How to make students to remember the things you teach them?

[dora96]

Hello there,

I have experienced some teaching problem. I have some students range from Grade 1 to Grade 2. Their ages are  from 6 to 9 years old. They are practicing their exam piece. I have been working with them almost 6 months. They can play satisfactory but at the moment, I am polishing their music. Whatever I say to them. You need to pay attention to detail. The rhythm, counting, the tone color, the phrasing. I have gone through with them weeks after weeks, months after months. One particular piece, technically is quite simple, but there is lots of detail of crescendo, dim, mp, p pp mf  and rit... <.....> etc. Each week, I keep on mentioning to them please pay attention. You need to execute all these details in the music. I feel really disappointed, if I don't mention it, they won't see it somehow. Why it is so hard to kids to pay music with tone color.I am trying to different methods to arouse their interest or imagination.  Even ask then to hum along with the music they play.  I said to them, please draw me a picture, with lots of interesting color. They have drawn amazing, beautiful pictures, but they can't play their music with creative and imaginative way. One student every time comes to play the piano, she sits down," bang bang cling cling"  all the way through the end. I said to her " are you playing music or making noise !!". I said to them play the music note is not enough. How do I encourage them to remember what I teach them, I have made notes and write down and highlight everything for them and how do I make them to play in creative way, not afraid to express feeling, emotion, style.  It seems that they understand when I am telling to them, but as soon as they left, by next week, old habit is still the same. Sometimes, I can see little bit of improvement, but it is not constant enough somehow.

[counterpoint]

I have made notes and write down and highlight everything for them and how do I make them to play in creative way, not afraid to express feeling, emotion, style.  It seems that they understand when I am telling to them, but as soon as they left, by next week, old habit is still the same.

Oh, I know this problem so well 

I think, some students are just not interested in playing the piano and do not practise their pieces with full concentration.

One student every time comes to play the piano, she sits down," bang bang cling cling"  all the way through the end.

I would not wait for the end of the piece, but stop the student immediately, when he is trying to kill the piece    As one is supposed to respect other people, so I suppose, that the work of a composer has to be respected as well. It needs much sensibility to bring it to live. If the student knows this but he doesn't care, then I would stop teaching him.

[danny elfboy]

If you want your students to remember what you say, what you say must make sense to them. The problem is that teachers say things that make sense to them (because they already know them) but doesn't make sense to those learning them.

Why does every person of this world can remember a good movie he saw at the cinema?
Because what he sees makes sense and follow a logical plot.
And that's learning ! There's absolutely no difference between learning a theory concept and learning the plot of a movie, they're identical. Learning should be effortless and indeed it happens naturally as long as we're introduced to something that makes sense to our mind so much that it chooses to keep it.

For example on singing lessons if you tell a student "you MUST do this thing which is called covering" he/she will forget it. If you say "now there's a group of three notes which represents the break between your chest voice and your head voice and there are many techniques that have been invented to make sure to have this notes sound as the other ones. This is a big component of vocal training and one of those techniques is called covering, can you see that you need to focus a lot on this important technique now that you understand what the basis for it is?" you have put the whole concept into a context which makes absolutely sense, you've explained the absolutely intuitive nature of the problems of singing and why a given technique is used. In fact you haven't provided fixed notions but have given the basis to allow your students to even question that technique.

That is: you're not giving them arbitrary notions to swallow without protesting but you're giving them contextual concepts that they can use as the basis to form their own theories, doubts, questions, logical conclusions. Nothing is more beautiful in teaching to have a student questioning the teacher because it means that he/she has really understood not just memorized some regurgitated notion.

Our brain rejects arbitrary orders for a good reason: they don't make sense.
Whatever "do it" concept existing in a vacuum and out of whatever meaningful context is just pure garbage for the mind. Allowing things to make sense, to exist in their own meaningful context and to never be in a vacuum and allowing students to explore those concepts on their own by letting them reason structurally and logically on the given concepts rather than feeding them pre-made notions, allows the student to learn as effortlessly as when they learn the plot of a movie ... just because it makes sense.

There's something absolutely beautiful about "pieces fitting and things making sense" and children know this. That's why they love learning and don't need any kind of compulsion in order to explore the world and try to make sense of everything. It's just like breathing to them. The horrible school system and the didactic philosophies of many teachers just rob children of their natural curiosity and love for learning (the same that they are supposed to mantain as they grow and become adult individuals, but that they lose as soon as school begins) by reducing the nature of exploration and making sense of the world to a series of "dos" and "donts" and "trues" and "falses" and just arbitrary material to learn compulsively.

The truth is that there's a contrast between the musicality and love for learning of a person and the natural distrust for an arbitrary and flawed education system.
So that even the person with the strongest passion for music could be turned off by orthodox piano lessons and even the person with the finest musical sensitivity could be unable to express it within the orthodox musical lesson in front of the teacher.

But deep inside each person there's a love for learning, a passion for exploring and a thrill for seeing pieces fitting into place and things making sense.

Giving hints and asking questions is a great way to allow effortless learning to take place.
Notice the difference between:

1) Remember you must always do the covering and practice it a lot

and

2) So there is a group of three notes which is problematic because it is the break between the chest and the head voice. So what do you think about this? (possible answer: that those threes notes sound different than the rest) Exactly so you can see this is a big problem around which the whole notion of vocal training is built and what would you do to solve this problem? (possible answer: well ... find a way to make it sound like the other notes) Exactly and this is what they did when they created the covering. Makes sense uh?

Believe me: whatever student of whatever age will remember the nice logical path of 2) without problem while almost everyone would be resistant to the aribitrary senseless of 1)

Sometimes I think that teachers don't want to make sense of what they're teaching and hence explaining the nature of what they're explaining because it would "remove the aura of mistery" they want their matters to have. My singing example is such a case.

To explain that the whole notion of vocal training is build around something so easy and "down on heart" as three cracking notes makes the whole notion of singing and teaching singing more earthy and humble while removing from it the aura of divinity, austerity and superiority that teachers love to exploit.

Understanding that it's all a matter of "putting things into meaningful and interesting contexts" has allowed me to never experience a problem teaching (i.e. facilitating the self-learning) whatever thing even when dozen people had failed before and even when the person was foolishly  considered "almost retarded".

[luvslive]

I had to log in just to reply to your post, danny elfboy.  That was the most well thought out answer..EVER!  Very thorough explanation of what "teaching" is..I have taken a few voice lessons and definitely get that those middle notes can ruin everything.  Just as some concept could hold someone back from playing the piano musically.  Its definitely great when students "get" what has been holding them back and can finally be free to express the music.

[quantum]

Here's an adage that was passed on to me:

Tell them ... and they will forget.
Show them ... and they will remember.
Involve them ... and they will understand.

[quantum]

Re: Danny

Who are you, and what did you do with Bernhard? 

Excellent post BTW.

[pianochick93]

Danny, that was an excellent post!

Analogies really work as well. My piano teacher kept telling me to bring out a melody in a piece, and I tried, but I couldn't do it. (This is the middle section of the Raindrop Prelude.)
She eventially told me to imagine the repeated notes are like the ticking of a clock - they are constantly there but you never really notice them - and the melody notes are like someone talking - noticable over the 'ticking' of the 'clock'
Then when the louder octaves and chords come in over the 'ticking' and the 'person speaking' they are the chimes of the hour/half-hour/whatever.

It really helped!

[dora96]

Thank you for all your advice and  help on my post. Another question, I am just wondering the students I have the problem with. I have been talking to them and evaluate their situation. One girl I find that she is 7 years old , very talented, very creative in other ways except the piano. I ask her " what do you do in your spare time? She said I like to watch TV,  draw, play games and shopping. What about playing the piano. She said  I like it but I don't like to practice . It takes so long.  My brother doesn't play the piano, he learned it before, but he gave up. My mum won't allow me to give up. My brother can choose what he wants, but I am not allowed to choose. Sometimes, their  background and circumstance can affect the way they are learning. I remembered I had a friend when her daughter practiced the piano, the other kids running around  and  screaming in the house. Everyone is busy doing their own thing in the house. No one is interested in her playing the piano. There is no encouragement  after the lesson. Most the parents have little knowledge about music. They are completely rely on the teacher. When they need help, there is no one to help immediately, and the students have to wait for next week to ask question, wait for me to correct them.

I do understand whatever I taught them which need to make sense. Some kids just don't understand why they need to play the piano while their friends don't need to learn. The only explanation because their parents want them to. I think it is important for kids to find meaning and propose otherwise they won't be conscientious and willing to demonstrate the detail in the music. I think kids need routine and disciplines, and I don't want to be bad policeman like Danny  said The horrible school system and the didactic philosophies of many teachers just rob children of their natural curiosity and love for learning. How to find the balance?  I heard many people say they had the opportunity to learn the piano when they were young, but they were not  appreciate it . Of course, when they became  conscientious, it was too late. Life just devours. All the precious time lost.   

Like my friend' s 8 years old daughter when she ask her daughter to practice the piano. The whole practice only takes 30 minutes but she will argue and cry for 15 minutes before doing it. When she wants to practice after few minutes, she is tired, she needs to go the toilet, get a drink, turn the light on, it is too hot or too cold, she is itchy and has a scratch so on and so on.  When she has done something incorrect, she won't practice again and confirm everything ok. It is very stress for the mother and on the other hand, other siblings are screaming for attention and crying at the same time. It is so ridiculer. We try lots of praise , encouragement, fun way to play the music. The ultimate goal is all come down to practice seriously.  I mean lots of things I don't know about my student's live an their circumstance plus do I need to get involved?   

