Understanding the fundamental principles and fallacies in piano pedagogy can greatly enhance the effectiveness of music teaching. Richard Chronister, a renowned piano pedagogue, identified eight principles and fallacies that challenge conventional teaching methods, advocating for a more holistic and student-centered approach. These principles aim to enrich the educational experience, ensuring students gain deeper understanding and intrinsic motivation. Let's explore these eight principles and their corresponding fallacies to enhance our teaching practices.

Resources

These Principles and Fallacies can be found, along with a wealth of other information, can be found in A Piano Teacher's Legacy. There is so much useful information in this book, I highly recommend it!

Piano Teaching Fallacies and Principles

1. I Tell You, Therefore You Know

Fallacy: This fallacy assumes that simply telling students information ensures they understand and retain it.

Principle: "I tell myself, therefore I know." 

Learning is more effective when students actively engage and internalize knowledge rather than passively receiving it. Understand that telling a student is not the same as teaching a student. Instead of telling your student something, create a teaching moment where they can experience it.

2. The Best Way to Present Material is in a Mass of Fragments

Fallacy: Presenting information in disconnected fragments without context is effective.
Principle: "The best way to present material is from the context of the whole." 

Introduce concepts within a broader framework to help students understand their relevance and application. Teaching the grand staff, for instance, could involve explaining its historical context and practical use, not just isolated notes.

3. The Fragment is the Same to the Student as it is to Us

Fallacy: Assuming students perceive and understand fragments of information the same way teachers do.
Principle: "It is the teacher's job to make the fragment the same to the student as it is to the teacher."

Teachers must bridge the gap between their comprehensive understanding and the student's initial grasp. Use relatable analogies and hands-on experiences to make abstract concepts tangible.

4. It is More Important to Measure than to Teach

Fallacy: Prioritizing assessment over the actual teaching process.
Principle: "It is important that students learn to measure themselves." 

Focus on fostering students' ability to self-assess and understand their progress. This empowers them to become independent learners, capable of continuing their musical journey without constant external validation.

5. The Teacher Furnishes the Motivation

Fallacy: Believing that teachers are solely responsible for motivating students through external rewards.
Principle: "Students furnish their own motivation." 

Cultivate an environment where students find intrinsic value in their learning. While external rewards can be useful, they should not replace the internal satisfaction derived from mastering a piece or understanding a new concept.

6. The Answer is More Important than the Process by Which it is Reached

Fallacy: Focusing on correct answers rather than the learning process.
Principle: "The process by which an answer is reached is more important than the answer itself." 

Emphasize the importance of problem-solving and critical thinking. When students understand the steps to reach an answer, they build a stronger foundation for future learning.

7. Working on Tasks Devoid of Purpose is Good Discipline

Fallacy: Believing that repetitive, purposeless tasks build discipline.
Principle: "Working on tasks with a musical purpose is good discipline." 

Ensure that every exercise and task has a clear, musical objective. This approach not only builds discipline but also maintains student engagement and relevance to their musical goals.

8. Education is Preparation for Life

Fallacy: Viewing education solely as preparation for future endeavors.
Principle: "Real education is life itself." 

Education should be a meaningful and enriching experience in the present, not just a means to an end. Encourage students to appreciate and enjoy their learning journey, fostering a lifelong love for music.

Conclusion

Richard Chronister's principles and fallacies serve as a valuable guide for piano teachers aiming to create a more effective and engaging learning environment. By shifting our focus from traditional, often fragmented teaching methods to a more holistic, student-centered approach, we can foster deeper understanding, intrinsic motivation, and a genuine love for music in our students. Reflect on these principles regularly and consider how they can be integrated into your teaching practice to continually improve and enrich your students' musical education.

Episode Transcript

Show Transcript Jacqueline Beckoff: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Piano Pedagogy podcast. My name is Jacqueline Backoff and I am the owner and founder of High Desert Piano, a successful piano studio in Southern California, and Defined Music Teacher, a web-based teacher coaching business.

Today, we're going to be talking about a man named Richard Chronister and one of his concepts related to piano pedagogy, where he lays out eight fallacies related to piano pedagogy and then counters those fallacies with eight principles to follow for teaching.

