and other short stories.
– Memorizing a large amount of Romantic poetry, including Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, around age 9. (I still know it today!)

All of these activities have three characteristics in common: (a) I had fun doing them, (b) I learned something in the process and (c) they were totally voluntary. Some of them my parents suggested or provided help with, others were entirely my idea, but I was never coerced or “bribed”. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who remembers these sorts of childhood activities being “fun”…so why do we take for granted that children need to be forced into doing them?

This vast disconnect between what we expect from children (laziness) and what’s actually there (energy, creativity and curiosity) goes right to the heart of what’s wrong with our educational system today. Our society has a collective idea that Learning Is Boring. “Obviously” children are not going to want to learn about negative numbers, write stories or practice piano on their own initiative, right? So either we have to bribe or coerce them.

Bribery comes in all sorts of forms in our educational system. Most often it’s a sensory form; for example, a computer game that will let you practice your times tables by lighting up and flashing every time you get the right answer. Exciting, isn’t it? From a post by my fellow blogger Montecelery: “Somewhere along the line, the idea that children need stimulation went horribly, horribly awry…there’s just this conception in our society that children need or want brightly colored stuff, stuff that lights up and makes noise, whatever.” If it isn’t loud or flashy things, it’s cute dancing cartoon characters, the promise of a movie after class, or chocolate. But, so goes the conventional Western wisdom, they will not swallow that bitter spoonful of educational medicine unless we promise them some sugar to go with it.

The traditional “Asian” method is rather less subtle. Why bribe the children if we can coerce them? It’s their job to clench their teeth, buckle down and learn those math concepts or spelling lists, distasteful, boring and tedious though it may be. No spoonful of sugar needed here; they’ll learn to take their bitter medicine each day and do it promptly, or they’ll have an angry parent or teacher to answer to.

In contrast, I’m going to advance an alternative theory.

(1) Children – in general – are naturally creative, curious, and enjoy learning. (Obviously, some children will have more energy or passion for a given subject than others. However, if there’s a child out there who has absolutely no interest in learning, I haven’t taught or met them yet. :D) There’s even a school in Britain named Summerhill, where the children are under absolutely no obligation to go to classes, take tests or learn anything at all. But, amazingly enough, they do!

(2) Though children enjoy learning, they won’t just spontaneously learn if they’re entirely left to their own devices – not through lack of motivation but lack of tools. It’s absolutely essential to expose them to a wide range of possibilities (teaching them to read or introducing math concepts at a preschool level; signing them up for soccer or other recreational opportunities; going on nature walks; taking them to the library to borrow books; and so on.)

(3) If you want your child to enjoy learning, the best thing you can do is spend time interacting with them. Opportunities for learning will naturally come up. If there’s one thing that almost all 5-year olds have in common, it’s that they never stop asking questions! Learning is much more fun when there’s someone else there to do it with. 🙂

(4) “Educational” TV shows and DVDs, by and large, do far more to dampen intellectual curiosity than to sharpen it.** They teach children that learning consists of sitting passively and absorbing information. (Of course this prepares them very nicely for the mainstream educational system…which involves 12 years of sitting passively and absorbing information! Is it any wonder that parents, a few years down the road, bemoan their children’s “apathy” and “lack of motivation?”) Learning is an active process, and watching TV is by nature passive.

And most importantly…

(5) Learning doesn’t consist of stuffing information into one’s brain. It’s a process of exploring the world around us and finding out how it works. An interest in learning, and “being well prepared for tests”, often have very little to do with one another.

This is why the Asian model is so self-defeating. It supposes that one can generate curiosity through hours of drudgery. Does Ms. Chua truly believe that memorizing lists of spelling words, or doing pages of long division, will give one a passion for literature or mathematics? Of course, spelling and arithmetic are useful skills in our society; I’m not denying that! But the very idea that one can “drill” a passion into a child through rote repetition is, to my mind at least, absurd.

Children do not need to be “motivated”. They come that way naturally. The danger is that they will become “demotivated” – either through passive TV-watching (usually when both parents work outside the home) or through an educational system that emphasizes “right answers” and “good marks” over intellectual curiosity. But, if they are given the tools that will let them pursue their passions, they won’t be spending six hours a day on Facebook.***

Of course, these may not be the same passions that Ms. Chua appears to personally value, such as academics and music. For example, one of my cousins has an amazing talent for renovating older cars and re-selling them. Why shouldn’t he “pursue his passion”? If a 9-year old longs to be in a school play, or on the school basketball team, why does Ms. Chua not consider these good choices?