[danny elfboy]

Thank you for all your advice and  help on my post. Another question, I am just wondering the students I have the problem with. I have been talking to them and evaluate their situation. One girl I find that she is 7 years old , very talented, very creative in other ways except the piano. I ask her " what do you do in your spare time? She said I like to watch TV,  draw, play games and shopping. What about playing the piano. She said  I like it but I don't like to practice . It takes so long.

They need to learn how to practice and if there's no fun in practice and if it's just a dull, pedantic and boring ... they're breaking all the rules of practicing. Your playing is as goon as your practicing is ... and this includes the expressivity of your music. It's just not feasible to have students practicing in a robotic and pedantic way and expect their playing to be passional and emotional.

I think it is a cycle. Classical training is flawed. It is flawed the idea of learning first the notation than the aurally sensations. It is flawed to focus the lessons in a series of "do" and "dons" without really involving the students, it is flawed to consider the lesson as something holy so that, like in church, you can't have fun or say jokes or make the whole thing less dull. It is flawed the focus on perfection rather than on a steady dancing rhythm and consistence and it is flawed the focus on discipline instead of creativity. It is flawed to spend 40% of the lesson listening the students playing their piece over and over instead of spending it for demonstrations, explanation, interesting anecdoted, active listening to CD. It is flawed that after 20 years old classical lessons a pianist can only play standard repertoire which he/she can read on a sheet just can never sit at whatever piano and just make music arranging, composing, improvizing, playing by ear, accompanying, creating original basslines from fake books and so on.

As I have said even the most passional and musical spirit would be turned out by this.
When they have to practice at home practice sounds a lot like the dull lesson.
If there's something within these students which really love music it is never given a chance to fulfill such desire. And which is why eventually 90% of piano students give up.

But the orthodox, austere, dull and pedantic nature of piano training has nothing to do with the nature of this task, but with the heired mentality of the snob cultural environment in which classical music was more exploited as a status quo than really "felt". So students can learn everything and even more even with a completely different approach.

Everything a teacher can do to break from the military college environment of piano pedagogy, the better for the piano and all the students and future pianists.

I do understand whatever I taught them which need to make sense. Some kids just don't understand why they need to play the piano while their friends don't need to learn. The only explanation because their parents want them to. I think it is important for kids to find meaning and propose otherwise they won't be conscientious and willing to demonstrate the detail in the music. I think kids need routine and disciplines, and I don't want to be bad policeman like Danny  said The horrible school system and the didactic philosophies of many teachers just rob children of their natural curiosity and love for learning. How to find the balance?  I heard many people say they had the opportunity to learn the piano when they were young, but they were not  appreciate it . Of course, when they became  conscientious, it was too late. Life just devours. All the precious time lost.

I would never teach someone something that he/she doesn't want to learn in the first place.
For as many piano players who developed a passion under compulsion there are way more that developed an hatred for music. You can't teach anything under compulsion because it's just a circumstance which is antithetic to learning. You can only brainwash through compulsion and brainwashing has nothing to do with learning. There's no precious time lost.
As there is no "critical period". Or better yet there do is time lost and it's the one doing and practicing something you don't want to do while you have better personal ideas on how to engage your time. If a piano passion will develop later that will be the time to start cultivating it. After all the good thing about piano is not just being able to play it.
If pills to make people able to play the piano would be invented they would never give the thrill of playing piano that comes from the whole path to becoming a piano player.

So even more important than being able to play is the whole training. It's not just where you're going the important, it's also the path from there and the ability to enjoy the beautiful landscape while you're still travelling. So it's just wrong to think that it's okay to make piano compulsory just because these kids will be already able to play the piano the day they will develop a passion for it.

Learning is as natural as breathing as long as it involves and interests the mind of a person.
Much of our miseries as "civilized" human beings depends on the belief shoved down our throat since we were in the cradle that to do something properly we must make an effort.

The truth is that learning is almost passive just like seeing and just like earing.
Things happens around us and we just absorb them and metabolize them as long as they're important to us. Putting an extra effort in seeing (because of such absurd belief in the value of effort) worsen our eyesight and increase the refraction problems due to muscular strain.
And putting extra effort in learning doesn't only destroy any real learning hence a real understanding and not just a parrotting of the few essential notions (sometimes nonsense) your books and teachers regurgitates, but also slowly destroys the ability to learn.

Like my friend' s 8 years old daughter when she ask her daughter to practice the piano. The whole practice only takes 30 minutes but she will argue and cry for 15 minutes before doing it. When she wants to practice after few minutes, she is tired, she needs to go the toilet, get a drink, turn the light on, it is too hot or too cold, she is itchy and has a scratch so on and so on.  When she has done something incorrect, she won't practice again and confirm everything ok. It is very stress for the mother and on the other hand, other siblings are screaming for attention and crying at the same time. It is so ridiculer. We try lots of praise , encouragement, fun way to play the music. The ultimate goal is all come down to practice seriously.  I mean lots of things I don't know about my student's live an their circumstance plus do I need to get involved?   

It doesn't work like this.
A child should never need a parent bothering him/her to practice.
The piano is his/her thing, it's his/her choice and he/she doesn't need any more condescience in life. When a boy begs his parents to attend the basketball class and he eventually becomes a good player, you will never hear the parents saying the boy to practice basketball ... it is just not something that belongs to them. The boy loves it enough to know when and how to practice without any jiminy cricket annoying them behind their back.

So even before focusing on how orthodox and classical based piano training destroys the joy of learning music I would focus on how we got the creepy idea that piano must be compulsory and that a piano-slave will eventually thank us even if he/she just hates us right now.

[counterpoint]

If pills to make people able to play the piano would be invented they would never give the thrill of playing piano that comes from the whole path to becoming a piano player.

This is just a wonderful sentence!

Okay, not from a grammatical point of view, but in its true meaning 

The difficulties of playing piano are the fun of it, when they are mastered.

[danny elfboy]

This is just a wonderful sentence!

Okay, not from a grammatical point of view, but in its true meaning 

The difficulties of playing piano are the fun of it, when they are mastered.

Thanks
This is a bit off-topic but would you mind rewrite the sentence to me so it is more grammatically and syntaxically correct? I'm always eager to improve my english.

[counterpoint]

Thanks
This is a bit off-topic but would you mind rewrite the sentence to me so it is more grammatically and syntaxically correct? I'm always eager to improve my english.

Sorry, I have the same problems with english grammar as you 

[dora96]

Of course, no one can make anyone play the piano if the person doesn't  want to do in the first place. What I describe the kids I have it is extremely cases? Like my friend's daughter, she asked to have piano lesson, she wants to learn. But when she faces difficulty in the music, she just doesn't want to face it. Once she is over the obstacle, she is happy and proud of herself. The tantrum happens when she needs to pay attention and practice the difficult piece of music.  Not just for little kids, even for me, you think practicing the piano is all fun, not quite it is really hard work specially when level is high. When I read about Lang Lang. "When he was nine years old, Lang Lang was nearing his audition for Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music, but he had difficulties with his lessons, and was expelled from his piano tutor's studio for lack of talent. His music teacher at his state school noticed Lang Lang's sadness, and decided to comfort him by playing a record of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330; she asked him to play with the slow movement. This reminded Lang of his love of the instrument. "Playing the K. 330 brought me hope again," recalled Lang years later. You think his success is about all fun and happy. I feel inside me when he was kid, the tear, the sweat, the frustration, the obstacle in his life to get where he is today. Don't you think he is complaining about now? Did he compliant about learning the piano robbing his childhood? 

Like my neighbor 's son, he said to parents, he wants to join the school band, it is really excited and fun. He begs his parents to drum lesson. They bought him a drum set. After 6 months, he said " it is really boring, he doesn't want to do it anymore. He wants to try to play the flute. They bought him the flute, after 7 months lesson, he gave up. He wants to try something else. They let him, because they only have one son, it is good for him to experience different thing, so they give him the freedom to choose whatever he likes. The problem is when come down the discipline and persevering. There is too many thing influence kids nowadays,  if you ask a kid, do you want to watch TV or play the piano. Which one you think he/ she choose?  I am sorry that I am so stubborned, but I can deny what I believe it is right  and make sense to me. I am sometimes wondering we have Dr. Phil or Dr. feel good always give device to general public why the problem is there?

 

[danny elfboy]

Of course, no one can make anyone play the piano if the person doesn't  want to do in the first place. What I describe the kids I have it is extremely cases? Like my friend's daughter, she asked to have piano lesson, she wants to learn. But when she faces difficulty in the music, she just doesn't want to face it. Once she is over the obstacle, she is happy and proud of herself. The tantrum happens when she needs to pay attention and practice the difficult piece of music.  Not just for little kids, even for me, you think practicing the piano is all fun, not quite it is really hard work specially when level is high. When I read about Lang Lang. "When he was nine years old, Lang Lang was nearing his audition for Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music, but he had difficulties with his lessons, and was expelled from his piano tutor's studio for lack of talent. His music teacher at his state school noticed Lang Lang's sadness, and decided to comfort him by playing a record of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330; she asked him to play with the slow movement. This reminded Lang of his love of the instrument. "Playing the K. 330 brought me hope again," recalled Lang years later. You think his success is about all fun and happy. I feel inside me when he was kid, the tear, the sweat, the frustration, the obstacle in his life to get where he is today. Don't you think he is complaining about now? Did he compliant about learning the piano robbing his childhood?