Now we're going to dive right in, but before we do that, let's just keep in mind that these are just things to consider. This is one man's opinion of how to be a good piano teacher.

To talk a little bit about who Richard Chronister is, if you haven't heard of him - he was a pioneer in piano pedagogy in the United States. He was known for his innovative teaching methods and his dedication to improving piano pedagogy. He co-founded the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, and also he was involved with the New School on the East Coast. He had a lot of influence, both from universities to small independent studios. And he was at the forefront of research.

So let's dive in. His first fallacy is that "I tell you, therefore you know." I'm sure that you've heard yourself thinking to yourself, or maybe you have even said it out loud: "Why don't you remember this? We've been over this. I've told you this already. Why don't you count out loud? Why don't you remember that that note is F instead of G?" etc.

The reason for that is because just because we've told them something doesn't necessarily mean that we have taught it to them. The principle that Chronister introduces to counter this fallacy is "I tell myself, and therefore I know." So when we say something to a student, we're just regurgitating the things that we already know. Essentially, we're trying to communicate something with our students. And because we know the entire thing, we know all of it, we feel like we can just tell it to them.

I think that the lesson to take away from this principle and this fallacy set is that telling is not teaching. This makes sense in other aspects of life. How many times do you need to tell a child to not touch the stove until they finally touch that stove when it's hot and they're probably never going to do it again? Because that experience of touching the hot stove and experiencing why they should not touch the hot stove is way more powerful than us simply telling them, "Don't touch the hot stove because you'll get hurt."

I'm sure that as parents, you may recognize that you have to let children learn something the hard way. And that's because some things you can't really create a teaching moment for, for something like "don't touch the hot stove." But for us as music teachers, we absolutely can teach. That's our job - we're not music tellers, we're music teachers or piano teachers. So when we are teaching, we want to bear in mind that just because we say something does not mean that they learn it.

Moving along here, Chronister's second fallacy is "The best way to present material is in a mass of fragments." This can be very tempting, and on its face it feels like it makes a lot of sense. Because when we're teaching our students music, for example, when we're teaching them rhythms for the first time, and maybe that includes for you quarter notes, maybe that's the first thing you start with, or quarter notes, half notes and whole notes - it's very easy for us to look at this fallacy and be like, "Well, I am presenting rhythm in a fragment. I am not telling them everything there is to know about rhythm."

But I think that's misunderstanding this fallacy, because the principle that Chronister suggests we use to counter this fallacy is that "The best way to present material is from the context of the whole." This makes more sense when we think about it this way: When we introduce quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes, we are not leaving out crucial context for our students to understand what that means.

Another example, I think, would be teaching grand staff. How could we possibly teach the whole grand staff? How can we teach the context of the whole for the grand staff with all of the notes from that low G all the way up to the high G on the top of the treble clef staff? And we don't need to do that. But for us to simply say, "Well, that note in the middle of the grand staff, that's middle C. It's middle C. Why is it middle C? Well, it's middle C because I said so. It's middle C because I told you. And you simply have to accept that I'm telling you the truth."

A better way to approach the grand staff from the context of the whole would perhaps be explaining what the treble clef and the bass clef mean and why the second line of the treble clef staff is treble G. Why is that? And that then makes sense as well. If that line is G, it's because the nickname for the treble clef is the G clef and there's historical context behind that and how the letter G simply got warped over time before it became the treble clef.

If you can explain some of that context first, then it begins to make sense why the staff is the way it is. Another way that you could do it is by rotating the staff sideways and comparing the sideways movement of the staff, rather the up and down movement of the staff, which is now left and right to the piano. Because it's not immediately apparent why going up on the staff means we go to the right on piano and going down means we go to the left, or why the top line of the treble staff is different than the top line of the bass clef staff.

There's an important balance, I think, that we need to strike because you could absolutely overload your student with just far too much information. I think that's definitely something that you should be cautious about. But when we're doing something like math, if we think about how schools teach math, they will present information to students as complete. When a student first learns to understand how to add and subtract, multiplication is not a necessary component for us to understand or for children to understand how to add and subtract. So by leaving out the concept of multiplication, you're not depriving the child of the context about how addition works. We obviously cannot introduce every single mathematical concept at the same time, and I'm not suggesting that you do the same thing for piano pedagogy.

