This passage from Haruki Murakamis Norwegian Wood really resonated with me, so Im going to share it here: I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, If only she had started out with a good teacher and gotten the proper training, shed be so much further along! But I was wrong about that. She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. Theyre blessed with this marvellous talent, but they cant make the effort to systemize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. Ive seen my share of people like that. At first you think theyre amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and youre overwhelmed. You think, I could never do that in a million years. But thats as far as they go. They cant take it any further. And why not? Because they wont put in the effort. Because they havent had the discipline pounded into them. Theyve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so theyve been able to play things well without any effort and theyve had people telling them how great they are from the time theyre little, so hard work looks stupid to them. Theyll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so theteacher figures theyve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do THAT in half the time and go on to the NEXT piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required for character building. Its a tragedy. I myself had tendencies like that, but fortunately I had a very tough teacher, so I kept them in check. Anyhow, it was a joy to teach her. Like driving down the highway in a high-powered sports car that responds to the slightest touch - maybe responds too quickly, sometimes. The trick to teaching children like that is not to praise them too much. Theyre so used to praise it doesnt mean anything to them. Youve got to dole it out wisely. And you cant force anything on them. You have to let them choose for themselves. And you dont let them rush ahead from one thing to the next: you make them stop and think. But thats about it. If you do those things, youll get good results. - Reiko Ishida, Chapter Six, Norwegian Wood.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 19:05:42 +0000
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