BY PAUL BERMAN
hould children study violin—or rather, be forced to study violin? Or forced to study ballet? Mark Oppenheimer published a piece in The New Republic the other day asking this question in the urgent manner of a dad fretting over his daughter’s education. Oppenheimer tells us that, as it happens, his daughter is delighted by her own weekly after-school sessions on the violin and at ballet class, and would like the classes to continue, and this is fine by him. Still, what if, one day, her patience runs out and she wishes to stop? Should he respond by saying, no, those lessons are mandatory? Or allow her to quit?
These are good questions to ask because, in their family-routine fashion, they allow him to touch on a bigger matter, which has to do with classical music. To wit: Is there something special about classical music? Does the study of classical music offer something that cannot be found in the study of (Oppenheimer lists these alternatives) folk or pop music? Or origami? Or auto mechanics? The study of any or all of these things would confer obvious benefits—would encourage a child’s ability to master difficult topics, would develop finger and hand dexterity, would encourage an appreciation of aesthetics (except maybe for auto mechanics), would encourage certain kinds of sociability (pop and folk music especially, if you think of summer camp), would promote a can-do spirit of practicality (auto mechanics). And so forth. Why see anything uniquely valuable and overwhelmingly important in the study of violin and ballet, instead?
He tells us that, as a child, he himself never took up a musical instrument. At a dinner party, though, where he expressed his perplexity about music education, everyone else, some ten adults, had, in fact, studied music. And none of those adults appear to have reaped any benefits at all from private lessons and their years of study. The instruments they studied as children went unplayed as adults. Nor had anyone cultivated a taste for classical music. Those many years bent over a piano or contorted into a violinist’s posture—gone, in a wisp of smoke! Oppenheimer is confident that his dinner table companions are representative of the American educated class, 2013, and, in order to prove his point, he challenges his readers to ask their Facebook friends if their own experiences have been any different. But no one has any reason to inquire. I think all of us already know that he is right—if you leave aside a few prodigies who make their careers in music, not that music careers are especially easy to make in our present age of bankrupt orchestras.
Further reading: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114781/parents-should-force-kids-take-music-lessons
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