I recently read a post on Substack by Ted Gioia (of The Honest Broker), who writes on music and culture and is a past faculty member at Stanford.
His article a few weeks ago outlined a few complaints he had about music education, specifically in the realm of private lessons, and I felt they needed a rebuttal. So, here it is.
Ted believes that kids lose interest in music lessons as they get older because there are inherent problems in the way that music is taught. I will not disagree completely with that idea, but I will make a caveat that it depends on the kid.
The biggest complaint I have about Ted’s arguments however, is that he makes claims that do not make sense when comparing music to sports. Many of my students have straddled participation in sports and music in elementary school but, in high school, decided to go the sports route. If Ted’s complaints about music education were correct, kids would also quit sports for the same reasons.
Let me explain.
This is Ted’s first complain, in his own words:
“(1) The first problem is that they’re called lessons. Music-making is fun, but music lessons are something very different. The first change I’d make is eliminating the word lesson from my vocabulary. I’d get rid of the word practicing too.
And fortunately we already have a better word—it’s called playing. You play your instrument, and the experience is one of fun and playfulness.”
Yes, we play music, and sports enthusiasts play sports.
But I played on the school basketball team in 8th grade, and basketball practice was called practice. And we did boring things like run laps around the court. And we did hard things like agility drills. And, yes, they were called drills.
We didn’t do those things because they were “play” or because we found them “fun,” We did them because we trusted our coach to make us better players, and he said we needed to do these things if we wanted to get good and win games.
And when kids practice scales and arpeggios and etudes on their instruments, it is because they believe the teacher when they teacher says these exercises will make them better players.
The problem is not drills or practicing or hard or boring things. Practice is not a dirty word.
It’s about whether or not the student believes that these things will get them to where they want to be. Maybe some kids just don’t want to get that good and play at a level that demands this kind of practice.
I quit basketball. I didn’t care enough and music was more important to me.
This is Ted’s second point”
(2) Music carries the heavy baggage of the entire education bureaucracy, and this makes everything boring and burdensome. As Paul Graham has rightly pointed out, the single biggest impact of early education is to convince students that hard work is pointless and should be avoided at all costs. Too much of homework and testing is designed solely for the purpose of convincing a teacher of your competency. The idea that you might work hard for your own benefit is never taught in school, and many people never realize that important fact.
Music lessons suffer because they rely on similar metrics, and are often integrated into our bureaucratic educational system. So even something intrinsically fun (like music-making) starts to feel burdensome.
I honestly have to say I don’t even know what he is talking about here. What metrics? The metrics of practicing a lot so you can win an audition in the local regional or state-wide youth orchestra that you find fun to be in? I would say that kids in music DO learn that they get personal benefit from learning music.
That is, as long as their teacher gives them some agency, and most do!
Kids who learn the pieces they want to learn or work towards goals they want to achieve realize they are getting themselves there with hard work and proper guidance.
Ted’s 3rd complaint:
(3) Parents are part of the problem—maybe the biggest part. Suzuki, the great music education innovator, realized this early on. He found that parents imposed all sorts of negative attitudes on to their children. They yelled at them to practice more. They sat in judgment at recitals. They had vague ambitions about how their children’s performances would enhance their own status. Etc.
Is this not also a problem in sports? How many times have we heard parents scream at their kids for not catching a ball or making a mistake on the field? How many times have parents ended up in the news for making a scene at a kid’s sports game? Perhaps it has died down in recent years (or maybe others news has become more important given the political climate…)
But it is ingenuine, in my opinion, to claim that this is a problem in music when it is a problem in all categories of life. Sure, kids that feel pressure from parents may want to quit anything. But why is this a problem in music education? Couldn’t this also be why kids want to quit school or sports or working for the family business?
Ted’s complaint #4:
(4) The endless round of recitals, auditions, and competitions create a perfection-driven culture that diminishes—and often kills—the sheer joy of music-making. Ethnomusicologists have studied many societies where everybody participates joyously in music-making—but that only happens when you don’t have auditions and competitions to weed out poor performers. If the goal is to enhance your inner joy and satisfaction, you would do things very differently.
Endless round of recitals, auditions and competitions? I suppose when the entire year is considered, there is always something to be preparing for, whether it is a spring recital or early fall auditions for local ensembles or late-fall auditions to All-State or early-winter applications to summer music festivals.
