Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How far are we pampering the kids now method-wise?

I know this might look as yet another thread on beginner methods.

The truth is I have read most of the threads about methods I found here (at least the ones I could find). I have subscribed to the forum because of those threads that I found enormously helpful.

The reason I am interested in method books is that I am writing a dissertation about this (In Romania there are certain qualification exams you can take as a teacher and "First degree" is the top one, for which you must write a "longish" paper)

My theme is about method books for the beginners. Given the fact that in my country there exists only ONE method book written by a Romanian lady called Maria Cernovodeanu in 1959 and used as "the piano primer bible" ever since I thought my work would be interesting.

Other than the Romanian Cernovodeanu primer, some years ago (especially during the communist era here) the Russian School of piano playing- ed. Nikolaev was also used. And some more passionate teachers would throw in some Bartok Microcosmos at the more talented children. Up until the mid '60's and even early '70s the Beyer method was still in use from the most conservative, older teachers.

During the communist time we didn't have access to any "imported" sheet music, the only ones that made it to the shop were Russian and Peters Editions (based in the GDR Leipzig). And now, in the 20 past years sheet music business is considered a luxury as people can barely feed on the wages, and therefore it's less than before.

To my delight I did finally see some Thompson and Bastien in a little English bookshop, and I send all my students to buy their books from there, crossing my fingers it won't close for lack of interest.

I must confess that for academic purpose only I have collected quite a few method books from the internet (I myself am teaching from Thompson right now and I am quite happy with it, and my kids buy the books from the said shop)

I told you all this so you understand the kind of input I need

I am analyzing the methods on the criteria I found in J.M Jacobson's book Professional piano teaching. What I realized analyzing the Romanian and the Russian books is that they would fail most of the "good method" tests of modern piano pedagogy. Yet, kids from Russian music schools are not that bad... (BTW that is a huge understatement)

I've recently seen comments that are not so flattering even about the Thompson methods.

I can't pronounce myself for the highly praised Piano adventures or Music tree, as I haven't seen them [that's another side concern for my paper] but I have seen screen shots and sample pages and they seem very slow paced compared even to Thompson's Easiest piano course.

Basically, my question is:
How far are we pampering the kids now, and is this a good thing?

I mean, today it does seem extreme to make a 6 year old kid in her second piano lesson remember the names of all the piano octaves on they keyboard and shout at her "OI, I told you to play E in the Contra octave, not in the Great-octave", but hey, that's how all kids my age learned it here in Romania and probably even more drastically in the USSR, and we didn't come out monsters



I've just changed the title from "Need input about beginner methods" to the actual question, in hope of rising curiosity.
I guess the best title would be "Ignore this thread too"

Mirela, I think it's about different expectations from parents and students regarding what piano lessons should be and what they should deliver, and it's about new insights into the way children learn as well. To suggest that kids are being 'pampered' through an approach that doesn't assume such an information-rich approach is missing the point: these methods exist in a culture where children are ALL encouraged, irrespective of 'talent', background or IQ.

I agree that the methods these days take AGES to get the kids playing, say, pieces from the Anna Magdalena Notebook - 5 years is really far too long!!! But I don't think this is coming from a desire to pamper children.

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on where it does come from, Elissa. My own guess would've been similar to what you alluded to briefly, that it's the parents, who are happy to have kids in music lessons, but don't particularly like nagging them to practice and thus are happy to have light demands placed on the students (and by extension the parents).

Very quick response, and barely touching the surface..... I think the method books these days are very reading centric, so students only get to experience what they can read. This necessitates the slowing down of physical experiences that would be easily/quickly mastered if reading were not part of the process.

This logocentricity has absolutely nothing to do with pampering!!

Thanks so much for responding!

My question was rather provocative so to get people's interest, I must admit to that

And to be honest, I couldn't see myself teaching exclusively from the Russian one for the love of money (pun intended). I even stopped using the Romanian one a while ago, even if this is a much lighter (as opposed to gloomy) version of the Russian one.

And yes, it's true the reason I first switched was because of parent/children response to the Cernovodeanu.

As a "joke" - sadly TRUE - I had a very intelligent young man, very interested in classical music (concert goer and all) in his third year of Medical school come to me desperate about his inability to play the "kindergarten" songs in the method assigned by his previous tutor. Needless to say teachers here use the Cernovodeanu primer (intended by the very author for kids "no older than 9") for teenagers and adults as well.