Moving along here to his third fallacy. His third fallacy is "We assume that the fragment is the same to the student as it is to us." What does that mean? Teaching, by definition, as we've just discussed in the previous principle and fallacy, we have to go by fragments. You cannot present, I think you would be hard pressed to find any concept that you can explain all in a single sitting in its entirety without leaving things out.

So when we present fragments of a concept, for example, we'll stick with our grand staff example for now - if we are teaching perhaps middle C, treble G, bass F as Piano Adventures does first, or if you're using a position-based approach for that, like the old Alfred books do, maybe you're teaching middle C position - you're by definition leaving out everything else. You're leaving out everything other than the three notes you've introduced or the one position you've introduced.

I think that approach is where you try to explain everything at once. For example, the way I was taught when I was very little, they threw the mnemonics at me - the "All cows eat grass", "Good boys do fine always", "FACE", etc. They tried to give me everything all at once and it was way too overwhelming.

So when you introduce concepts in fragments, I think that it's easy to assume that the way it is in our head is the way that it is for our students. When we introduce a technique, we know the end destination, our students don't. And I think that it's crucial for us to abide by the principle that Chronister introduced here to counter this fallacy. Principle three is "It is the teacher's job to make the fragment the same to the student as it is to the teacher."

What does that mean? Consider a teacher in the middle of a lesson and you turn the page and you see a dotted quarter note pattern for the first time. That teacher says, "Wow, that's interesting. Let's look at this." They explain the rhythm. Time is short, so perhaps it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the student, but they're able to mimic it back to us. And because we, this hypothetical teacher in this scenario, has the context for why a dotted quarter note is the way it is, all of that context, we're like, "Okay, that explanation made sense to me. My student was able to parrot it back to me. Fantastic. They know it. Let's move on."

That student likely does not have the same relationship to the dotted quarter note-eighth note rhythm pattern that we do in that moment, or this hypothetical teacher doesn't. So what is a way that we could help that fragment make sense? Depending on the age of the child, you could provide a mathematical explanation. They likely know what a dotted half note is versus a half note. The dot may have been fully explained as one and a half its value, or you take half of its value added to the original value. Either way, you get to the same number. Or you could have just said, "Well, when you add a dot to a half note like this, it gets an extra beat. It becomes a dotted half note."

So you can certainly relate it to the previous concept, even if you didn't fully explain the fragment at that time. For example, if you had a, I don't know, a seven-year-old, probably not the best to explain at that time, or even an adult - maybe you just want them to accept that knowledge and they don't necessarily need to know why. It doesn't leave these questions hanging.

But back to our dotted quarter - you could explain what that dot does, and then you could, instead of having the dotted quarter note, you could have a quarter note tied to an eighth note followed by another eighth note, which would have the same exact sound, of course, as a dotted quarter note-eighth note pattern. And you can have the student tap that or listen to it or write out "one-and-two-and-three-and-four", and you can have them understand that.

And then below that you can put the same rhythm of the dotted quarter note followed by the eighth note and have them repeat both of them back to back. And by equating those two pieces of information and hearing and doing and seeing and experiencing those two pieces of information and equating the dot on the dotted quarter note to the eighth note that was tied, you can help that student make that fragment make sense for them in the same way that it does for you. You can have it make sense for them in the same way that it makes sense for you.

And that complete picture, although it's just that fragment, they're relating that fragment to other knowledge. They're making connections just like you have all of these connections for how a dotted quarter note-eighth note relates to other concepts. So you can do that with every concept. Although fragments are an essential part of teaching music or teaching anything, as we've discussed, I don't think that you want to throw away the idea that fragments should still make sense as part of the greater whole.

And you cannot forget that when you explain a fragment to a student, first of all, telling is not teaching. Refer back to principle number one: "I tell myself, therefore I know." So if you just explain it without having them experience it, you're going to tend to not provide them that full experience in the same way a child needs to sometimes experience a stove being too hot or water being too hot, or a knife being too sharp or whatever - they might need to experience something for that to fully click.

And as parents, you want to shield that child from those unpleasant experiences. And as teachers, we also want to make it as simple as possible. But we have to relate that to the whole picture, and they need to be provided an experience, not just talked at. That experience, in this case with the tied note to the quarter note versus the dotted quarter note, will be a much more impactful experience for them.

