Educating Children’s Dreams
It’s very well known that young children many times have big dreams, including becoming great successful musicians like their idols, and as teachers, the idea has to be always to get them closer to the dream as long as it’s alive, because sometimes, their goals change. Still that is their choice, to decide whether or not they love it as they get closer, and avoid them getting bored or hate what used to be their dream.
Eli Yamin, a Jazz composer, pianist, singer and teacher has a few words for young aspiring musicians:
Young man, you must ALWAYS play music. The music you make brings beauty and positive spirit to the world. And goodness knows, we need more of it. Choosing a career in music is a separate decision. A successful music career relies on the cultivation of many skills both musical and non musical. To make a living or good wage as a musician, you need to develop skills in business and/or education. These may or may not be of interest to you. So, before putting all your eggs into the making-your-living-by-playing-music basket, spend time finding out where you are at in these other areas.
A lot has been said about parents encouraging their children, and teachers encouraging creativity but the part that really makes a boy or a girl want to make music is sometimes forgotten in search of better understanding of their abilities.
How is it possible to encourage this side of things? easy, talking about it, and asking about it.
The thing is, that it’s not very easy to find children talking about their dreams and experiences, i we were to search in google, chances are the results show tips on how to teach kids or how to interact with them but not their actual thoughts or opinions.
Of course one may argue that children’s opinions may not help as much as an expert’s opinion on the subject, or tips that let’s us organize our minds, but the truth is that sometimes there is a part of the dialogue that’s missing.
In the end music is very much a personal experience, while it can be shared it’s the relationship between the individual and the sounds
Dr Eric Rasmussen says:
There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake. The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music. Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.
In many ways it shows that music can help children be more connected with themselves and develop creative skills while learning more about the world that surrounds them.
In the end, the truth is that a children’s mind doesn’t really recognize the line between imagination, dreams and the “hard” reality. This is something that it begins to lose strength as we grow older, and our dreams begin to fade into routines, jobs, and just getting life in order.
Undying Dream
There is a part of the way children’s minds work with these things that must stay the same, that’s why it’s so important in this case for children interested in music to have good guidance and express themselves about their goals and dreams. Casey van Wensem has an article about the line between dreams and realistic goals as a musician, she says:
While they may feel different in our minds, dreams and goals are essentially the same thing – they’re an idea of something we’d like to achieve at some point in the future. While a dream may seem like a far-off fantasy, it becomes more realistic when we connect it to the present through a series of short-, medium-, and long-term goals.
Dreams don’t die, we organize and learn to have a sense of discipline, which then makes them real. Children need to maintain their dreams, while learning how to use the tools to make them real, and for that, the best thing to start is a good little conversation.