So, returning to your answer, yes I understand "the market" drives the demand for the slower paced methods, but has the demand gone so wide (I mean wider than the fifties or sixties) that we get mostly the non talented, not so super bright kids that could go through Thompson's Modern course without whining and pouting every 10 minutes?

Hmm, do take into account that Thompson's Modern course is hardly cutting edge stuff.....

And in my experience whining and pouting stems from things other than the tasks one sets one's students.....

And I don't think it is the 'market' so much as new insights into how children learn that has been behind most of the slower pacings in more contemporary methods.

In my experience, the more time I spend establishing good habits in all areas in the first two years, the better able the student is to progress more quickly later and without having to undo things. My experience with Music Tree, specifically, is that my students are confident readers that also have a good technical foundation and also understand what they are doing. When we reach the level of AMB, for instance, they have built-in physical gestures and, because MT repertoire is so written, they have developed their hands equally and can handle the 2-voiced writing nicely.

Slow at the beginning, but paying big dividends later.

Monica: Talking from the little experience I have (9 years of piano teaching - or 14 if you count tutoring during college), I'd have to agree with what you said.



English is not my first language, so I might need to ask stupid questions, but I hope you don't mind that

What do you mean by physical experiences? You mean the ability of playing things more technically challenging like faster scales, arpegios, sixteenth note passages? And what has that to do with reading?

And, in your opinion, if children would go through faster paced methods they'd get to the point where they just learn by heart the music they're playing instead of actually reading it?

oh, and you've totally lost me at the "logocentricity". The definitions I found on the net put me more in the dark instead of illuminating me

Thanks again to both of you for responding. I really appreciate your ideas.

My English has to be blamed for that again. I meant just the opposite. That Thompson's Modern course - that is mostly antiquated - and in my opinion quite fast paced (I use the Easiest course for the children and the Modern one for the adults) didn't seem much of a problem for kids in the '50s or '60s, and they developed good foundations from that too.

Now, 30-40 decades later when paradoxically everything goes faster and faster from computer to trains and what not, piano methods go slower.

To tell you the truth, my personal opinion is that the "good foundations" a child gets have little to do with the method, but with the teacher. And that a good teacher can can produce perfectly fine, well rounded little musicians even with the dullest method (this implying of course much more work and inspiration on his part as opposed to having a brilliant method).

In this thread I am not arguing either for or against the slowing down. It would be scientifically wrong to put a biased opinion in my paper. I have my own opinion that I might very well state in the conclusion if I fell like it, but other than that I need to understand, so that I don't only get my negative feelings over.

Damn Derrida.

It just means where the word (which implies writing) is given primacy over speech, or in the case of piano where the notation is regarded as being more the music than the sound or the experience of making the sound is.

All methods these days take reading as the starting point.

Young students can do all kinds of things that are hard to read. But because they are hard to READ these physical actions at the piano are not introduced until they are appropriate from a literacy point of view. This contributes to a 'slowing-down' effect.

In addition, young students can perform all kinds of rhythms that are REALLY hard to read. So they miss out on performing these rhythms until they are capable of processing the notation as instruction.

One could extrapolate at length. But in my case I'm off to visit my sister in hospital - she's just had a baby!!!!! I'll join in the conversation once I'm back from meeting my only nephew!!

Actually, Dr. N. Jane Tan's method does just the opposite, or at least stresses learning to play concurrently with learning to read, but focusing more on the learning to play (touch and tone production). So much so that most of us need special classes to learn how to work with such a method! Her method is also more aggressive than most methods available, and thus requires a fair degree of parental support if you are to be successful.

There was an extensive article on her approach published in Clavier Magazine sometime during the 1990s. I'm at a family reunion at the moment, and won't be home until Tuesday, so I cannot be more precise with the reference.

Quickly...

I agree completely with Elissa and have reached much the same conclusion that modern methods are centered on reading, often to the detriment of technical or listening ability.

I've actually known teachers to hold students back from playing challenging repertoire because "we haven't gotten to 16th notes yet in the book." What a horrible excuse!