There's no robbing of childhood.
Childhood as a mystical, magical and special moment that could be "ruined" if not lived the right (western) way is just a cultural myth a lot of narrative but also political rhetoric exploits to no end. According to UNESCO western children are the most unhappy and unfulfilled individuals in the whole planet. When the newspaper replied to the new they said that it might be true but there's still much work to do to reverse poverty and allows children not to be poor.

To this the UNESCO replied that their study showed that money and whealth had NOTHING to do with the lack of well being of western children. It's the chronic infantilization and hypocrisy of parents and a culture that believe childhood is made to be lived in triaviality while teaching their children the value of gathering as much stuff as they can because that what makes happiness. A childhood lived in what Holt called "the garden prison of childhood" is fake, it's like living a surrogate of a life. Childhood should be like any other moment of life, made of experiences and enriching circumstances but can't be ruined by "being lived the wrong way"

If more children could spend their childhood nurturing their passions and feeling real emotions (including sadness, fear, nostalgia, doubt ... all vital emotions in humans) instead of living in perpetual condescendence and triviality collecting figure stickers and buying ninja turtles, I guess the UNESCO report would suddenly change ... showing that even western children can be happy and fullfilled.

There's only one way to be robbed of your childhood: being intrapped in a room with nothing interesting to do, nothing interesting to explore, nothing interesting to feel. And guess what this is the kind of disturbing childhood that our culture worships and believe to be the best one (of course: it allows everyone from parents to the government to brainwash any child and turn them into clones of someone else)

A childhood of real emotions (including struggles, including frustration, including difficulties) is way better than any western sit-com surrogate we are trying to conformize kids into.

To me the passion for music and marvelous sensation of playing the piano and creating sounds exceed any sacrifice, any fear and any sadness. Indeed to me playing the piano and learning to the play the piano is FUN ... and the hard work is fun too, it is exciting and increases my self-confidence. There's nothing in my piano learning path which is bad or I wish I could avoid. I'm grateful of being able to feel so strongly instead of being an urban zombie.

Like my neighbor 's son, he said to parents, he wants to join the school band, it is really excited and fun. He begs his parents to drum lesson. They bought him a drum set. After 6 months, he said " it is really boring, he doesn't want to do it anymore. He wants to try to play the flute. They bought him the flute, after 7 months lesson, he gave up. He wants to try something else. They let him, because they only have one son, it is good for him to experience different thing, so they give him the freedom to choose whatever he likes. The problem is when come down the discipline and persevering.

One child has more discipline and perseversance than all adults combined.
The problem is that their mind is still sane enough not to accept compromises.
They treasure what it's important to them and they trash everything which is imposed to them but doesn't make any sense to them. I have often heard people claiming
"that child can't focus" ... but the child could focus for hours and with self-discipline on colouring books, on trying figures with his skateboard on exploring the wood behind his house. In other words he COULD focus better than the people who said he couldn't, he just couldn't focus on the things that didn't thrill him, didn't fascinate him and didn't interest him. And even though learning should be a wonderful journey that never ends, the majority of teachers have the disturbing talent of turning something so natural and beautiful into a nightmare of boredome, mediocrity and nonsense. No wonder the mind of these kids prefers more important things, things that enrich them way more.
 

There is too many thing influence kids nowadays,  if you ask a kid, do you want to watch TV or play the piano.

A kid is forced to live in the environment and living circumstance that someone else chooses for him/her. And the problem is that their parents and teachers are not only choosing for them the most terrible and alienated life circumstances and environment but don't know themselves how to make their life better. Kids are ignored, never taken seriously and infantilized.

And if that wasn't enough they have to live in a modern world which is completely alienating to them, where external support is reduced, where their freedom to make meaningful experiences (but not their freedom to posses expensive meaningless stuff) is curtailed and where the sense of community has disappeared.

Whenever a situation makes you sad, isolated and apathetic you can choose to change it, to open a door and find something that makes your life meaningful. A child can't. A child can't choose between parents that believe love is buying stuff, a sense of emptiness and lack of meaning in life and the opportunity to find out a sense of life. So whenever they tell me to observe that mischievous kid what I actually see are hideous parents and a child who is trying to rebeal against something that his/her mind can still recognize as stupid, hypocritical, inhumane, unfair.

Nothing represents hypocrisy better than the way children are treated and are aspected to behave in the western world. It's identical to the way black americans were treated.
Complete tautology! They were never given the freedom to show they were human beings like anyone else and put into life circumstances that prevented such freedom and yet they were accused and punished for being "different" i.e. being like they were forced to be.

No wonder the UNESCO tells us that children in poor countries living on huts made of mud are way happpier than any western child.

The bottom line is that learning is as natural as breathing.
Any time we absorb a new interesting and important information we're learning, even if it just remembering some gossip. Hence it's impossible to teach how to learn and it's not only usefull but harmful to try to impose the focus, discipline and interest that occurs naturally and without effort and straing when we're really learning. Every other form of "knowledge" which doesn't follow this rules is just brainwashing.

Education comes from the words ex ducere. Which means drawing out.
It means that the learning is a sense inside of us from birth.
It's like our heartbeat or our sight, it is there from the first day and will be till there till the last. The majority of people say education but mean in-ducede ... hence putting in hence brainwashing. Children learn the hardest thing in the whole world by themselves: language. They do it by imitation, trial and error and observation and exploration.
If any busy-body would interfer with this and would try to force in children language-learning systems or the "discipline" to learn the language ... I'm 100% sure that the child would never learn to speak and would remain speechless for life. The same with teaching. Attempting to teach a child to learn is destroying the very essence of learning still alive in the child. If a teacher believes that its her/his duty to teach a child how to learn, he/she should believe it's our duty to teach a child how to breathe.

As William Bates wrote:


The idea that to do anything well requires effort is drilled into us from our cradles.
The whole educational system is based upon it; and in spite of the wonderful results attained by Montessori through the total elimination of every species of compulsion in the educational process, educators who call themselves modern still cling to the club, under various disguises, as a necessary auxiliary  to the process of imparting knowledge.

It is as natural for the eye to see as it is for the mind to acquire knowledge, and any effort in either case is not only useless, but defeats the end in view.
You may force a few facts into a child's mind by various kinds of compulsion, but you cannot make it learn anything. The facts remain, if they remain at all, as dead lumber in the brain. They contribute nothing to the vital processes of thought; and because they were not acquired naturally and not assimilated, they destroy the natural impulse of the mind toward the acquisition of knowledge, and by the time the child leaves school or college, as the case may be, it not only knows nothing but is, in the majority of cases, no longer capable of learning.

[danny elfboy]

As for your student: try to talk to her as if you were talking to a close friend of her ... openly and honestly. Tell her that playing the piano must be her passion, her dream and her desire and that she should not do it for the wrong reason (compulsion, trying to impress someone, trying to make parents proud)

Tell her learning to play the piano is hard work and you must have consistence and dedication but that when you really love music even all the hard work put into the process of learning is pleasurable and makes you feel good.

She might surprise you and be open and honest in the same manner. Maybe she will tell you that she doesn't love piano that much. Or maybe she will tell you that she really loves music but the piano lessons seems to destroy her musical appreciation and spontaneity (which is a claimI have heard from graduated students and famous pianists alike) and then you'll have to find a way to maintain her spontaneity and musicality (I would suggest the Susuki and Whiteside philosophies) or maybe she will tell you that she is not afraid of hard work but just doesn't really understand even if she wants to. There's no reason for classical repertoire and piano technique to be tedious, boring, lifeless and pedantic. We must bypass the emotionally repressed attitude of western teaching. A great russian violin teacher once told me that in Vivaldi's winter it's not important to spend hour acquiring the right technique, it's important practicing visualizing the ice breaking in the cold night as you play it.

Learning is made of vision, immagination, creativity, touching, listening, trying, experimenting and only a tiny 10% works by reading or by trills. All the beautiful force, immanence and transcendence of classical repertoire is just DESTROYED in orthodox piano lessons. What should inspire the subconscious and capture us in a journey of the mind and the spirit ... becomes nothing but a series of lifeless, nauseating and emotionally repressed exercises.

It's like teaching poetry not by focusing on the passion, the inflection of the voice, the emotional rendition but on learning word by word, automatically and robotically, without learning the sense (because when you reduce a sentence to words you don't understand the meaning of the sentence anymore) in a dull and zombie voice. Who is so crazy to believe that such practice repeated for years could in some magical way result in someone being able to claim a poem with passion and talent?

Every little bit of what classical piano training is supposed to be is flawed and uneffective,. But nothing new there ... thousands of students, pianists, theorists and teachers have said and proven the same for years.

My belief is that those few kids who became talented pianists had enough fantasy and immagination on their own to keep seeing the "colors" of music even when their lesson were in "black and white". But for the others the difference between the colors music and the black and white of piano lessons is too strong not to wonder why in the world they're doing it and giving up pretty soon.

[the_duck]

Thanks
This is a bit off-topic but would you mind rewrite the sentence to me so it is more grammatically and syntaxically correct? I'm always eager to improve my english.

