Practice Habits: Fundamental Failures of Music Education

Fundamental Failures of Music Education, the predictable consequences, and what we teachers can do about it. (Hint: It’s not the student’s fault).

Table of Contents

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Lesson Goals

To highlight some fundamental failures in the way that music is taught… with the hope of elevating the quality of music education everywhere.

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Prerequisites

LOVE of music, LOVE of teaching, LOVE of our students. and the willingness to be a great students ourselves.

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Fundamental Failures of Music Education

Seven all-too-common music teaching deficiencies come immediately to mind…

1. Teachers don’t instill effective study and Practice Habits.
2. Teachers “teach” students to play notation, not sounds.
3. Teachers don’t teach students how the piano works.
4. Teachers keep regurgitating the myth that finger training is the path to fluent Piano Technique.
5. Teachers show the result but not the process for achieving that result (likely because the teacher doesn’t even understand how they do it themselves).
6. Teachers teach Music Theory as if it’s just a collection of definitions–without connecting the theory to experience, ear training, and how music works. In other words, they teach what a musical something is, without any understanding of what that musical something does.
7. Teachers don’t give students opportunities and tools for overcoming Performance Anxiety as a routine part of their teaching practice.

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The Consequences

The consequences of poor music teaching are absolutely predictable. Many eager students give up trying as their sincere efforts are met with endless frustration–mistakenly and tragically coming to believe that they are untalented… while the most conscientious students continue and become mediocre at kind of sort of playing music they can’t read, can’t hear, and don’t understand.

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An Invitation

We teachers need to elevate our teaching practices by coming to the table with two competencies: subject matter expertise and deep knowledge of educational psychology principles.

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The HUGE Takeaway

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