Oddly enough, this is where Suzuki differs - children are encouraged to progress technically, and when they do, teachers are quick to point out "but they can't read!" Well, maybe not yet, but they can actually play!

I also think it's true what Mirela said about market forces. Music publishing is a volume business, and most people study music rather casually - as an enrichment exercise. One often hears the phrase "I don't want my kids to be concert pianists, I just want them to have fun." So publishers put out stuff that tends to be instant fun - requiring very little discipline or practice.

This results in a lot of method and supplementary pieces that are highly patterned, based on very basic presentations of chords and scales, and require very little contrapuntal or physical skill. (I was actually SHOCKED when my publisher agreed to publish my baroque suite. I'll be very interested to see the sales figures.)

Great topic, by the way - I look forward to reading more!

FJH huh? Love their stuff. Especially by Wynn Anne Rossi. They actually publish contemporary composer's works and that is something to celebrate. Especially since I consider many of them to be (gulp) New Age.

Oh, I just woke up and the first thing I did was to check on the thread!

OT Elissa, CONGRATULATIONS for the new baby in your family!!

Thank you all for being so helpful!!!

Yes, Suzuki came to my mind too when I first read Elissa's post last night, but that too requires huge amounts of parental involvement.

On the other hand, I must confess that the system here in Romania doesn't make me happy at all. I wrote something about it in another post on a "dead" thread, so I'll just repeat myself. The response was in a thread called "I hate John Thompson" (the OP didn't really hate him, but had some issues, mainly about an adult beginner who read by finger numbers)

So, here's what I wrote there:
Of the many students I started on JT not one failed to read. I do all the worksheets in the book (the ones where they're supposed to write the note names, only I don't let them write the names, but every other lesson I have them "read" the notes to me). Also, before playing each and every piece we first read the notes aloud. For some kids who are slower to learn I write additionally, weekly, one line of random notes so they practice reading at home.

As for the Modern Course (which I use for Adults or for older children)... The only students who are proficient sight-readers in my class are the ones who did JT!

Let me explain.... In the music school where I teach one is supposed to start the kids on some kind of primer (mostly the Romanian one, but it's not a rule, you can choose whatever you want). When the teacher considers the kid can move from the primer (usually after the first year, but sometimes even sooner than that) the child jumps to Czerny 599, Bach - the Notebook for Anna Magdalena, Sonatinas by Clementi or the Beethoven G major and other rather similar level repertoire (Kabalevsky, Bartok, Schumann, Burgmuller etc...)

Basically, after the fist year the child must produce 2 pieces in December (etude+Romantic/Modern) and 3 in June (etude+Baroque+Classical). Needless to say that's all they do! So, they end up learning those pieces by heart and the only music they do "read" in an entire year is basically 5-6 full pages. I don't make the curriculum of the Music School (the State does...) and parents who send their kids there don't complain, as - being a State School, it's free.

The students I teach privately however don't need to go by that said curriculum. It's true that at recitals the kids from the Music School seem "much better". Their repertoire is at a much higher level, but that's all they've learned in a whole semester. On the other hand, the children on JT even if they are at lower level have "something new in every lesson". They read tons of pages of music as compared to the others.

I know you'll say I should make kids from Music School read something new in every lesson - and, for as much as I can - I try to do so, but something happens there:

1st - We need to focus on the exam pieces that are way beyond their reading level and rarely there's time to do something else in a lesson. "Sight-reading" becomes a side thing, not as important as the "real thing" - EXAM stuff. With the JT kids progressing through the book - thus reading a new piece IS the real stuff.

2nd - Music School kids tend to "block out" when a new piece of music is in front of them. Somewhere in their mind a new piece - however easy - must be studied at least 3 weeks separately right hand and left hand before attempting at reading it as a whole. Kids in JT do this (almost)every week. It's normal. Also, they go from one piece to another progressing fairly even (not from say "Lightly Row" to Beethoven's Sonatina in G) and don't get the "new piece fright"

This is why I love JT

I realize though that my experience is "JT as opposed to something worse". I don't have the ocean of alternatives everybody else here has. (As I said, I did see some Bastien in a bookshop, but I didn't quite like it)

But what totally puzzled me - and what made me write in that thread - was that for me JT means the exact solution for sight reading - thing that they said JT hinders!

