US music educator Walter Bitner writes in praise of the wholehearted attention displayed by students who make music, and how it can be applied to other moments in their lives.
He says that beyond the content of the music curriculum, there is something fundamentally different about the process of learning music to learning most other subjects that makes for dynamic, flexible, and responsive individuals:
- Students who sing in choir or play in band or orchestra must simultaneously perform a complex set of operations that call on more aspects of the human being than any other activity they face in school. Only dance and theatre come close.
- At its best, musical performance demands a complete absorption in the moment in which all other thoughts and concerns disappear. And the teacher must exhibit this wholehearted attention herself in the classroom, consistently modelling a kind of behaviour which may not be required of them in the other learning environments they are exposed to.
He continues that in our ever more distracted world, with so many stimuli vying for our attention, the ability to concentrate completely on the present moment sets an example for how one could live differently and may be the music teacher’s greatest legacy.
Source: Walter Bitner blog – Off the Podium: http://walterbitner.com/2015/06/12/wholehearted-attention/
Music Education Works 