Moving to fallacy number four. I think that some of these fallacies, you can hear these fallacies and you can just outright say, "That's outrageous. Who could possibly think that way?" And I think that this fallacy is one of those: "It is more important to measure than it is to teach."

I think that when you hear that fallacy, you're like, "Who could possibly think that? That's ridiculous. I would never believe that thing." Now, that said, I think that we can be very guilty of focusing on that measuring process, especially with programs like that have leveled exams, programs that focus on evaluation. And I'm not denying that it is important to evaluate our students and have them understand that knowledge.

But think about it. Think about a college jury examination, a jury performance, which I'm sure that many of you have experienced before. We all know how it works: a performance major or a pedagogy major, a music major, spends a semester practicing a certain set of repertoire and the teacher works with the student to shape that and the student practices what the teacher assigns. The jury measures what's happened, and if the performance is up to what the teacher expects and the other faculty expects, they get a good grade.

What have they really learned in this scenario? What has the jury really measured? Their ability to recite what the teacher has coached or to mimic back what's been given? Present an alternative solution. And I think that this also sounds wild upon first approach: The student works through two Beethoven sonatas or movements. They have similar skill sets. The teacher teaches the first one, and the student brings it back. The student brings it back. The student shares what they've learned and they shape it. However, the second Beethoven sonata is the one that is measured by the jury board at the end of the semester. And that one, the student has received no direct instruction from the teacher.

They've received no direct instruction from the teacher on that second one, and they've had to apply what the teacher has taught them about the first sonata. And the skill sets are similar. I'm not suggesting that you do like Movement 1 of the Moonlight versus, I don't know, Opus 2 No. 1. I'm not suggesting that you teach two separate skill sets here, but that instead of just being able to mimic back what the teacher has done and just kind of recite what they've been told, they're instead given the task of applying that knowledge in a new situation. And that's what they've been graded on at the end of the semester.

I think that first of all, that's incredibly intimidating. It is an intimidating process, but it is an interesting thought experiment and it plays into Chronister's fourth principle, which counters this fallacy: "It is important that students learn to measure themselves."

All students will eventually stop being students. It's a sad fact. Even if you get a student at the age of five or six, you keep them for 12 years, 13 years, they've graduated high school, they've moved on to college. They're not majoring in music. Music is a huge part of this person's life because of the work that you've done with them over the formative years of this child's life. And they have relied on you to help them know when something is right and when something is wrong.

That's a big problem because it means that they don't have the ability to be a musician without your evaluation, without your measurement. They need to learn when it is right and wrong on their own. They need to learn to apply those skills on their own. Because at every point a student stops being a student and they have to go be a musician. Just a musician.

It's a situation that students are in when they have a performance degree, they graduate college, they move on. They are now not taking piano lessons anymore. Hopefully they know how to tell when something is right or wrong. And that makes sense in that situation. But I think that with the six-year-old, with the seven-year-old, with a 12-year-old, with someone taking lessons for two months, three months, six months, I think that that student also needs to be able to measure themselves. And Chronister agrees.

Moving on, fallacy number five: "The teacher furnishes the motivation." I think this one is going to be controversial and I'll share my thoughts on it. But let's talk about what Chronister is saying. This is a quote from his book here:

"I see that music publishers are now putting out books that are nothing but colorful musical stickers so that teachers can now more easily motivate their students. Of course, this fallacy pervades all parts of life. We know that Santa Claus gives gifts only to good children."

What's he saying? Is this a participation trophy moment? I'm not sure how he would feel about participation trophies, but in this moment, he's saying that students are motivated by extrinsic rewards. There are two types of rewards: intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. Those prefixes "in-" versus "ex-" are the key parts of those words. Extrinsic rewards are rewards external to an individual or activity. And intrinsic rewards are a core part of that individual's relationship to that activity.

For example, many jobs in this world do not have intrinsic rewards. They have extrinsic rewards. They're paid, right? Many music teachers find intrinsic value in teaching music. It's rewarding to us. But not all jobs are like that. Incredibly important jobs, jobs that are required for society to function, do not necessarily have intrinsic reward as part of it. They don't necessarily get to build up their own business, their own studio, build up relationships. Someone responsible for picking up the trash on a weekly basis - garbage truck people or industrial waste engineers, I'm not sure the term - but I think that we can agree that there is very little intrinsic reward to that activity. I don't think that those people would perform that essential service for society if they were not being paid and compensated for it.

