There are numerous educational benefits to having children learn music at an early age. Studies have shown that students who participate in music are far more likely to graduate high school than those who aren’t. Music is a great option for students who are nervous about playing sports, because it teaches many of the same things: following instructions, honing personal skills, coordinating with other people, and performing tasks alone. Making time for a music class amid all the other scholarly pursuits allows students one hour to take their mind off their academic pursuits and do something very different. Music allows the brain to relax while still keeping it engaged and active. Students are allowed to interact with other students and work with them. Much of our Western education is structured so that students receive instruction directly from the teacher, and have very little interaction with each other. Music classes are structured so that students have opportunities to work together as a whole and also in smaller groups, learning things from each other all the while. The most common instrument that children learn in school is the violin.
Learning violin is something of a rite of passage for many families, and provides an important gateway for the child to learn other instruments. Of course, students can choose to learn other instruments first instead, but violin does have the most available literature and the most specialized programs for learning. The method for learning violin that is most familiar to Americans by name is the Suzuki method. This was developed by a musician in Japan after WWII. He noticed that children under the age of five have an amazing ability to learn languages that adults find difficult. He took many of his observations from language acquisition and turned them into a method for teaching children music, especially violin. His goal wasn’t to create prodigies, it was to instill these children of a battered and bruised society to have grace, discipline, and an appreciation for beauty. One of the most important elements of learning violin in this manner is the early emphasis on tonalization, or teaching the ear.
Beginning students in the Suzuki method are taught their solo pieces by ear. The theory is that this allows the brain to recognize tonal patterns in the music and then reproduce it on their own instrument. Even very small children taught in this way can play songs that have a quality normally heard from professional players. Early criticism of this aspect of the Suzuki method for learning violin stated that it made children too dependent on their ear, and they were terrible sight-readers. Changes to the method incorporated introducing music reading earlier than before, so that the ear training just added to the ability to read music rather than subtracted from it. Another important part of the Suzuki method involves playing over past pieces frequently. European music schools had collections of etudes, or musical studies that were meant to develop a certain skill, such as vibrato or playing across multiple strings.
Students had to play these every time they practiced, and they did hone techniques, but they could often be quite boring. Suzuki’s method has students play over their past pieces frequently, so they can refresh techniques learned in previous pieces and perhaps add newly learned techniques to the playing as well. Other methods of learning violin do not have recognizable names, but they are used just as frequently. The Kodaly method that is often used in the US differs from the Suzuki method in several ways. It emphasizes reading music earlier, and it incorporates a great deal more folk music. Students learn songs from around the world so they can learn to recognize the many forms that music can take. Children are also encouraged to compose their own music at very early ages.