CHILDREN AND MUSIC
Sir,-I fully agree with your contributor David Lyons that children should not be forced to learn music, if they do not like it. I do not think however that there are many children who dislike music. In fact, the majority of children, | when asked whether they would like to learn an instrument, would answer "ves." It is only’ when they find out that proficiency can only be achieved by regular solid practice at home that they will object. It means an encroachment on their leisure. Then there is a .sense of frustration when it is discovered that they cannot play properly by simply taking up the instrument after.a few lessons. To me those are insufficient reasons for giving it up. Parents do not normally pay out hard-earned cash for their children’s music lessons in order to give the children/something they did not have, to make Kreislers or Solomons out of their children or simply. to keep up with the Joneses. Their motive is purely and. simply to teach the children
a subject not normally taught at school, which may serve them well when they are grown up and which will @nable them to live a full life. a The children’s love of music does not necessarily get over the difficulties about their . practice. My nine-year-old son, who is learning to play the piano, is musical to a degree above average. I do not say that merely because I am his father. He shows discrimination in the cheice of radio programmes, likes to put on recordings of good musi€,aAs an excellent memory for musi his ear enables him to pick up faulty intonation of players of orchestral instruments and singers. And yet, when it comes to doing half an hour of. tidy practice, there is trouble. This may be hard on my purse, but I am not worried. As he develops mentally, there will come the thrill of the moment when he appreciates that his enjoyment of the music which he is playing is partly due to his own labour. Then the battle will be won. Until then I will try to keep his music going with a minimum of scenes and tears. I am sute that my boy will never: be sorry
about it.
PARENT
(Wellington). —
(Abridged.-Ed. )
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 798, 5 November 1954, Page 5
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380CHILDREN AND MUSIC New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 798, 5 November 1954, Page 5
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