And Chronister is saying that these stickers or this extrinsic reward is not good. He's saying that it's a fallacy that this is how motivation needs to work. And many of you with sticker books could vehemently disagree with him. But his principle is that students furnish their own motivation, that students must furnish their own motivation. And I think that it's a very black and white approach the way that Chronister is presenting this. But he's suggesting that if a student does not find an inherent value, an inherent satisfaction in completing a piece of music, in performing that piece of music, in furthering their music theory knowledge and their technical abilities and their knowledge of history, if they don't find an inherent intrinsic reward in those things, that their love for music will only last as long as the stickers last, as the external reward. And that just like the people who collect garbage would likely stop collecting garbage if they were no longer paid for it, that the student that relies on stickers to motivate or treat bags or reward systems to be motivated will only be motivated as long as that is there.

And I have mixed feelings about this fallacy and principle combination. I do think that he's right, but I don't think that his derision of stickers is necessarily warranted or completely valid because I believe that some students do need some extrinsic, some extra rewards for motivation. However, I do think that it's a very messy situation to be in.

I was actually at the very beginning of 2020, I launched the Piano Olympics, the High Desert Piano Piano Olympics program. Students would get points for every minute that they practiced during the month. There would be special activities that they would be able to gain points from that would rotate on a monthly basis. And there was a rewards box. It had candy, it had music rewards, it had sheet music, socks, it had sticky notes and trinkets. Like you'd get at the dentist afterwards. And I was doing that for several months. First of all, COVID, the COVID lockdowns kind of interrupted that because students could no longer come and collect their rewards.

I also read some research during an educational psychology class that I took at university that discussed this issue - intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards, because many teachers at school, especially at the younger ages, they have a treasure box or some kind of currency that you can earn and unlock items, rewards. They have sticker charts. Parents have sticker charts. They're all over the place. And the point that this article made, that this research made was that if a student gets intrinsic value out of an activity and is then furnished with an extrinsic reward for that activity - so remember, that means that they get an inherent pleasure out of doing something, and then a reward is introduced, for example, candy - that the value of the inherent reward will go down over time. And it could eventually be completely eliminated.

So if a student really likes math and they love math, but then they start getting candy for math, they may not love - they may love candy more than math. And they can be weaned off of their enjoyment of math. And the same thing can happen for piano students. If a student gets an inherent joy out of learning the piano, performing, furthering their skills, their technique, their theory knowledge, their history knowledge, if they get an inherent reward out of that, if that makes them feel good, and then you're introducing candy or other extrinsic rewards, you can then rob that child of their inherent love of music.

So what does that mean for us? Because not every child has an inherent love of music. Not every child has an inherent love of math. And if you only take - or if you found that, well, when I give them rewards, they stick around a lot longer. They stay for years. They enjoy themselves more. Okay. I think that's totally valid. And you can say if I take away those rewards, my studio count is going to go down. I'm going to lose students and they'll enjoy themselves less. And I think that that is a totally valid argument. But there's the big but. I think you should consider what effect a reward will have on the students that just love music and that if you have a transfer student, for example, that's been studying for years and they just really love music, and then you start giving them candy for their sight reading, how will that change their relationship with music?

Moving on from that very loaded principle and fallacy, fallacy number six: The answer is more important than the process by which it is reached. This is, I think, a much less controversial fallacy. We can look at this and we can say obviously the answer is important. But I think that people, especially educators, have a distaste for standardized testing, right? Often people complain, and I believe rightfully so, that they have to teach to the test.

What does that mean? That for a specific year in an elementary school, middle school, high school, that instead of necessarily teaching the things that they believe are important, they reach the standards that they need to be able to teach those students to regurgitate those standards so that they can score high on their standardized testing, especially if funding is tied to testing results or bonuses or raises or job promotion.

It's the same thing in college. If a teacher is on tenure track and they need their students to do well to reflect on them, you know, it can be very - I would imagine it would be very tempting, I've never been a university teacher - to teach to the test. And you design the tests in those situations.

