| From a piano teacher's point of view, there are children | | | | "failure" at the piano. These teachers make no |
| who are easy to teach and those who present | | | | allowance for personality, family situation, mood, age, |
| difficulties. | | | | gender, or any one of the ten thousand other things |
| It's easy to teach a child who is calm, happy, diligent | | | | that affect why a kid can or cannot learn the piano at |
| and serious. | | | | 3:30 today. |
| It's hard to teach a child who is scattered, nervous, | | | | It is easier for these teachers to make kids follow a |
| unhappy and uninterested. | | | | set curriculum, a diet of dry, unimaginative exercises |
| Piano teachers, bless their hard-working souls, have | | | | that would chill the soul of even the most enthusiastic |
| ways of avoiding these unwanted students. | | | | child. After all, they followed more or less the same |
| The first method is to simply wait until the child fails to | | | | path to the piano as a child, so why should this child not |
| master the teacher's method, and quits on their own. | | | | do exactly the same? |
| The teacher loses a little income, but also loses a | | | | This beginning piano curriculum, worthy and valuable to |
| headache. | | | | the few people able to master and enjoy it, has not |
| Or, since the child is not doing well and knows it, (the | | | | changed in almost 200 years. |
| teacher has made it clear they are not happy!) the | | | | Listen to yourselves: you're the same poeple who tell |
| student will start canceling lessons and then the | | | | me, "I took piano when I was a kid but I hated it." |
| teacher can let them go as a "financial liability." After all, | | | | I'm not saying the standard piano curriculum will not |
| the teacher has to fill time slots to survive. | | | | teach you how to play. Obviously, to be a real pianist |
| I have the opposite tactic: I want these kids as | | | | there are rules and you must learn them, if only to |
| students, these failures the other teachers call | | | | break them later. |
| "quitters." | | | | I am saying the standard beginning piano curriculum will |
| Why would I want the hardest of students, the ones | | | | only succeed with a very few children, (that same |
| who wiggle and giggle, the ones who have seemingly | | | | 10%) and the other 90% are forgotten and denied a |
| no aptitude whatsoever for the piano? I mean the | | | | musical education at the piano. |
| same ones who cancel half their lessons out of | | | | Look at the statistics: the same 10% who "succeed" at |
| apathy or fear or laziness or baseball or whatever. | | | | piano lessons are the ones who have an aptitude for |
| Simple answer, I want the challenge. I'd prefer to feel | | | | the teacher's method, not the piano itself. |
| the pride when I get a child like this to finally play, | | | | If a child comes to me with "no aptitude" for the piano, I |
| however simply, and with a sense of joy. | | | | make them prove it. Then I find what little aptitude they |
| And most of all, I want to see the look on the child's | | | | have. |
| face as they play something they would have sworn | | | | Every kid can do SOMETHING at the piano. I know |
| a year earlier that they could never play. | | | | because I've taught piano to remarkable, courageous |
| What I find mystifying is the piano teachers | | | | kids with grievous, terrible disabilities, and if they can |
| themselves. | | | | play piano and enjoy it, you can too. |
| Here they are in an industry where 90% of the clients | | | | Like a tiny campfire flame, I blow on that tiny spark of |
| are expected to fail, yet they never do anything about | | | | interest or aptitude until the fire burns as bright and hot |
| it. Why lose all those clients? | | | | as it can be. |
| The reason, I'm sorry to say, is that some of the | | | | I believe that every person, especially a child, has a |
| teachers are perhaps lazy and not a little bit impatient. | | | | musical spark inside, and that it is the obligation of the |
| These teachers, either from inexperience or tiredness, | | | | teacher to be creative enough to nurture that spark |
| know only how to turn students out of their "mill" with | | | | into a flame, regardless of the student's "aptitude" for |
| as little effort as possible, hence their "method." It's | | | | any particular piano method. |
| easy for a teacher to follow a standard text from | | | | This creativity takes, more than anything else, patience |
| page to page, especially if you've done it twenty | | | | in measures not experienced by most normal humans. |
| thousand times. | | | | The next time you hear about a child quitting the piano, |
| If a student is unpromising and unable to toe the line of | | | | start wondering if it was the teacher's fault. |
| their "method," they are termed a "quitter" and a | | | | |