Music Educators' Energiser

How to harness parents' zeal to support their child's musical success? Some are too laid-back ('we just want them to have fun'), others too pushy, but most mean well. Any positive support is worth bottling. This topic hits hot buttons whenever I raise it, like last week's presentation at a Perth pedagogy conference.

"Parents offer children so many options!"

Today's students rocket between before/after school activities, barely absorbing content, let alone reinforcing it. When teachers insist on regular practice to build foundations they cry ‘but we don't expect them to become famous soloists, we just want them to enjoy music!'

Sure, students learn faster when they have fun. That premise saturates my method Enjoy Playing the Clarinet. (http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-322108-X)

But, as Phyl Huthnance writes, ‘How can they enjoy if they can't read fluently, have sloppy flat fingers and bad technique?'

Parents want to give their offspring the edge in a competitive world. Show them scientific research that playing music increases intelligence, like Don Campbell's 'studies show... music enlarges existing neural pathways and stimulated learning and creativity' in The Mozart Effect. Or:

‘Music engages all major components of the human brain/mind: the sensory and perceptual, the cognitive, the "planning movements" (for example, organising a sequence of muscle actions), motor (fine muscle and gross muscle coordination), feedback/evaluation (that is, hearing if one has played the correct notes), motivational, learning and memory. Also, music performance is the one activity which involves both hemispheres of the brain... Regularly playing music not only strengthens synapses, but brain activity can actually produce new synapses.' (From a speech to US Congress by Dr. Norman Weinberger. The URL link is broken but it's quoted in Practice is a Dirty Word.)

Simplified, playing music makes us more brainy!

Download and copy my parent motivation leaflet

Help your Student Excel with Music at http://www.RuthBonetti.com/ParentDL.pdf (fold to DL size).

May Sale! Practice WAS a Dirty Word: Practice Journal 21 for the price of 10! Order 10 journals and receive 20 old edition journals plus one new edition. At http://ruthbonetti.com/orderform.php3