No doubt someone will correct my correction, but here's my best effort anyway:

"If a pill were created that could give people the ability to play the piano it could never give the same thrill of playing piano that comes from following the path of organic learning."

nice sentiment, but damn it's hard to express! 

[timothy42b]

Danny, that was an excellent post!

It was a great post, except for the fact that it was wrong.

Well, maybe not completely wrong!  The logic is okay. 

But.................this is a six year old student.  They are nonverbal, for all practical purposes.  You cannot explain in the academic intellectual style Danny used (though it was quite well put together.)  It just does not work, any more than you can explain calculus to a dog. 

[danny elfboy]

It was a great post, except for the fact that it was wrong.

Well, maybe not completely wrong!  The logic is okay. 

But.................this is a six year old student.  They are nonverbal, for all practical purposes.  You cannot explain in the academic intellectual style Danny used (though it was quite well put together.)  It just does not work, any more than you can explain calculus to a dog. 

It works believe me. You have just to let go to preconceptions and try it and they will just suprire you. Did you know that 4 years old are able to formulate abstract thought and to think phylosophycally about life and the existence? There is a writer who was so impressed by the complexity and deepness of young children thought that created a book with their insight and claimed that "child phylosophy" should be an accademical matter.

All children I have tried to explain things in non-condescending and simplified ways have always understood me and if there were something in my words they didn't understand all I needed was to explain those words so they could make sense of the general concept.

[musicrebel4u]

Sometimes when I read Dannyelfboy, I feel like it is my own words and believe.
I just disagree on one point: students have to learn notation aurally and vocally from the very first steps. Singing helps to understand the very nature of music piece.
 
I also  want to add something to his great posting from… mathematical point of view.

As you already know, we developed a computerized system to teach students to read notation and develop piano skills ( alone with ear training, memorization etc). This system has 2 scores: amount of notes that played right out of perfect some and amount of time overspent (looking for notes, keys, coordination problems etc). First duration of notes is hidden in animation (notes presented as flower buds, later they replaced with original notation) Pure math and only facts!

What I had realized by working with students of any age beginning from 2+ that they build their 'music minds' or ability to comprehend music as an artistic language gradually. For example, when the amount of played notes is less then amount of lost time (student struggle with reading and coordination and don't even 'hear' what they play), they 'don't hear' even my fingering suggestions. In that stage you could put big red flag with number of finger that they are missing and they won't see it! I am not daring to tell them about character, because it would fell into the dead ear.

When the playing is getting more fluent and timing on the screen is closer to 0 , students more opened to some suggestions and really interested about fingering

After passing that stage we play a lot with rhythm beats (metronome is too tedious, I think). After that Oh! HOW they opened to suggestions about character, phrasing, different touches etc. They practically are pulling all the information about dynamics out from me!  Sometimes (because we sing a lot alone the playing) they play everything dynamically right without my help.

Also, the system allows students of any age to go through a lot of music by sight-reading.  It also contributes to ability to feel music as a language – not like mechanical production of drills.

As a sample I will place 2 videos for you:
1.   5 year old boy playing L.Mozart with my singing. You will see how singing helps to understand music as a language

2.   Our programmer Yuri, who never took any piano lessons, but taught himself to read music performs Sonata Pathetique. He can open ANY music book and read it like this. We have hours of recording of reading music. It is just amazing, how artistically he is doing it!

           

           

           

[timothy42b]

It works believe me. You have just to let go to preconceptions and try it and they will just suprire you.

No, you need some knowledge about the developmental levels of children in order to teach them.  Piaget is probably more important than musical pedagogy.  (or whatever modern authors are more current, I'm a little rusty on the literature) 

You MUST deal with a child on the level they exist at, not the level you are at or the level you think they are at.  This is science, not opinion.  I agree with not being fooled with preconceptions, but you seem to have the preconception that children are verbal the way you are verbal.  They are not.  Read Jean Piaget.  Read Virginia Satir.  Skim a text on Developmental Psychology. 

There is nothing wrong with your logic, you are a good theoretician.   But you need some data points.

For practical advice, with a young child: never use two sentences if one will do.  Never use three, ever, under any circumstances.   

[anna_crusis]

You MUST deal with a child on the level they exist at, not the level you are at or the level you think they are at.  This is science, not opinion.  I agree with not being fooled with preconceptions, but you seem to have the preconception that children are verbal the way you are verbal.  They are not.  Read Jean Piaget.  Read Virginia Satir.  Skim a text on Developmental Psychology. 

I have to say I agree completely with that. You can't talk to children as if they were adults. Two things will immediately happen:

1 - they won't have a clue what you're talking about.
2 - they will feel guilty about not understanding and tell you what they think you want to hear, so as not to appear foolish. They can be incredibly convincing in this.

I've seen so many families where the kid is made to feel embarassed about being a child and so begins to act like a mini-adult. Except that they don't have the cognitive or physical abilities of an adult, and are therefore swamped with feelings of innadequecy.

A child's world is simple and straightforward, made up of what is obvious and immediately apparent. Abstract thought is an alien world to them.

[alessandro]

I have to say I agree completely with that. You can't talk to children as if they were adults. Two things will immediately happen:

1 - they won't have a clue what you're talking about.
2 - they will feel guilty about not understanding and tell you what they think you want to hear, so as not to appear foolish. They can be incredibly convincing in this.

I've seen so many families where the kid is made to feel embarassed about being a child and so begins to act like a mini-adult. Except that they don't have the cognitive or physical abilities of an adult, and are therefore swamped with feelings of innadequecy.

A child's world is simple and straightforward, made up of what is obvious and immediately apparent. Abstract thought is an alien world to them.

Didn't read Developmental Psychology or Virginia Satir...  I live with friend and her two daughters, nine and twelve years.  I never consciously adapt my behaviour with kids, I always try to be kind, articulated and friendly with them, but the way I am.  I hate it when I hear mothers talk to their children with the very high voice 'Honey sweetie mama asks you...'.  I hate that kind of "dealing" with kids, and I hate talking of yourself in the third person...   I think kids are very smart because they're very sensitive, just because they're kids...  (some can be of course very cruel too...)  For the youngest daughter, I find it amazing how she can be surprised if I talk in metaphors, how interested she is in expressions, and how quickly she understands them and uses expressions in a correct way...  She really has a talent  for language...  On the contrary, and I read that in some kind of scientific study and I think I understand the point of the that author, humans in general experience less the adult age...  We stay for a longer time "child"...  If I look around me, it's so obvious how some thirty year old ladies still can chatter as if they were in playground of the biggest futilities (man on the contrary often are fascinated by "ball"games...)  I think I still have some of the main charactertistics of a kid like the curiosity, I sleep (and like lying in my bed)...
So I just mainly try to be straightforward and honest with the girls, I like them so much.   I appreciate that they're gentle, sweet, polite and positive.
...
Should stop here for a while...
Kindly

[keypeg]

Fancy big words does not equal adult-talk, nor imparting concepts.  A true expert in a field will be able to bring concepts across in very basic language.  Someone who has learned and studied, but has not really mastered his material, will be stuck with the lingo, regurgitation of facts as he learned them.  He knows them enough to use them effectively, but he does not truly understand them.  One of the lessons I am learning about music is that the most profound is the most basic, as well as the most elusive.  If you are capable of grasping that, then you can impart the profound on a young child.

 A lot of the psychology used in modern education is confusing nonsense.  We must not forget that when we work within an educational system, we are working in a system, an institution, and both we and the children are exhibiting institutionalized behaviour.  It is not necessarily a bad thing, but we must be aware that it exists and creates its own norms.  When we talk about "what children do" we must not forget to put the parameters of their learning environment into the equation.

Something else that may be missed in what Danny Elfboy is saying - and I am probably of a similar philosophy - is that the questions, ideas, and quest can come from the children themselves: unless they have been removed from the source of their own motivation.

[timothy42b]

Children are nonverbal not in the sense of lacking vocabulary, but because at a very primal level they have not fully connected language to reality.  This is a slow process. 

I'll give a practical example which unfortunately does not explain my first sentence.  <g>

Teacher:  "Arch your hand like this.  (child looks, understands, turns toward the piano to try it) This lets you play with better tone.  (child turns back, torn between urge to play and requirement to obey demands of authority, irritated and frustrated at not completing the first action) That will .........(child has now tuned out completely and is politely smiling but not listening) ........allow you to play with more expression.  Making music is mostly about expression." 

Teacher is now satisfied he has explained the concept simply and succintly.  He has talked at the child's level and kept it short and sweet.  Now he will blame the child for repeating the error with the hand. 

We've all seen it, we've probably all done it. 

[danny elfboy]

No, you need some knowledge about the developmental levels of children in order to teach them.  Piaget is probably more important than musical pedagogy.  (or whatever modern authors are more current, I'm a little rusty on the literature) 

You MUST deal with a child on the level they exist at, not the level you are at or the level you think they are at.  This is science, not opinion.  I agree with not being fooled with preconceptions, but you seem to have the preconception that children are verbal the way you are verbal.  They are not.  Read Jean Piaget.  Read Virginia Satir.  Skim a text on Developmental Psychology

I know Piaget very well and I know that Piaget has been debunked completely.
That's why I said that children as young as 4 are capable of abstract thinking.
Piagest believed they were not but better methodological researches were able to prove they are and that Piaget methodology was completely wrong. Piaget is not needed, is completely obsolete and harmful.