So I believe the problem can be more pervasive. What does this look like in piano pedagogy? I think that in piano pedagogy this looks like some of the previous fallacies where we talked about just regurgitating information. You know, like with the Beethoven Sonata example from earlier - for juries, you want them to score high on juries. Yes. Would you accept a lower jury score if it meant that they learned more? Would you be happier if it took them longer to master a concept, but they have a better understanding of it? Or is it just important to you for them to be able to tell you facts about eighth notes and look at eighth notes and be able to understand them well enough that they can get by?

Or perhaps you might have been - let's be careful here. You may have guided a student very intently through a tricky couple of measures. They've been stuck on these measures for a long time, and you've just kind of showed it to them and had them mimic you so that they understood - well, that they're able to perform the tricky rhythm or they're able to execute the phrasing in that section the way you know it should be. But they don't know why or how they got to that answer. They think they did the answer because you told them to. They executed it flawlessly. The phrasing is beautiful, but if you gave them another phrase with the same principles, they may not be able to do it well. Or if they came across that rhythm pattern again, would they be able to do it easier or would you just have to show it to them again?

So I think that that is a very tempting thing to do in some situations. And I know that some teachers rely a lot on that showing the answer. Students with perfect pitch - teachers are often discouraged from playing the pieces for their students beforehand to show things like artistry and rhythm and whatnot, because the student will not need to learn to read it and they'll just be able to hear it and rely on that instead.

So the principle that Chronister has associated with this fallacy is that the process by which an answer is reached is more important than the answer itself. And just like the fallacy, he was - this I think is a little bit more controversial. The process by which an answer is reached is more important than the answer itself.

What does this look like in practice? For me, this looks like taking far more time to walk a student through why the note that they're playing is wrong and how to figure out that note using guide notes, because that's the method of sight reading I teach. Teaching them to figure out why it's wrong and how to do better in the future rather than just spending 15 seconds saying "That's a G, write it in, let's move on." I'll spend 5 minutes walking the student through a process to figure out why their mistake is wrong and how to correct it.

I will not give a student the answer, and that means yes, things do take more time to understand, but that the mistake that they make will not keep reoccurring. And I think that that's an important thing to bear in mind, that if you provide an answer without walking the student through the process by which they could get to that answer, that it's not really meaningful.

Imagine a math teacher. They're teaching a difficult long division process or they're going through - I don't know, listen, I don't want to - a math teacher going through something complicated and the student gets it wrong. But the student didn't provide - they didn't show their work. Everyone hates that. "Show your work." Why do math teachers require that you show your work? Well, they can see where it was wrong, where you went wrong, and how to get the right answer in the future. Then you can then see I forgot a negative sign there. I didn't do the math thing - listen, I'm not a math teacher. They didn't do one of the steps properly and things got off the rails. Maybe they were very close to the right answer at the very end. And then they missed something.

Or alternative way - and this one is interesting. It's very frustrating for children. I mean, I was frustrated by it when I got the right answer using the wrong method. And my question was marked wrong. Why? Why would they do that to me? I got the right answer. I got the right answer. Why is it wrong? Because the method I used, perhaps it's not the fastest method. Perhaps it doesn't work in every situation. Perhaps it is a flawed approach to that specific problem. But in this case, something about the way the problem was constructed meant that I got the right answer. Or maybe I made a mistake in my flawed answer, my flawed approach. And that mistake gave me the right answer.

Like, if someone said - again, maybe using guide notes - they see, I don't know, they see the A a third above bass F and they say something like, "I know that that note is A because it's a second below middle C." Okay, answer's right. It's not a second below middle C, it's a third below middle C or it's a third above bass F, whichever approach they take. And that, that there's a misunderstanding here. So they got the right answer, but they made a mistake to get to that right answer. And that's a problem - that means that it will not necessarily get them the right answer again in the future. So I am a firm believer in process over results. I strongly believe with Chronister about principle six that the process is more important than the answer itself.

Moving on here to fallacy number seven. Fallacy number seven: Working on tasks devoid of purpose is good discipline. This is a cliché in certain types of movies, right? The Karate Kid. "Why am I doing your laundry?" Or you know, it's a cliché in military movies. I don't know if it's - I've never been in the military, so I don't know if it's really done. But washing or scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush is a valuable task because it is teaching you discipline when it would be much easier to use a full-sized brush.