The truth is that children come with a wide variety of interests and this is good. Yes, our world needs doctors, lawyers and engineers. It also needs teachers, plumbers, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, retail workers, dental assistants, musicians and far too many other careers to mention here. Your child’s interests may not match your own, and that’s fine – but it’s also none of your business to tell them what they “should” enjoy.

In closing, I’ll hand it off to my dad, whose advice on careers was always as follows: “I have only three requirements for what career you pick. One, you need to enjoy it. Two, it has to be legal. Three, you need to be able to earn a living at it.” That’s all any parent should insist on. After that – hands off. 🙂

– The Contrapuntal Platypus

* Just for those who are curious, the maps of imaginary countries, the short story/poetry writing, and memorizing the Ancient Mariner were entirely on my own initiative. (Nobody could have been more surprised than my parents at that last one.) 😀

** To clarify, I am not telling parents never to turn on Discovery Channel or to borrow educational DVDs from the library. This shouldn’t, though, make up the bulk of the child’s “learning time.”

*** Unless, of course, their passion is for network design or computer programming…in which case they may be the next Mark Zuckerberg. That wouldn’t be so bad either.

The Divine Conspiracy (A New Kind of Question, Part 1) July 17, 2010

Posted by contrapuntalplatypus in A New Kind of Question, Christianity, Saving the World.
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Question: By following Christ’s teachings, can we make an observable, profound, positive change in both our inner lives and our day-to-day interactions with the people around us?

“Imagine, if you can, discovering in your church letter or bulletin an announcement of a six-week seminar on how genuinely to bless someone who is spitting on you…or how to quit condemning the people around you, or be free of anger and all its complications. Imagine, also, a guarantee that at the end of the seminar those who have done the prescribed studies and exercises will actually be able to bless those who are spitting on them, and so on.
In practical matters, to teach people to do something is to bring them to the point where they actually do it on the appropriate occasions. When you teach children or adults to ride a bicycle…you don’t just teach them that they ought to ride bicycles, or that it is good to ride bicycles, or that they should be ashamed if they don’t…Imagine driving by a church with a large sign in front that says, We Teach All Who Seriously Commit Themselves To Jesus How To Do Everything He Said To Do.”
– Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

Let’s face it: the vast majority of us are not living the sort of lives we’d like to. Much of the time we find ourselves behaving in spiteful, angry, deceitful, selfish and deliberately hurtful ways when ideally we would like to be calm, generous, honest, and caring individuals. We resolve to take control of our own actions and to live as better people, but somehow the combined forces of habit and societal pressure always seem to pull us back into “default” mode. The consequences to ourselves (our health, our relationships, our happiness), the people around us, our society, and our planet are all too obvious. Can Christianity offer a practical solution?

Unfortunately, as Willard discusses, most Christian institutions tend to skirt the problem. Generally, they give one of two unsatisfactory answers:

Answer 1: We can solve the problem of evil by making sure we have eternal life in heaven (this involves believing that Jesus has died for our sins and accepting him into our lives.)

Answer 2: We can solve the problem of evil by working to create a just and peaceful world for everyone (this involves eliminating poverty, hunger, racism, disease, discrimination, and violence from our society).

These solutions, Willard argues, are not so much “wrong” as incomplete. What’s the point, after all, of “getting into” a perfect paradise for eternity if we remain the same selfish, quarrelsome, and discontented individuals? Shouldn’t accepting Christ have a real, positive impact on our inner lives and our actions now? Likewise, how can we hope to create a just and peaceful society if we, internally, are not just and peaceful people?

We can see there is an essential practical step entirely missing from both approaches: how can we become individuals capable of – both now and for eternity – living in harmony with those around us, with ourselves, and with God?

*******

Well, Willard asks, how do we learn *any* practical, hands-on skill – such as swimming, piano, carpentry, or speaking French? First we find a good teacher who knows the discipline and has experience passing it on to others. Then we repeatedly practice the skills required (butterfly stroke, playing scales, cutting and sanding wood, conversational drills) until they are part of not only our conscious knowledge but are ingrained, automatic actions which we can perform without thought. We are not learning isolated facts (“the capital of Portugal is Lisbon”) or purely abstract theories (such as atomic theory or free-market economic theory). Rather, we are learning various patterns of behaviour which we can reproduce and apply in our own lives.