Piaget ideas and studies were so flawed that one doesn't know where to begin.
His conclusion were wrong, he tested perceptive skills that didn't depend at all on age but on having developed them through the external world, he thoughts of development as linear and age-based, he tested children from one social class and one culture at most proving what the effects of that culture and that education had on those children but proving nothing about children, age and cognitive development. The identical studies piaget did have been repeated by other researchers and the result are completely different. Piaget lacked control groups, he collected small samples using children of identical social backgrounds, his work was completely absent in statistical analysis. In other words he was a poor researcher with a flawed positivist premise: observe the behavior of few children in certain situations and you'll identify precisely universal features extrapolable to all the children of this world.

Children as young as 4 are perfectly capable of abstract thought and there's no intrinsic age-based development. I suggest these books strongly:

Children's Mind - Margaret Donaldson
Gareth Matthews - The Philosophy of Childhood
Muriel Seltman - Piaget's Logic: a Critique of Genetic Epistemology
Mathew J. Kanjirathinkal - Critique of Theories of Cognitive Development
John Holt - Escaping from Childhood
John Holt - How Children Learn

Notice that when I said that if you do explain things to a 6 year old he/she does understand I was talking about real life experiences. It would be pretty stupid to deny real life experience in favour of theoretical hypothesis based on limited in a vacuumm data. People are first of all individuals we must know and interact with.

Whatever kind of real life evidence based on such interactions wins over any kind of a-priori psychological and sociological theory which might easily one day be disproved, incomplete, flawed or based on the flawed assumption that what we can interfer from the study of one or more individuals can be extrapolated to the whole population as if we were static rocks to study in an objective way rather than unique people one completely different form the other.

Nowadays we know better, compared to Piaget, to believe that there's such a beast as "the average child" because there's none. We are beasts of circumstance and every single action and choice in our life shape the people that we were, are and will be and a child is not exception, he/she is an individual not a neurologically pre-programmed robot. Real life experience disproves and disproved Piaget even before serious researches showed how wrong he was.

The scientifical approach doesn't work with people because we are all at whetever age completely unpredictable, unique and ruled by our choices. Many writers and scientists have warned the scientific world of the problem of using science as a way to understand and create predictable schemes and theories of human behaviors. Born, a physicist, even called it a conflict of interests since the object and the subject are the same. Foucault clearly saw the huge epistemological flaw of humanities and predicted how they would have lead to nothing but wrong conclusions due to their faulty premise. Development is not predictable and doesn't work by stages because humans are too complex and the way the interaction with the circumstances we face everyday shape our humanity and personality is unique for each of us.

[nyonyo]

dannyelfboy,

Unbelieveable, how could you even have the desire to type such a long thing.
I do not even interested in reading such along argument. I am not saying what you say useless. I just wonder how could you have such an increble amount of energy to write like that. I'd rather spend my time practicing piano.

[danny elfboy]

I explain it all.
I don't say "play like this because it is better" but I explain to them why it is better.
If I use words they don't understand they ask me to explain those words and I also use examples and analogies. No one not even infants learn in a vacuumm. Our mind loves to discards useless out of context information. That's why we learn and retain what we can make sense of, understand and relate to. Arbitrary instruction and rules doesn't belong to this.

I don't say "the staff is 5 lines period" but I say "the staff is 5 lines because it is easier to read notes in that way, you can try yourself that more lines would make reading far harder, many had tried different ways to write music including more lines but eventually a monk named D'Arezzo realized that 5 lines was the best. If you try to experiment with more lines I'm sure you will find out it is the best way too"

This way of explaining information and their foundation makes a person and the mind of this person involved hence the information makes sense, doesn't exist in a vacuum and is retained. This applies to everyone from very young children to retired seniors. I don't say "this position of the hand is better" I say "try yourself many positions and see which ones feel better and more confortable and gives the best sound. I'm pretty sure you'll noticed the one I showed is also the one that feels better. It's the same when you hold a spoon to bring it to your mouth. You can hold the spoon in a unconfortable way and riskying of letting it fall or you can find a confortable way where your holding is secure and strong but you don't feel tense or strain" (if they ask me what tension means I just explain it to me and they understand it immediately)

I understand when a person is listening. I don't care for smiles or staring in the eyes but I care for questions. When a person is involved with an information he/she either ask questions or wants to make himself/herself a small essay about it. For example after explaining the why of 5 lines he/she might say "imagine if there were 100 lines that would be messy lol" and I understand they have understood and that such information will make always sense for them.

[danny elfboy]

Didn't read Developmental Psychology or Virginia Satir...  I live with friend and her two daughters, nine and twelve years.  I never consciously adapt my behaviour with kids, I always try to be kind, articulated and friendly with them, but the way I am.  I hate it when I hear mothers talk to their children with the very high voice 'Honey sweetie mama asks you...'.  I hate that kind of "dealing" with kids, and I hate talking of yourself in the third person...   I think kids are very smart because they're very sensitive

Consider this.
What is smart about children is how rely on what they know, what they experience and what they instinctively feel. This makes them very open minded, flexible and allow them to adapt their thought processing to the circumstances.

Adults on the other hand (not all) are forced by social conditioning to fix themselves within certain paradigms, thoughts processing, truths, stereotypes, platitudes. They lose the ability to change the way they thinkg and see life according to the circumstance and the situations.

The truth is that adults don't have inherently and universal different thought processing than children but that we all choose our thought processes. Just because we've forced ourselves to have certain perspectives and mindsets it doesn't neither mean that they're the best nor that they're a product of natural growing. In adult can choose in any moment to see things like a child would and would benefit from such perspective in many ways. A child can choose in any moment to see thing like an adult would but in smart enough to realize how stupid is to consider things in a fixed arbitrary way. Artists are known to alter their thought processing in a way which is functional to their art.

A common problem with human studies is that what we observe tells nothing about the nature and the cause of what we observe. If we observe a different model of thinking in adults it doesn't in any way means that mode is the product of development rather than based on how adults culturally and socially perceive and limit themselves. If we observe a certain behavior in a child it doesn't mean that behavior depends on his being child or his age rather than his personality, his level of understanding based on the experiences he has been allowed to live or even more subtle reasons. An observation of a young street rascal would show very different characteristics, mentality, knowledge and cognitive skills than a smoothered child from an high-class family.

A study for example told children of 3 to 6 years old about a kid who buy candies and put them in the kitched table. He goes out to play and the mother while cleansing the kitchen moves the candies from the kitched to the livingroom drawer. The children are asked where Max will look for his candies. Most children reply that Max will look in the kitchen because he can't be aware that the mother moved them because he wasn't there when the mother did it. This is indeed an example of formal thinking and change of perspective. If Piaget were right none of the children should have replied like that. But what the study noticed is the strong correlation between what the child replies and what kind of education the child had, what kind of every day life he lives, what kind of parents he had, what kind of experience he made. Unschoolers like Dewey noticed that children with a non authoritary educaton and lot of freedom to make good choices think and reason in very different ways. A child might live his first 6 years of his life in a kindergarten with the parents never there or he might have different life exererience everyday with his parents, travels a lot, get involved with sports and other kind of tasks or even having work experience like acting or doing commercials.
The amount of experience the second children does before 6 would completely influence the way he thinks and reason at that high. Interesting enough there's no relation with chronological age. To realize how logical this is we just have to think of how different can be the perspectives and mindset and musical sensitivity of two pianists. The way we think about music, wether for example we have a melodical perspective rather than an harmonical perspective, depends on how history ... in other words what kind of musical experience and what kind of musical education.

If there was an island were all inhabitants are completely unaware of the existence of music and never developed instruments or a musical system and we tried to test their musical knowledge we could conclude that these people are unable to understand music and process music with their mind. That wold be completely wrong of course since the truth is that they have never been exposed to music and hence can't process something they have not been exposed to. This is true of children and their experiential baggage as well.

Besides since we expect them to show their understanding of music using the musical system and perception we know we might conclude that they don't understand music and can't process musical sound while the truth would be that they do understand music and can process music sound but they are unable to show their understanding through a system they don't know. In other words just because a person might not know what the words GATTO or MER mean it doesn't mean that he is unable to understand what the a cat and the sea are and have a knowledge about these two entities. Failing to understand this point when dealing with studies analyzing cognitive skills is an unforgivable huge sin.

For example very young infants do know that an object is still there when it is moved away from their sight. They just don't want to reach for it and it's a not a chance that the period in which the child is said to have developed the cognitive skill, to understand the object is still there, coincides with the period in which the child develops enough motor coordination to reach for the object easily. Expecting to determine the understanding of object permanence through systema/languages/modus that are extraneous to the child and therefore concluding that the child doesn't have the cognitive skill is an embarassing flaw. The extraneity of a language doesn't say anything about the understanding of concepts; through a different language. The systems/modus/languages we expect the child to master are cultural products and for the child to have them they must be learned and ingrained. But this doesn't mean that without those cultural modes/system the child is unable to understand things and reason about things. I can reason about furry animals with wiskers that look like small lions and make strange meoww sounds without needing to know they're called cats or needing to know they're felines. In the same way cognitive skills exists in children even if they are outside of the paradigms and cultural modus and systems we know and have learned as standards.