So "working on tasks devoid of purpose is good discipline" is his fallacy. I think this one's pretty easy to agree with on its face. It's easy to agree with on its face. But then in practice you can find yourself disagreeing with it, right? Someone's getting something wrong, but they finally get it right. And before you move on, "Do it ten times in a row correct before we move on." Or teachers assigning Hanon - one of my college professors has a story that she used to do Hanon while also reading comic books. She would read comic books and she would do Hanon and she's fine with it. The teacher was fine with it. This is not me dissing Hanon. Please don't come at me on Facebook and say that you are a strong believer of Hanon. I'm not saying my opinion about Hanon, which probably reveals it, but I'm not saying Hanon is devoid of musical purpose.

I'm saying that any task can be devoid of musical purpose if you do not help the student understand what musical purpose it serves. If they practice scales for scale's sake and you get them to work up the tempo, but the entire time, they have no idea what they're - they're not listening. They're just kinda reading comic books or maybe they're watching YouTube or whatever. It's not - it kind of says that that is a fallacy here.

I find his principle to counter it is that working on tasks with a musical purpose is good discipline. So maybe their scales - maybe they should know a little bit of why they're doing their scales. Maybe they should be paying attention to something specific with their scales. Maybe they need to be doing the right hand piano, left hand forte, or they need voicing or articulations. Or maybe they're doing beautiful phrasing on those scales. There's many different ways that you can take a task that's a drill, because we know that drill is necessary. Drill is necessary because students need to build up a muscle memory so that things aren't automatic. I agree 100%. I'm not dissing drills.

So if you're a big fan of power tools, don't come at me on Facebook. But what I am saying is - and Chronister is saying rather - drill for drill's sake is not beneficial. Drills for drill's sake is not beneficial. Remember, correcting a mistake - that's probably not going to be high on a student's list of things to do because it's a minor thing. But achieving a specific sound and understanding that when this note is wrong, when a note is not the one that's on the page, or if we miss this crescendo here, it detracts from the overall purpose of the overall approach. Or if they clearly understand why they're doing their technique exercises and that those technique exercises are a bit of a brain teaser so that they can force themselves to pay attention. I think that these are a better way for students to approach these tasks.

Now, we're here on our last fallacy and principle. Fallacy eight: Education is preparation for life. Education is preparation for life. And I think that that is again, something that sounds really - it sounds really right. It sounds really correct. A quote from his book here: "Much of what goes on in all our educational programs suggests that we believe that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the cold, cruel world. Education that seeks to prepare people for something in the future without providing opportunities for using that preparation as part of the learning process produces two types of people. One group is just chomping at the bit to get out of school and start living. They've never tried what they've been prepared for, but they are convinced that they are prepared enough. 'Let me loose in the world. I'm ready.' The other group is made up of those who will find ways to stay in school forever, afraid to get out there and start living. They may even know that their preparation stopped short of actually doing anything useful. But as long as they can find more courses to take, more degrees to earn, more repertoire to learn, more research to pursue, they can avoid taking responsibility for their own lives."

Now, I think that it's easy to take that and take out that somehow this piano pedagogue has a negative impression of education, which is outrageous. And let's skip ahead and then come back here. Let's skip ahead. His principle: Education is not preparation for life. Real education is life itself. And I think that this is an incredible approach to it. If we - and it helps make sense of something - if you teach primarily children, maybe you don't have any adult students. I think that it can be a lot less clear that this is the case.

But when you have an 86-year-old woman come to you, as I have - saying 89, she was 89 years old. She came to me and she was driving herself. She was walking unassisted. She was incredible. I hope that when I am 89, I am as incredible as this woman was. And she came and she said, "I've always wanted to learn the piano. I've always wanted to learn the piano. And if I don't do it now, I think I can confidently say that it's never going to happen." The music education for retired people, for adults, for hobbyists - which for most teachers, most music teachers, most piano teachers, schoolteachers in school music teachers K through 12 - we can mostly agree that our students are not going to become professional musicians.

