"Opening the Shutters*

John Kenneth Adams

Recent headlines proclaim the extraordinary amount of time the young spend on mass
media. Between 7 and 9 hours a day is the new norm. The fact that so little study has
been done in any scientific way to filter through all this is equally disturbing. It is
hard to have direct personal communication today as so many are addicted to their
mobile devices. Empathy is the greatest casualty.

Students! Please take out your ear phones, turn off your cellphones, delay that next
tweet or Instagram, and take out your scores. Teachers! Place your 50 most
pressing worries, your menu for dinner, and your imminent foreclosure on the back
burner....then greet your next student.

What now? Perhaps the silence might be daunting for you both.

It is just this silence that is the life spring of music, that silence from which creativity
flows. It is a precious commodity today. The ability to be quiet and prepare ourselves
for entering the special world of creativity is at the center of all learning.

There is a certain lack of beauty today in education. Try not to let mass media take over
your life to the point where you miss out on spontaneous human connections. Look up,
not down What is lacking in schools and homes must be supplied by teachers who are
committed to their own and their student's personal development. Proper learning is a
dialogue, not just a solo aria.

We have to coach the young to find ways to discover beauty in themselves and believe that they possess unique and precious gifts of self expression. Music demands that we be quiet and make a space around it. Certainly this discipline of quiet and space can help one learn any subject on a higher level of understanding.

So many educators fail to notice this simple fact: test scores go through the roof when
nurtured with the arts. Business leaders miss the point that human emotions drive achievement more than any body of dry statistics and profit driven mantras.

We must never forget the basics of musical expression and the long established rules for
unlocking musical thought. The most potent force in music is the power of melody. It
can often be just a fragment, but even this can suggest much more than thought possible.

I am thrilled when a student says “I just love this bit/” Often, it is just a
couple of chords, or just a subtle shift in harmony.

Ask yourself how many times you have been moved by just an unexpected shift from
major to minor, or the flight in the melodic line to a place you thought impossible.

We must go deeper into the music. We must teach pieces that are on the near side of
attainable and not so demanding that the student loses track in the search for solutions.
We must dig into that quiet spot where music aesthetics dwell, sorting out good taste
from bad taste. Students need to be presented with an ideal. As Plato said, if you
want to appreciate beauty, then you must first contemplate beauty.

Place what is possible in a direct way in front of your students, and take time
to find those places that evoke a response from them. Explore all the reasons that
make them feel that way. Ask them every lesson what they like in their pieces, and
if there is a roadblock, be honest enough to explore more than one solution. The goal
is to have many solutions, realizing the most complex situations are solved with
simplicity. You can't solve complexity with complexity. Above all, have a healthy
respect for the fact that not everything in music is explainable.

Face up to a changed world and learn the language of the young..Incorporate the best
features of new media techniques for learning, but don't let tt be a crutch for not
searching into your own imagination. Include those with handicaps in your class. They
will teach you more than you could possibly teach them. In the process never forget you
have a tremendous world of experience to share. This will give you confidence and
support you when you feel down.

Many of you will live to see a new attitude towards education. Trying to cram down
learning by endless testing and rote teaching will give way to a more pragmatic approach,
one that has learned the value of human connection. Emotions stirred by creativity build
new pathways in the brain, opening the shutters to a world where work and contemplation
go hand in hand.

When you find the quiet spot, you will have found the center of creativity...that great
wellspring of all emotion.