Curiosity, awe for life, spontaneity, need for affection are universal human features.
Children exhibit them because they're less spoiled humans (but according to Mill they're spoiled enough by cultural, social norms and parents bias and prejudices) and if adults exhibit less of them is because they're completely spoiled and not because adult are supposed somehow to lose those characteristics.

What many don't understand about human beins is that we have not fixed characteristics.
What we are depends on the circumstance but within each of us there's the potential for everything. In certain circumstances we're tought and strong but in other circumstances we're vulnerable, in certain circumstances we're brave but in other circumstanced we're cowards, in certain circumstances we're confident but in other circumstance we're shy and self-conscious and so on. There's no superiority. None of us can be superior of inferior because they're relative to the circumstances. The small body of a child can be an inferior trait in certain circumstances and a superior trait in hundreds of other circumstances were actually a bigger body is an hindrance and hence inferior suited to the situation.

Being involved into sport I deal a lot with nutritional and athletic quarters.
I see many people depressed, unfit, out of shape with terrible hematic profile and physical resistance. They exhibit certain thinking models. I see also these people transforming, getting in shape, improving their health, their confidence, reversing their depression and apathy. Their way of thinking changes drastically. What I often hear them saying is that "I feel I see things like a child again, I see thing with the same sparkle and open mindedness and I feel the same sensations I used to feel at a young age" The point is that we "choose" to think in certain ways to think either consciously or unconsciously. Our mindset, perception, cognitive models can change drastically according to the situations and circumstance we face. Even what kind of thinking we consider superior depends on culturally biased standards. What we believe to be a developmental superior trait (formal thinking) is actually considering inferior by other cultures that consider concrete operations superior.

[keypeg]

"Arch your hand like this.  (child looks, understands, turns toward the piano to try it) This lets you play with better tone.  (child turns back, torn between urge to play and requirement to obey demands of authority, irritated and frustrated at not completing the first action) That will .........(child has now tuned out completely and is politely smiling but not listening) ........allow you to play with more expression.  Making music is mostly about expression." 

I'm in my 50's.  To tell the truth, that lesson would irritate me.  Why all the words?

One of my favorite first lessons was, as an adult, blissfully playing scales or something of the sort, and the whole time my hand was slowly inching up the violin neck.  I had no open strings, a good sense of relative pitch, so it sounded fine to me ... until I came to an open string and the next descending note was wa-a-a-ay off.  I tried again.  Didn't work.  Stopped.  Looked at my teacher who was grinning from ear to ear.  "I was waiting for that.", he said.

Why did this have such an impact that I remember it years later?  I dare say that if my teacher had used reams of words, explaining the importance of this and that, I would not have made that discovery, would not have realized the importance of what that mistake taught me.  I have had hour long lessons in which barely two words were spoken.  They were often the most effective.

If kids aren't into words, why all the words?  Why explain concepts with words, words, and more words?  Is it possible that children do comprehend abstract concepts, but not on the verbal level, and mabye where it counts?

[danny elfboy]

Why did this have such an impact that I remember it years later?  I dare say that if my teacher had used reams of words, explaining the importance of this and that, I would not have made that discovery, would not have realized the importance of what that mistake taught me.

Since I made a post in which I said I explain things I want to specify what I mean.
I believe in putting things into context because our mind hates to learn in a vacuumm.
It's not by chance that we learn so quickly and so well when we're faced with challenges and learning about them become the way to solve them. On the other hand theoretical intellectual work away from real life application is for the most part a terrible waste of time.

Explaining the history of something or how other people have reached certain conclusions or why things are the way they are, allows people to make sense of information and to relate with the context and dimensions in which these information apply.

It doesn't mean relying more on theoretical work than real life application and it doesn't even mean preventing a person from learning the lesson from his own mistakes, reasoning and doubts. It means thought preventing information from existing in a meaningless vacuumm and to be of any interest for the simple reason that someone with a soi-disant authority is telling you they're important.

Why for example playing historical role games onlines is one of the best way to learn history? Because you're involved, because you live the perspective of those times and relate to the choices and circumstances that occurred and hence you remember them. It's the same reason why analyzing the life of an historical figure and relating with his frustration, doubts, challenges and so on works so much better than learning dates, body counts, geographical coordinates and names in a history text book. Nothing works so well about learning the structure of a ship than sailing yourself, working in a ship as an apprentice and learning things as the circumstances to discover them present, compared to reading about ships theoretically on books.

Our mind hates vacuumms and giving instructions, saying things, listing rules without explaing their reasons, their how, when and why is the worst vacuumm possible. The authoritative vacuumm. And intelligent person would ignore all of that but the student feels compelled to listen and force himself to remember because he fears punishment, judgement, disappointment. That's not learning, that's brainwashing through subjection.

[keypeg]

In my example, my teacher waited for me to have the question and seek the answer.  The occasion was not accidental but wise, guided teaching.  I have not lost the inquiring mind, and it has not been killed by lessons - though it could well have been.

[danny elfboy]

In my example, my teacher waited for me to have the question and seek the answer.

Of corse, I believe in self discovery.
I said that I explain concepts so they're not in a vacuumm but those conceps are asked to me.
Learning is making sense of things that around us, it is not getting good grades, passing tests, memorizing stuff we don't understand or following teacher instructions mindlessly. But I believe in giving hints. For example if a student would sit unproperly I would ask him/her whether he/she feel comfortable. What follows is a lot of kinethetic self exploration. Sometimes we let things happen passively and we are not aware of them and restoring such awareness becomes unvaluable.

[keypeg]

Actually the quote I responded to begins with a statement that children cannot comprehend abstract thought if expressed verbally.  It was then followed by a sample lesson and I found myself, an adult, reacting like the child.  If so, since I am assumed capable of verbal abstract thought, the chid's reaction like my reaction cannot be due to that.  I looked at that lesson and thought, "There are way too many words.  Let me get on with it!"

You are speaking of an explanation that the student of any age seeks; I hear what you are saying.

Going back to the lesson of the arch of the hand: Trying something new absorbs all one's attention.  If I am told about the arch of the hand, then I want to be thinking arch.  I want to try the arched hand.  I want to be fooling around with that arched hand on the keyboard, see if I get it, find out what it feels like.  Probably I'll end up with questions.  I want to "play" in the child-like sense of the word, as in "explore".

But our sample teacher is intoining the importance of the arch for expressive music.  I'm not there yet.  I'm not trying to play expressively at the moemnt.  I'm trying to learn about the arched hand.  I'm all "arch" and that is a good thing.

Why, in fact, tell me that it will let me play expressively, at this moment?  To persuade me?  But I'm already persuaded.  I'm trying it out ... well, I would ... except that you, teacher are stopping me from trying it out, becuase you're intoning on its uses.  Then finally you have finished intoning, I've forgotten about the arched hand with all that talk about expressiveness, and then you're disappointed that I haven't done what I was told to do.

Is it, in fact, about abstract comprehension of ideas, or is it something else?

At another time, however, I may want to play expressively - or after I have worked with this hand you might tell me it will help me play expressively, like drop a seed for future use.  If I want to play expressively, that's my motivation - What a perfect time to remind me that the arched hand will help me do so.

As a side thought, my youngsters explored abstract concepts metaphorically through imagery.

[timothy42b]

In my example, my teacher waited for me to have the question and seek the answer.  The occasion was not accidental but wise, guided teaching.  I have not lost the inquiring mind, and it has not been killed by lessons - though it could well have been.

Yes.  I have a similar incident that sticks in my mind years later.  I had painstakingly worked out the fingering for a piece we used in church a lot, and I was playing it for my teacher.  There was one really awkward spot I just couldn't get.  She watched me struggle until she couldn't help laughing; then she reached forward and said, "why don't you try it like this?" and demonstrated a simple easy way to do it.  Light bulb went off!  Good teaching moment. 

[timothy42b]

I believe in putting things into context because our mind hates to learn in a vacuumm.

Ah..........no.  Your mind hates to learn in a vacuum.  So does mine much of the time. But this is not necessarily universal, in fact it is probably somewhat rare.  It is certainly not true of children at most stages of their development.  There is a reason they are such superb imitators.  They are hardwired to be so, for survival purposes. 

I don't mean to be harsh, but judging from the length of your posts I suspect you find it impossible to tone down your explanation to the needs of a child.   Less is more! 

[alessandro]

An observation of a young street rascal would show very different characteristics, mentality, knowledge and cognitive skills than a smoothered child from an high-class family.


Right. Since their has been here in Europe some kind of a scandal concerning a Bulgarian Orphan House, in that context a study arose in which a difference in fysical growth but also psychological knowledge occurs, due to environmental causes.  The objects of the study were kids with 'normal' (in contrats with poor parents ; less than 1000 euros per month), with only 'one' normal parent, with poor parents, kids that live without parents but within the family or another tutor and finally orphans in orphan-houses.   The kids for the first example had the best fysical and psychological conditions and the orphans, well, they were like 'in general' poor shape...  The first kids were bigger and healthier - the orphans were meager, didn't grow well (stayed little)...
Environment really has an influence on kids, who they're and how they develop...

[counterpoint]

I think it's very simple: you can teach kids only what they want to learn. Everything else they will "forget" instantly. Perhaps "forget" is not the right word, since they will not notice what you tell them at all.

So the question is: how can you interest them in what they are expected to learn?! That's not a simple task. And sometimes it is just impossible. You have to know that. Otherwise you will drive mad in short time.

