I am only slightly embarassed to admit that I am a pretty big fan of the Dr. Laura radio show. While I certainly don’t agree with the good doctor on everything, I find her approaches to her callers’ problems interesting. On one show, a mother called, upset that her son wanted to quit piano lessons when he was very close to achieving a certificate. “What good is the certificate if he doesn’t want to play music?” asked Dr. Laura.
Can a teacher or student ever be too goal-oriented?
There’s no doubt that goals are an important part of musical education, and life, and I’m not here to tell you otherwise. Often times, students will start taking lessons with specific goals. Other times, a student might have general ideas about what they want to do, and a good music teacher can help them define their dreams into goals. Sometimes a student might be studying just for enrichment; they might not want to perform publicly or be preparing for a test or recital, but they can still benefit from setting benchmarks for themselves. However, people can sometimes lose track of the big picture in pursuing goals. I’ve noticed this come up in several ways.
When I started teaching young piano students, I would give them a sticker each time they “passed” a song. For many of the students, this proved to be a good reward system, and they got a sense of accomplishment from earning the sticker. However, in some cases I began to see that students were more interested in the reward than the process. I would see some of them ignore songs once they had passed them. Others would get discouraged; I would sometimes hear, “Well, I’m not going to be able to get a sticker on this song today, so what’s the point?”
What I’ve found is that the reward in and of itself is neither a good or bad thing; how it’s presented and the results it gets are what matters. If it causes a student to practice more, great. If it makes a student ignore everything else, not so great.
Sometimes I invoke the old phrase, “The golden rule means that he who has the gold makes the rules.” Part of a teacher’s stipulation in giving rewards can be that the student has to maintain their ability to play material they’ve already learned. Think of the difference between how kindergarteners versus high school students are taught. My belief is that we remember more of what we learned early on because it’s taught to us repetitively; in high school and college, we cram, get our “A” and then promptly forget everything. Even as you set goals for your students, it is important to remember that a goal can’t be abandoned once it is achieved. No, a six year old is not likely to grasp the concept of the “Big Picture”; they could care less if they still remember the song a year later, they just want the sticker. But you can still structure your curriculum in a way that the rewards–stickers or otherwise–are part of the big picture, whether or not your students can see it all.
I myself was guilty of tunnel vision when I was starting to get serious about teaching music. At the time my primary employment was substitute teaching. Think back to when you had a substitute teacher in middle school or high school. This can help you understand why as soon as I realized I had a shot at making private teaching my full time job, I went into it full throttle. That was not a bad thing, although in retrospect pacing myself might have been a better approach. When the alternate was substitute teaching a remedial Algebra class, it was amazing how I was willing to drive 200 miles a day to different students’ houses, charging a rate that I now realize was considerably below what I might have. Instead of considering how I could have been more efficient in my business, I was imagining the day that I would walk into the school district office and tender my resignation.
That goal, obviously, was achieved, and as is often the case when a goal is achieved, I was glad. I like the feeling of watching a student proudly place a sticker on their sheet music, or pass an audition or test, or perform a successful show. Goals will always be a part of any successful music curriculum, and there is an art to setting achieving them. But even if your students can’t necessarily conceive how a goal fits into the bigger picture, you can. As a tool, goals are valuable, but the tools should never become more important than what they are supposed to create.
The question of the week is: Have you ever caught yourself being TOO goal-oriented, either with yourself or a student? And have your students ever been too goal-oriented themselves, and how?
And the joke of the week:
A judge says to the defendant, “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” says the defendant. “I used to give your son violin lessons.”
“Ah, yes!” says the judge. “Twenty years!”
Maestro's Musings 