How To Develop Your Child’s Talent

How on earth do you teach a five-year-old to play the violin?

The violin is more difficult to play than other instruments. How can a child learn all the complicated motions, not to mention the notes? How do you help if you don’t have a musical background yourself?

Are some people just born with talent? (Image by Kazuo ota @kazuo513)

Many people believe that you either have talent or you don’t, and if you don’t, it will be too difficult to learn it.

Shin’ichi Suzuki saw it differently.

Everyone has ability

His answer lay in Saino Kyoiku, Japanese for “talent education” or better translated, “ability nurture.” When the proper conditions are met, every child can not only develop talent, but thrive and succeed in what they are learning.

Saino Kyoiku is a conviction that says, if you water the plant, it will naturally bloom. This is the far-reaching and revolutionary fuel behind the Suzuki method, and it also applies to educational method beyond the violin.

If you water the plant it will naturally bloom.

Suzuki believed every child has a natural, voracious ability to learn. Their brains are like sponges, soaking up anything and everything in their environment.

With the right kind of support from teachers and parents using the right method, children will progress quickly even in complex motor tasks and artistically fine skills.

The right conditions

I’ve been amazed to see the focus and attention a child will give!

But only under the right circumstances. Only when we give them the right conditions:

• Begin as early as possible

• Create the best possible environment

• Use the finest teaching method

• Provide a great deal of training

• Use the finest teachers

“When all these conditions are working together the flower of really wonderful ability will bloom,” says Eric Madsen, author of The Genesis of Suzuki: An Investigation of the Roots of Talent Education (Montreal: McGill University Thesis, 1990).

But what is the “best possible environment?” How can we attain these conditions?

The Mother Tongue

Madsen goes on to say:

Suzuki’s method in teaching, be it music or math or reading, mimics the way we train children to speak their mother tongue. Teaching and learning the mother tongue is usually done in a natural, simple, unstudied way. Suzuki has analyzed this procedure and applies the same steps and components to other areas of teaching and learning. The effectiveness of his approach is demonstrated by the astoundingly accomplished performances of young violinists taught by his method.

Teaching and learning the mother tongue is usually done in a natural, simple, unstudied way.

The mother tongue approach is simple: surround a student with a “language” of any kind, and they naturally begin to speak it.

Think about it: if you drop a person into the middle of a country with no prior understanding of the language, soon they will be speaking it, out of necessity. They will hear it all around them, they will begin naturally to speak it.

This is totally different from book learning! Most traditional classroom foreign language instruction is a waste of time. Kids forget it if they don’t speak it currently and in context.

The finest method

It might seem elitist to say “use the finest method” and the “finest teachers.” But what is meant here is not the American concept of the upper crust. It does not refer to people who have attained performance credentials—she went to Juliard, he played in Carnegie Hall, she played on America’s Got Talent, and so on.

It speaks of a teacher’s ability to reach students and surround them with a mother tongue approach.

Now of course this requires fluency with the craft, and enough experience to master the instrument in question. But it does not entail having played in the New York Philharmonic.

“Finest” in this case means carefully crafted. In the sense of fine thread, or a fine piece of woodworking.

A Suzuki teacher is one who not only has mastery of the craft of music, but who understands the fine art of teaching. Who understands that deep internalization of music must happen for true artistry to be reached, not just reading notes. Who grasps on a deep level Saino Kyoiku, the organic nurture and development of talent.

There is a certain amount of child psychology to this as well: children of different ages learn differently, and they learn better in certain forms (think: games!) than others. Older children are motivated by autonomous achievement through challenging goals. All children need the presence of peers and playing together in a group.

But all of them need the kind of nurturance that draws out their ability naturally.

It must come from them

It all comes down to this: naturally drawing out students. This means: they must initiate the action. Natural engagement means the child initiates the action from within.

This is very different from telling students what to do from the outside (though that kind of guidance is also occasionally needed.)

Natural engagement means the child initiates the action from within.

If it is imposed—DO THIS, DO THAT, PLAY THESE NOTES, BE LOUDER HERE—it will not be authentic, and it will not be engaged, and it will not be truly learned. Children do not fully learn if they have not taken embodied ownership of the activity.

But if naturally encouraged through the mother tongue approach, their brains are wired to do nothing but learn.

Seek a new way

If you have not experienced your child choosing the actions that demonstrate engagement and learning, it might be time for you to reconsider your path. Seek out a pedagogy that is more tailored to your child’s natural ability to learn.

The Suzuki method is adaptable and flexible and can include lots of music that is not in the “Suzuki books”. But when its core principles are followed, the method produces great artists.

Surround kids with music and a good method that engages them naturally, and they can’t not learn!

What a lovely conviction. I believe this is how we should develop children, in music and every other subject. How about you?

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Stay tuned for the Saino Kyoiku Series Part 2: Thinking With Your Body coming later this Fall!

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Find out more about the Suzuki philosophy:

Ability Development From Age Zero, Shin’ichi Suzuki

Nurtured By Love, Shin’ichi Suzuki

The Genesis of Suzuki: An Investigation of the Roots of Talent Education, Eric Madsen

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Experience in person the natural engagement and talent development for your child.

Visit an upcoming Group Class, or contact the studio for a tour.