[keypeg]

I read the books that DannyElfboy is reading, only it was 30 years ago.  I was dismayed when I taught public school for a meager 2 years, that the children had no instrinsic motivation.  They learned (performed learning tasks) because there were stars, rewards, apparently they had been given candies and treats in former grades.  Rarely was there a drive in "I want to learn this."  In fact, I came into the absurd situation where the brighter kids wanted to learn cursive writing but the curriculum said that they would only be allowed to learn it in grade 3.  The kids were begging me to teach them, and I was forbidden because some idiot "expert" had made it so.  I left the cursive writing chart on the activity table as a "fun activity-reward" and "helped" them in their "fun activity".  Some of them developed a beautiful handwriting.  I don't know how the grade 3 teacher coped with the fact that 6 or 7 of the students she inherited from me already knew cursive writing.

In raising my own children I determined not to kill intrinsic motivation, otherwise to be thought of as the inner drive to learn.  The human body is ridiculously constituted: we have to balance our whole body on two itty bitty feet on the bottom - yet little babies with gargantuan heads manage the task single mindedly.  When, where, and how does this get lost.  Must it be lost?  Is cognitive laziness truly a natural thing, or is it the "norm" in the school system so that it seems normal?  Those are the things that John Holt tried to address, I think in in the 1970's or 1960's?

I am intrinsically motivated myself.  I have never lost that.  I was generally clueless about pleasing my teachers, and still am.  I was surprised when they were displeased, and surprised when they were pleased.  I homeschooled my own children for roughly a decade, give or take.  There were core subjects, and the curriculum guidelines, as far as what knowledge was needed by each grade were milestones that had to be reached at a minimum.  In general, however, the instrinsic interests were nurtured, and led.  A deep interest in microscopic things and insects developed out of the blue: supply of microscope, terrarium for the crickets that sang all winter, library.  On one occasion we collared a college professor who privately taught the 15 year old the same course work that he was not allowed to take in an actual college because he was "too young".

Each youngster entered the school system, intrinsic motivation intact.  Their teachers did not fuel their interests.  They were not ignited by the spark that existed in the teacher.  They possessed their own spark, and only needed answers.  What they craved above all was expertise and competence.  This is where the homeschooling, unschooling and the rest unravels a little bit.  Where do you find the competent, expert guides for these inquisitive, self-motivated minds?  And at that point you run into the need for a teacher, but not in the manner of the first model, and one who knows that he is dealing with someone who is motivated.  The motivational devices are actually turn-offs.

The word "motivate" should be looked at.  It comes from the words "to move".  The word "motivate" is used mostly in a passive sense.  You must "motivate" a child to want to do something.  He gets inspired because of praise or reward.  He does it out of fear of punishment.  He gets inspired because he sees you enjoying yourself and wants to enjoy himself too.  He gets inspired because he hears Horowitz and wants to be another Horowitz.  These are all inherently passive and/or imitative and external "motivators".  Nothing originates from within the child.  That drive to learn to walk and talk are not there.

Another "motivate", which should really be given a separate word, begins with an inner drive.  Something pushes me to want to learn this thing.  I have something I want to do or say, and am restless until I can do it.  It begins within me.  You, the teacher, play well, and you're enjoying yourself.  That's nice.  I'm happy for you.  But now can you give me the tools so that I can fulfill my own drive to play well, which already exists?  Your enjoyment has nothing to do with my motivation, other than that I can see that you seem to carry the same spark that I already carry.  This "motivation" is a different animal entirely.  It is a thing that can be killed.  Once it is killed, you are left with the first "motivator": rewards, punishment, imitation and inspiration by watching others.

Once they entered the school system, my youngsters never complained that the work was too hard.  They did complain from time to time that it was not enough.  They did ask for an assignment to be changed so that they could do more with it.  And yes, this also involves music since one of the two eventually went into a music program in a good university.

Meanwhile I tutor the occasional young person, usually when they have difficulties.  Almost invariably I find myself telling the student to "own his knoweldge".  It's like the subject matter belongs to the teacher, he has to perform some circus tricks.  The idea that he is to benefit from learning, that the teacher is there to serve him in the acquisition of knowledge is a foreign idea to these kids.  They will do the most intricate math. while trading cards or computer game material, yet cannot figure out that 10 - 14 = (-4).  There is a clear line between "school stuff" and "learned stuff" which is not school-related.  It's foreign matter.  Has nothing to do with me.  The intrinsic motivation is totally absent.  Involvement does not exist at all - not a drop of it.

I had only one exception - a young man of 14 whom I tutored on an on-going basis.  He had not lost this drive.  He went on a rant one day.  His school was "motivating" the young people by teaching history through "what interests young people", and so it was all done through current events, following what the president and his family were doing in the news, and extrapolating on European history from there.  He was supposed to write a report.  Suddenly this youngster was on his feet, pacing like a college professor, talking like a college professor, agitated - running facts and theories based on rather deep knowledge of history spanning centuries and countries.  He could have written a thesis.  He was highly motivated.  He wanted to go off into research, create theories, expand on ideas - and was trapped in that this-is-how-young-people-think world.

I've written about young teens.  However, I remember my own, at the very youngest age, wanting to understand, and not just to know.  The difference is that at that age they expressed themselves in imagery and bodily.  I suppose that brings me into the world of MusicalRebel4U (Did I remember the name right?)  They were fascinated, as pre-schoolers, by proportion - a human was the size of the pupil in a dragon's eye, could I imagine it, they asked.   Perhaps pedagogy is still in its infancy.  Or maybe mass education is at fault.

[danny elfboy]

Ah..........no.  Your mind hates to learn in a vacuum.  So does mine much of the time. But this is not necessarily universal, in fact it is probably somewhat rare.  It is certainly not true of children at most stages of their development.  There is a reason they are such superb imitators.  They are hardwired to be so, for survival purposes. 

I don't mean to be harsh, but judging from the length of your posts I suspect you find it impossible to tone down your explanation to the needs of a child.   Less is more! 

I don't believe in toning down my explanations for children as I don't believe in treating them differently. I treat each of them individually which is what I do with the people of whatever age. Some people I know are more impressionable, some people are more vulnerable, some people have less experience and some are the opposite. It would be stupid to treat people standardly according to something as meaningless as their chronological age.
Piaget was completely wrong about development stages, they just don't exist. Piaget didn't try to find out something about children and development he tried to back up his pre-conceived prejudices. That's why his research suffers terribily from the flawed design of many his questions and tests. The counfounding habit of asking children twice the same question, the lack of statistical analysis,  the lack of control groups, the testing of very few children all coming from the same identical social and cultural background, the far-fetched conclusions even when his own tests didn't lead there. Piaget also would let his personal beliefs influence his research and he had a lot of them starting with the outdated positivist view, passing through Comte and reverse psychologism. Piaget research is a great example of what Born said about humans studying other humans and how scientists and researchers are never objective and unbiased when dealing with an object which is the same subject they're are. Piaget was wrong about egocentrism, theory of mind, abstract thinking, object permanence, reading, formal thinking, deductive reasoning and much more. He was wrong about language and wrong in ignoring the social classes, gender and cultural issues.
As a matter of fact nowadays it is thought that every kind of "set stage" theory is wrong, biased and incomplete whether it deals with cognitive development, or morality, or memory or learning. We don't seem to pass through standard stages of any kind, we're way more complex and influenced by life circumstances and personal choices.
We all are wired to be great emulators, emulation and being in charge and being showed remains the best form of learning for human beings of every age. As Bates used to say school teaches us to be stupid not to be smart, we unlearn the best way of learning, learn to use uneffective and time consuming ones and believed to have really developed.

[danny elfboy]

I've written about young teens.  However, I remember my own, at the very youngest age, wanting to understand, and not just to know.  The difference is that at that age they expressed themselves in imagery and bodily.  I suppose that brings me into the world of MusicalRebel4U (Did I remember the name right?)  They were fascinated, as pre-schoolers, by proportion - a human was the size of the pupil in a dragon's eye, could I imagine it, they asked.   Perhaps pedagogy is still in its infancy.  Or maybe mass education is at fault.

Pedagogy is not in its infancy. Pedagogy is founded on a faulty flawed premise.
Whatever grow or development pedagogy will do, will necessary be in the wrong direction because its whole foundation leads to the wrong direction.

We have continually to struggle against the idea that to do anything well requires effort.
This idea is drilled into us from our cradles. The whole educational system is based upon it; and in spite of the wonderful results attained by Montessori through the total elimination of every species of compulsion in the educational process, educators who call themselves modern still cling to the club, under various disguises, as a necessary auxiliary to the process of imparting knowledge.

It is as natural for the eye to see as it is for the mind to acquire knowledge, and any effort in either case is not only useless, but defeats the end in view. You may force a few facts into a child's mind by various kinds of compulsion, but you cannot make it learn anything. The facts remain, if they remain at all, as dead lumber in the brain. They contribute nothing to the vital processes of thought; and because they were not acquired naturally and not assimilated, they destroy the natural impulse of the mind toward the acquisition of knowledge, and by the time the child leaves school or college, as the case may be, it not only knows nothing
but is, in the majority of cases, no longer capable of learning.
- W. Bates -


Listening to an educational programme on the radio recently, I heard a school headmaster commenting that he was very concerned with the changes that he saw in children during their school years. He saw children of five or six with bright eyes, smiling faces, beautiful posture and ease of movement; they were nearly always talkative, eager to please, willing to learn and enthusiastic about life.

