One of the most fundamentally signficant ways that music can benefit a developing child, adolscent, or young adult is by instilling a sense of purpose into their day to day routines. This was brought to my attention yesterday as I went in to see my old music teacher from high school. He was preparing them for their concert that is taking place tonight. Each student was concentrating, displaying the countless hours of practice that they had put into learning and putting the finishing touches on the masterpieces they were playing. As the rehearsal winded down about 30 minutes after my arrival, I began to catch up with my old music teacher. When I brought up the fact that I was pursuing the advocation of music education through this blog, he offered his own opinion on the topic, telling me that every year he watches each of his kids develop necessary skills that prepare them for life through their studies as musicians. He talked of hardwork, dedication, perservearance, and the ability to express ones emotions productively. He talked about his firm belief that developing children and adolscents need some sort of passion or activity that provides structure and engages and challenges them to become a better individual. After hearing him say these things I thought back to my own development and how music engaged and challenged me, helping me to acquire the traits listed above. As a student of his I always was in awe of my guitar teachers abilities as a musician, with experience playing in multiple state and national orchestras his gift of playing beautiful music is amazing, but what is even more amazing is his gift to change the lives of hundreds of children every year by providing support and teaching them many of the life lessons that are too often not learned. We could use more Mr. Slocumb’s in this world.
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I love your topic! Is that you in the picture? I totally agree with your teacher when he said he believes “that developing children and adolscents need some sort of passion or activity that provides structure and engages and challenges them to become a better individual.” I am a strong advocate of this idea. As a parent of a young child, I definitely try to keep her involved in an activity that may one day be manifested into a precious, life long gift. Last year she had flute lessons, this year it is ballet. The problem I find is with wanting her to participate in more activities but ensuring that she has a fair balance and is able to excel in her first priority which is academic excellence.
You picked a very interesting topic. Amazingly there are programs that use music as a form of therapy for child soldiers and others suffering traumatic events. Music really does make the soul move in the direction of the melody. I think all children should go through some sort of musical learning experience.
I’ve heard of music and arts as therapy for child soldiers too and think the results are incredible. Music is such a touching and personal passion to become involved with; I wish I had learned to play an instrument or read music when I was younger. I had a keyboard and taught myself a couple songs just by watching the screen, pausing it, and learning that way or a couple songs my grandparents had taught me, but without being able to read music, I have forgotten how to play most songs now.
A few years ago my younger brother (was probably 7 at the time), but wanted to form a ‘band’ with some of his friends in our neighborhood. He wanted to play guitar, but he has been taking piano lessons for probably a year now and even though he is only 10, sounds amazing.