So, actually I do want my students to be able to read proficiently, because in the end of it that's what gives them independence. (sadly for me, most of my Music School kids need me as "a crutch" and as a result, when they graduate after 8 years of piano and move on to high school - that's when State music school ends) very few continue playing on their own. This is indeed very sad for me!

Elissa or anyone else for that matter
Could you please elaborate on the "new insights into how children learn" that have slowed down the pace of methods?

It is important for me, regardless of the paper I am writing, as there might be things I should change in my teaching that I am unaware of.

Just to chime in here. I honestly mainly use Faber PA because it is so well laid out graphically. You can open to a brand new page and know exactly what is being presented. It's clear and un-confusing. It's more aesthetically pleasing to use than other method books.

I was disappointed when I recently got a chance to see the new Helen Marlais books. I had heard some good things - but I opened it and there's just TOO much STUFF packed into one page.

And I dislike most of the older methods for the same reason (for example, 8 bar songs broken into six bars on one line, two on the next?? - or just mismatched proportions in general. Plus the colors are dull, and do not promote looking at what's important on the page for what they're teaching). If it's visually confusing for a teacher I can't imagine the extra distraction this causes for a student.

And the bottom line is, a good teacher does not teach a "method". They teach exactly what's needed for the child sitting in front of them in that moment.

Ah well, the Music Tree and methods following on from it base the reading of the students not on labelling notes by name but by recognising patterns and shapes - intervallic reading. This was a big move forward and is obviously quite different to the note naming activities students do with JT.

There is no question that this is the way to develop fabulous reading skills, as compared to intensive and exclusive note naming.

But there are other insights, such as learning by exploring, rather than learning by acquisition of intellectual propositions/concepts, and so forth.

Others can take this ball and run with it - I'm really exhausted and am heading for bed! (Big day!!)

I'm not a teacher but my £0.02...

You might need to clarify what you mean by "method", particularly inview of the variances from country to country.

e.g Do the graded systems by ABRSM (UK + commonwealth) and RCM (Canada) etc constitute a method in your context? I think they do. But not sure that they've been mentioned above.

You may wish to compare contrast commercial systems versus more academic approaches.

No, an examination/assessment system is not at all the same thing as 'method books'.

Method books are what you use with beginners and have no external assessment attached to them - a very different proposition to the exam systems of the Commonwealth countries.

And the opposition of commercial and academic is basically meaningless in the world of method books. If a method is not commercially viable you won't be able to buy (use) it!!!

I definitely agree with you about the layout an graphics of old method books compared to the screen-shots I've seen of the more recent ones, but you haven't seen the Romanian one :)or the Russian for that matter! Dull colors? What colors? there's no option but the black. They haven't even heard about the grey! And childish graphics? Who gave you that silly notion that a child's music book should contain pictures?!?!

But you're not saying that should someone take the trouble to re-design the old to be more musically edited and with better graphics you'd switch back to those, are you?

And yes, as I said a few posts ago good teacher doesn't really depend solely on one method, but you have to have a base. Not all teachers can (or have the time) to compose songs for every student [although I had a theory teacher that composed at least two solfeges and one musical dictation especially for my "weak" points every week we had a lesson. It's an experience (and a lesson for me as a teacher now) I'll never forget!] or choose specific materials from multiple method books to teach a child.

Without one basic method acting as a guideline I think it would be even more confusing for the child. I agree you may and should supplement it, but that's totally another topic.

EJR my paper is specifically about method books, and when I say just method it's just to shorten the phrase, sorry if it creates confusion.

I am aware of the multiple meanings "method" could have, and while I hadn't been thinking about the Commonwealth examinations as a method in itself (as I know little about them, Romania being far from such exams), I had a small chapter in my paper clarifying which meaning of the word "method" I am not going to talk about, that being "the way famous teachers taught piano technique" like in "the Leschetitzky method" or "the Taubmann Method" etc.

Again to set the cat amongst the pigeons ...

Everything in learning to play the piano hinges on the ability to sight-read ...
but sadly our system of notation doesn’t provide an easy read ... only by dedicated practice and the support of aural and muscle memory do we achieve any success.

By comparison we all learn to read Macbeth without any trouble ... but battle with our keyboard sight-reading ... and all because of a bum (antiquated) system of keyboard notation.