By the time these children left the school at sixteen they hardly looked anyone in the eye, their posture was very slumped with rounded shoulders, they were often lazy and uncaring about the people around them and they generally looked unhappy. 'What,' he was asking, 'in the name of education are we doing to our children to make them change so dramatically?'  In my view the answer is simple: we, as a society, remove children's freedom of choice. We do this physically by making them sit for long hours, mentally by putting them under unnecessary stress at examination time, and emotionally by making them feel inferior or stupid when they do not conform to the status quo.

For eleven years of the child's development we place them in a institution full of 'must', 'have to', 'can't', 'should', 'got to' and 'ought to'. This has the detrimental effect of the child gradually losing his or her openness. If you imprison a bird at first it will damage itself in its endeavour to escape, every day longing for its freedom to fly unhindered, but if you keep the bird in its cage long enough it will forget that there is anything more than the cage, and then even if you leave the cage-door open it will not try to escape - it has resigned itself to life in the cage. In the same way, many children scream, shout and have tantrums during their first days of school, but we make them go, and even the most loving parents will leave their children crying at the school gate regardless of their feelings and parental instincts, because they believe it is 'for the good of the child'. This can have a detrimental effect on the child, as it may well be the first major instance in which the child feels abandoned and betrayed, not understanding that the parents themselves really feel that they have no choice, as they think it is the law of the land that every child should go to school. This is not the case, but it is what most people believe. It is true that after a few weeks of trauma the typical child will 'settle down', but what is in fact happening is that she is becoming institutionalised as she learns how to conform to what society considers to be the norm. It is not long before many parents can see signs of a change in the child's behaviour as she becomes more and more withdrawn. By the time these children leave school many years later as young adults they have been conditioned to think in certain ways, acquiring fixed prejudices and rigid opinions which often stay with them for the rest of their lives. They feel they must act in a way that fits in with the rest of society, and that if they do not they will be ostracised by their fellow humans, due to the very same prejudices and fears that have been indoctrinated during those school years. You will often find children of four or five very open and it is easy to have long conversations with them, but by the time they are eleven or twelve it can be difficult to get more than the odd sentence out of them. They have become afraid of saying the wrong thing"
- Richard Brennan -



"Self confidence is developed through the reduction of fear, stress, uncertainty, confusion and failure - the very tools that too many of us skilfully use in the management of children in our charge. Children are fearful of verbal abuse, physical abuse and sarcasm. Children are stressed on the rack of tests and quizzes, often facing inevitable personal humiliation"
- Michael Sullivan -

[keypeg]

Not only have aI read the books - I acted on them.  I explored the educational system, and observed and made choices along the way when I became a parent. When necessary I was the educator.  The youngsters I raised are now adults, slightly older than yourself, and among other things give me feedback about my own choices in reaction to the same things that you are reading now.

Pedagogy is not only what the main institutions do, nor does it consist only of what the mainstream does.  I doubt that the whole world can be changed.  However, if you are a private teacher you have the choice of creating your own teaching method, which I understand you are doing now.

You will still need to interact with the world at large.  Your students will have been formed by that system, and their learning habits already established "out there".  You may need to prepare them for exams, for higher institutes of learning within the field of music.  If you deem some of that harmful, you may need to prepare them in a way that mitigates that harm - awareness perhaps.  Even while teaching what you deem is correct, other philosophies are there both in the form of where your students are coming from, and where they are going.  As long as you are aware of that, then you are in a good position to guide your students.  And obviously you are aware.

[timothy42b]

I don't believe in toning down my explanations for children as I don't believe in treating them differently.

danny's posts are long because he can't say it in less words. 

My focus is on the person listening instead.  It does no good to tell a child more than they can hear.   No child alive could read one of danny's posts - if we're honest probably none of us here were able to read every word. 

But to a lesser degree we all talk too much.  The answer to dora's problem is not more talk, but less.  Ideally a lesson might have no talking. 

[pianochick93]

 No child alive could read one of danny's posts - if we're honest probably none of us here were able to read every word. 

No, but if the post was spaced out, slowed down, and had pauses in it, so the child would get less of a sense of it just being recited to them, I believe that they could listen.

[keypeg]

Some of my posts are lengthy too.  It doesn't mean that I talk to a child when teaching as I write to adults when discussing.  This thread is about ideas, not word counts.

[slobone]

OK, I'm not a teacher and I know this is terribly un-PC, but -- what's so wrong about playing something for the student and saying "Now make it sound like that"? Play a few bars of the melody of the piece and have them try to imitate you. All of my teachers resolutely refused to do that for me.

I'm currently learning the Goldberg Variations on my own, and it's been enormously helpful to listen to recordings. I'll learn a variation, then listen to, say, Murray Perahia. That's when I discover all the things you can do to shape the melodies in the various voices, that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. But that's cheating, right?

[nyonyo]

OK, I'm not a teacher and I know this is terribly un-PC, but -- what's so wrong about playing something for the student and saying "Now make it sound like that"? Play a few bars of the melody of the piece and have them try to imitate you. All of my teachers resolutely refused to do that for me.

I'm currently learning the Goldberg Variations on my own, and it's been enormously helpful to listen to recordings. I'll learn a variation, then listen to, say, Murray Perahia. That's when I discover all the things you can do to shape the melodies in the various voices, that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. But that's cheating, right?

I do the same like what you do, but for any reason people who are very serious about piano playing really against the notion of copying great performances. I will be happy if I can play say 80% of what Glen Gould. If I can 80% of GG can do, I bet I sound much better than most of piano hobbyist.  My teacher also always made fun of this thought, I really do not care about my teacher thinks. I know what I want. I used him to help me with things that I am not able to execute well...Most of the time, he is able to find the reason why I cannot do certain thing. He keeps saying that Barenboim Beethoven Sonatas are bad, I have to listen to Arthur Scnabel (not sure with the spelling). Yes, it is true that Arthur's are very colorful, but I just do not like the style. I prefer Danny's Sonanta style. 

By the way, GG new Goldberg Var recording is a Gem...you should copy that one....

[pianochick93]

Its all very well to play something and then say 'Play this like me', but what if the child you are talking to doesn't understand what you are doing to make it sound like that, or what if they want to use their own interpretation.

[anna_crusis]

Children don't listen to explanations unless they're short, to the point and a response to a specific request for information. The longer you take to explain, and the more you rely on words instead of actions, the further away they drift. Anyone who's worked extensively with children knows this.

I was teaching a 6yo this morning and she has a wonderful thirst for knowledge. I never have to push her into doing anything, I simply make sure that each step is achievable and then like all healthy children she is eager to try the next step. Everything is explained in simple words with a demonstration of exactly what to do. There are no analogies, no metaphors, no abstract concepts for her to worry about. That is how a child thinks.

Deep explanations aren't necessary for children. The more you talk, the more you confuse them and irritate them because all they are thinking is 'Why won't he just tell me the *answer*?' Then they either lose interest, or throw a wobbly, or put on a plastic smile and tune out.

As for abstract thought in small children... that is an illusion. A child may draw a picture of a flying dog, but from their point of view there's no abstract concept attached to it (though there may perhaps be some subconscious meaning). They are just enjoying drawing something that makes no sense, the same as they enjoy reciting Dr Seuss. Sure, the adult may *read* something abstract into the drawing, and may even convince himself that that is what the kid was thinking, but that says more about what is going on in his own head.

Just keep it simple and unambiguous, demonstrate everything and never assume that the 'obvious' is obvious. A warm, caring attitude will also allow you to be hard on them sometimes without hurting their feelings. And if you've got a sense of humour, use it - there is no faster path to a child's heart and mind.

[anna_crusis]

at the moment, I am polishing their music. Whatever I say to them. You need to pay attention to detail. The rhythm, counting, the tone color, the phrasing. I have gone through with them weeks after weeks, months after months. One particular piece, technically is quite simple, but there is lots of detail of crescendo, dim, mp, p pp mf  and rit... <.....> etc. Each week, I keep on mentioning to them please pay attention. You need to execute all these details in the music. I feel really disappointed, if I don't mention it, they won't see it somehow. Why it is so hard to kids to pay music with tone color.I am trying to different methods to arouse their interest or imagination.  Even ask then to hum along with the music they play.  I said to them, please draw me a picture, with lots of interesting color. They have drawn amazing, beautiful pictures, but they can't play their music with creative and imaginative way.

Getting back on topic...

I think the problem here is simply that, having worked extensively on the same pieces, they've killed them and are no longer interested. The lack of tone colour or expression might simply be a reflection of their lack of interest in the piece or, worse, a kind of intentional sabotage like a child mutilating a toy they are frustrated with.

It also may be difficult for them to think about expression while they're trying to get the notes right. A lot of kids are completely subjective in their view of the world... you have to record or videotape them for them to be able to see themselves (and their playing) objectively. Kids love to record stuff, and can easily hear mistakes on playback; so that is an ideal time to pull a face and gently say, 'That bit sounded a bit funny, didn't it?' In my experience they'll then leap at the opportunity to try it again and get it right.

[counterpoint]

A lot of kids are completely subjective in their view of the world...

  how true!


and not only the kids