Over the past few days (and to be honest, years) I’ve been discussing the vagaries of teaching with many of my colleagues. It’s been an interesting discussion, and among the most common subjects has been the changing nature of the students we all teach.
I guess it’s not a totally fair judgment, but I always put the students that I work with up against how I treated my teachers when I was coming up over the years. I tried to come as prepared as I could (this was not a terribly high standard until I reached college, I must admit), brought a pencil, took notes in my music, listened to my teachers’ instructions and demonstrations, and (here’s the most important part) I asked questions when I did not understand what they were saying (but did NOT question what they were telling me until I had a chance to really try out what they were suggesting).
Here’s what we come up against these days: students are often inadequately prepared, sometimes to the point of being laughable. If they are at least adequately prepared, they are resistant to suggestions that will help them to better execute troublesome passages in their pieces, and are often hostile to different points of view. They don’t take notes in their music – in fact, they seldom even mark fingerings or bowings in their parts when they change them.
Obviously, the preceding paragraph does not describe an overwhelming majority of students (and it doesn’t describe my one private student at the moment), but it seems to describe a growing number of students that my colleagues discuss over the water cooler each week. There seems to be a sense of entitlement among many students, especially those who are of college age. They seem to think that whatever they think about music is of primary importance, instead of realizing that they are pupils, and they are in school to learn things that they don’t know, or to question those things that they already know but which might not be working to their best advantage.
Most often the students that give the most resistance are those who are mediocre at best, and often very much behind the curve in terms of their skill set. If they knew about William Primrose, Gregor Piatigorsky, or Jascha Heifetz (and often they have no idea who these people are – even Itzhak Perlman is a stretch!) they would be surprised to learn that these defining virtuosi of their respective instruments had teachers who expected the best in performance and behavior and decorum in their lessons, and if they didn’t get it, there was hell to pay.
There are music departments in schools ranging from the extremely small and modest to the extremely large and prestigious (and all the possible permutations of the above). Schools that are at the smaller, less prestigious end of the spectrum often have department heads who feel pressure to get bodies into their programs or else face cuts. It seems not to matter how well the incoming freshmen play, just the fact that there are “butts in seats” seems to be enough.
Is no one willing to step up to the plate at some point in the admission process and offer a candid, honest opinion of the level of playing that is being presented by these students? Or at least by the time a major must be declared?
The level of performance majors is often dishearteningly low. The level of music education majors is even more alarming. Those who teach must at least play somewhat above the level of those whom they seek to instruct – the halls of middle schools and high schools are littered with the dessicated bodies of formerly promising talents who were taught badly by teachers who weren’t qualified to teach the instrument that the student was studying. And thus the studios of countless teachers are full of students who are trying to undo years of bad habits and improper technique.
I think the solution is a simple one: be honest with students you encounter, whether they are yours or not. Furthering an illusion of promise just to “be nice” is not being good to anyone – there are ways to gently raise questions within a student’s mind about their suitability for a major or career in music, and most perceptive students and teachers will navigate the tricky question of “what next?” with aplomb.