The Music Specialist Trap

Here’s a great blog post from Mr. A, a music teacher from Connecticut. Its about not just teaching children to enjoy and partake in music, but allowing them to enjoy it and immerse themselves in an imperfect , but shared, activity, distinct from more passive solitary listening. As a relatively new father with a 2 1/2 year old daughter, who loves toying with my bass, her uke and mommy’s keyboard, and who I really want to grow up and become my drummer, its something I have to share with other parents.

mister a music place

Whether we want to admit it or not, we music teachers are all to some extent caught in the specialist trap. This trap has been built out of people who claim to have little or no musical talent and who must rely on us to provide all of the musical training for their children. The problem with this belief is that very few people actually have as little musical talent as they think, and when they abandon all opportunities for being a musical influence on their children, they are dong more harm than good.

This situation was brought to mind at a conference session I gave recently to a group of early childhood educators. These were not music teachers, but teachers of children ranging in age from infants to five years old. As I shared the wealth of research that has shown what even the new born’s brain is capable…

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