That’s IF – and a huge IF – the student is playing at a high level and wants to get into these ensembles and festivals and so forth. It is certainly not a requirement that the average music student do all this competing!
And if the teacher requires it, time to find a new teacher!
This is a parent problem if they don’t find an appropriate teacher for their kid.
That said, all the preparation for competitions is a great preparation for life. For adulthood.
There are always deadlines at work. Does everyone want to quit their job because of them? Or do some people understand that there is an ebb and flow and some weeks or months are extra stressful because of looming deadlines and accept it as part of the job?
But, even more – aren’t SPORTS full of competition? Isn’t that the WHOLE POINT of being involved in sports – to try to win? People don’t just get on the field and run around aimlessly. Even if it is a good-natured game where it doesn’t matter who wins, the teams do try to win.
To say that music is all about competition is also terribly ignorant. There are many, many ensembles that are “no audition” ensembles. Community orchestras, bands and choruses for youth and adults can be found in most places.
They are one big team “winning” by learning and performing music together.
One of my favorite things about music is that no one is left on the bench. The whole ensemble plays together. If you are in an ensemble, you are always with the ensemble, even when you have measures of rest, even if you are not the best.
(OK, I know, I know. Depending on the ensemble, some pieces do not use all the forces. So let’s just think one piece at a time.)
And, let me be frank. I have been in groups where some people are not trying to improve (sports or music or group assignments in school or group projects at work.) Those people are wasting everyone’s time.
We should all be in competition with ourselves to be a better person than we were yesterday.
Competition is not a bad thing, in and of itself.
Ted’s complaint #5:
(5) The ultra-intense hype on music lessons as building blocks of high educational achievement just aggravates the situation. Sure, I believe all the hype about the links between music-making and improved academic performance. Music probably does activate and nurture the same part of the brain you use for math and science. You probably do get better grades if you’re a focused, dedicated musician. But this kind of attitude treats the music itself as a negligible byproduct, instead of celebrating the intrinsic joy of music-making.
If you learn music for this reason, you will never get the greatest benefits from it, which can’t be reduced to a GPA or SAT metric.
NO ONE is telling little 6yr old Johnny, “Dear, you need to study piano so you can grow up and ace your SATs.”
The argument for the academic benefits of music are aimed at adults, because we’re trying to keep funding for music education in public schools. Even if this is the reason parents put their kids in music lessons, they are not trying to explain this to their little kids who would have no idea what they’re talking about.
And if it is the only reason why parents are keeping their children in music lessons when their kids have no interest, see point #3.
Finally, Ted’s complaint #6:
(6) The Western classical music tradition is amazing, and I cherish it every day of my life, but an educational system that just focuses exclusively on scrupulously playing note-for-note compositions written by people who died long ago is a mistake. If you want to convince people that music is stagnant, you couldn’t find a better method. Let’s keep Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and all the rest—I love them dearly; but let’s also embed them into a larger practice that is alive and vibrant.
I have to mention here that Ted is a jazzer. So, there is a bias here against the classical approach to playing every note exactly right the way the composer wrote it.
That said, there is some truth here. Classical music is still alive and well, but the system has focused on the music of dead, white men instead of what is happening now, and instead of broadening the variety of historical composers’ work.
However, that is slowly changing. Every day, new ensembles are formed that focus on performing new and lesser-known historical works. Organizations exist, like the Boulanger Initiative, that work to bring attention to women composers or composers of under-represented groups.
I find that Ted’s 6th point is two-fold, though. One point is about the “dead composers.” And the other point is about “playing every note exactly right.”
Here, we have to be careful not to denigrate the focus on playing every note scrupulously well. While I think it is important to protect the minds of young people against perfectionism, the exactness of classical music is incredible mental training.
Paying attention to so many details is a very high-level skill, and it is something that is demanded in many fields. We want our surgeons and engineers to have that level of precision!
And, classical music is not the only “fun” area where precision is judged. Think about gymnastics or figure skating where competitors are judged on how they land a jump.
So, again, it is not right to point these things out as problems in music education when they are part-and-parcel of many areas of life including other “fun” things like sports.
Not only are these things not real problems, many of them are incredibly beneficial.
The fun is in figuring out the puzzle. The fun is in the problem solving. The fun is in conquering what you can’t do today. The fun is being able to say, “I can do that.”
Music lessons help kids with this.
The question is whether or not kids want to study music, and whether or not they are with the right teacher. Don’t force them to study music if they’re not interested. And find them the right teacher if they are.