If you work at a university setting, I think that that's a lot less clear to say. But I think we can also agree that there are a lot more private piano teachers than there are university piano professors. And that 12-year-old or that 18-year-old from an earlier example that goes off and does something that's not a music major - maybe they never play the piano after their 12 years of piano lessons. It would be very easy for us to look at that and be like, what a waste. They took lessons for 12 years. They reached Chopin Nocturnes. They were doing concert études and they were composing their own music and then - and they didn't use any of it. What was the whole point? Why bother?

But of course, that's ridiculous. They have a beautiful relationship with music. They had 12 years - at the age of 18, 12 out of 18 is two-thirds of their life. Two-thirds of their life they've had daily practice, weekly music lessons. And life doesn't mean your memories don't start at the age of one. So for their entire life, for all intents and purposes, they've been a musician and they'll always be a musician. But even if they never touch the instrument after that last piano lesson, the experience itself was enough. It didn't have to serve a purpose. It doesn't need to. They don't need to go do something with it. Having that educational opportunity is life itself.

It enriched their life. It gave them laughs. It taught them self-discipline and it gave them a beautiful experience for their life up until that point. That's enough. They don't have to go be a professional musician. It wasn't a waste. What does that mean for us here? Returning back to the fallacy, we don't need to focus on the hypothetical because it is hypothetical at that time. The hypothetical music careers of your students - providing them with valuable and meaningful and rewarding experiences during the educational experience is crucial. Recitals are not just there as a teaching moment. They're there to serve as memories. They're there to be fondly looked back upon. And if you give your students a workshop where they get to make a friend and they do duets, that could be a really significant experience for them.

Maybe you are getting married and you let every student in your studio try out to play at your wedding. And that student doesn't become a wedding musician. They don't go on to be a gig - they don't do gigs. That was still enough. That was still a valuable experience because education is not preparation for life. It can be, but real education is life itself.

That's his last principle. And I think that it's important to keep in mind that these eight principles and eight fallacies are not an end-all be-all for piano pedagogy. They are not the only approach. But I think that you can find at least one of these fallacies that you are doing, that you are not following the principle laid out by Chronister, and you can tweak that. You can align yourself more closely with the principle rather than its associated fallacy.

Maybe you are guilty of talking too much and being like, "Why don't you remember this?" Well, maybe they don't remember it because you just told them and you didn't teach it to them. Or maybe you're very fixated on the overall attention of your students rather than how they inherently feel about completing pieces. Or maybe you are very focused on their future and making sure that they are being prepared in the ideal way and their journey is less enjoyable because of that.

I think that we can all take a look at ourselves and our teaching practices and don't try to do all eight of these all at once. If you're like, "Listen, I'm a disaster. None of the - I'm not doing any of this stuff. I am guilty of everything that you just told me for the last 45 minutes." Okay, well, you've got some work to do, but don't try to do all eight of these all at once. Pick a couple. Put it on a sticky note by where you teach and just try to improve at that thing instead of overwhelming yourself with all eight of these fallacies and their associated principles.

Richard Chronister is - he passed away quite some time ago, but his writings, his lectures - they've been prepared by a close friend of his and he has a lot of good stuff. He has a lot of good stuff outside of these readings. On the Divine Music Teacher blog, on the show notes, there's going to be a link where you can get this book on Amazon. And I highly encourage it. You read through it. He might be old, you might feel it's out of date, but I mean, it's a lot more recent than the sonatas that we're teaching. So I think that there's definitely something there for us all to learn from.

I think we're going to wrap up here. My big takeaway is that we can always be better, we can always be better, and we need to be constantly reflecting upon ourselves and what it is that we want to - what we are trying to live up to. And we need to constantly strive for that and don't think of it as falling short of your aspirations or falling short of standards set out by other people. Think of it instead as you are constantly improving the experience that your students have. You are bettering yourself in the same way that we strive for our students. And whether or not there is an intrinsic reward there - if you get satisfied from doing that, or if there's an extrinsic reward that you're a better teacher and you'll have a fuller studio and you'll make more money - regardless, I think that you'll find that there's something satisfying about that continuous self-improvement and evaluation.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Piano Pedagogy Podcast. I'd love to hear your feedback on the Defined Music Teacher Facebook page and I will see you guys next week. .