One of the things I most admire about Willard’s approach is his recognition that evil (or in Christian terminology, “sin”) is mainly unconscious habit. Most of the time when we gossip or put others down or exaggerate the truth or are carried away by an explosive blast of furious anger, we do not deliberately choose to follow these behavioural patterns (who wants to become angry, after all?). We do so because we have no others in our repertoire, or none ingrained enough to be automatic; we are like a computer running a “default” program. We may intellectually recognize that there are more positive ways to interact with others, but unless we have previously made a sustained, conscious effort to put these principles into practice, we are like a music theorist trying to give a concert without having ever touched a piano; our abstract understanding simply won’t help much on a practical level.

Much of the dimension of personal blame and condemnation (which many find the single most off-putting aspect of contemporary Christianity) is thus removed. We are not “bad people” but rather, simply, human beings who through observing others and reproducing their behaviour have copied these patterns of interaction into our own lives. In a very real sense, we “don’t know what we are doing”; once we have a clear insight into its destructive effect on our own lives and those of others, we will not choose to live that way. This is an extremely empowering message; we don’t have to (indeed it is pointless to) sit around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for God to magically transform our personalities. Rather, we must learn a better sort of existence through focused, applied effort on our part together with his guidance and help. Which leads to the next point…

*******

If we are to learn to live in peaceful fellowship with others and our own selves, Willard proposes, the first thing we must do is to find a teacher. (Otherwise, for all our good intentions we probably won’t get too far). In the Christian tradition (obviously there are others!) the ideal teacher of this skill is Jesus himself, as reflected in his life on earth and his words that others have recorded. Only by consciously following his instructions and by consistently, deliberately applying his principles in our own relationships with others and ourselves will we become the kind of people we want to be.

Next Willard gets down to the the “nuts and bolts” of the matter, which makes up the core of his book. Taking the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer as the two most unified, detailed records of Jesus’ teaching available to us today, he outlines the basic principles of Jesus’ approach. This begins with the recognition (the “Beatitudes”) that the ideal life – one of love, forgiveness, and infinite potential rather than hatred, condemnation and self-limitation – is available to all, right now. It doesn’t have to wait until some idealized future utopian society or a bodiless after-death state. This is the essence of Jesus’ “Gospel” or “Good News”: realizing that the sort of life God intended for us is open to every human being.

Next Jesus outlines the behaviours that prevent us from living this sort of life and which cause conflict within ourselves and our society: anger, contempt, revenge, hatred, condemnation, and manipulation of others for our own ends. (Willard discusses each in detail and why it is so destructive.) If we are to become the sort of beings we were meant to be, we need to step by step, consciously remove these factors from our interactions with others. Setting aside time for interacting with our teacher (God) through prayer, meditation, solitude and careful study of Christ’s own words is an important part in this process (it’s impossible to learn a skill if you never meet with your teacher!) In a larger sense, by applying these principles of active discipleship to Christian churches and communities, Christianity can be a relevant, powerful force for change within our society and our world.

*******

To sum up: this is the sort of “self-help” book we need to see more of: one that consists not of comforting statements and feel-good rhetoric, but a practical “how-to” manual that teaches us how to really make a difference in our own lives. Which is, when it boils down to it, the essence of what God wants for every one of us: to “have life and to have it abundantly.”

– The Contrapuntal Platypus

Post 1 of the “A New Kind of Question” series. For an Introduction click here.

* C.S. Lewis’ novella “The Great Divorce” provides an insightful and compelling glimpse into what such an existence might be like.

** As Willard describes: “We hear cries from our strife-torn streets: “Give peace a chance!” and “Can’t we all just get along?” But you cannot give peace a chance if that is all you give a chance. You have to do the things that make peace possible and actual. When you listen to people talk about peace, you soon realize that in most cases they are unwilling to deal with the conditions of society and soul that make strife inevitable. They want to keep them and still have peace, but it is peace on their terms, which is impossible. And we can’t all just get along. As a major part of this, our epidermal responses have to be changed in such a way that the fire and the fight doesn’t start almost immediately when we are “rubbed the wrong way.”