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How To Make Piano Students Quit
If you’re wondering how to make piano students quit, I have a few tips for you. Most authoritarian piano teachers don’t really care if you quit or not. They are business people, and demographics decree that another six year old wanting piano lessons is just around the corner. So go ahead and quit.
Many of the peculiarities of these teachers and their personalities lead their students to flee from utter boredom. Here are a few clues that mean you have an inflexible piano teacher.
Qualities And Rules Of Inflexible Piano Teachers
Certain things will be learned in a certain order, and if the child does not understand, or might benefit from some other approach, your demand is inflexible. You must learn exactly what I say, or risk my wrath. The old fashioned is scripture to you.
Your student’s reaction to your method is irrelevant. Persist in serving the basic curriculum, in the old order, no matter what your student’s reaction is. The student is wrong.
Piano Is Easy
Go From Page To Page
You use only the standard teaching texts, Faber, Bastien and Alfred, and go from page to page, pointing out errors, demanding more repetition. Do not use any newer music outside the standard texts. It is of no teaching value. You may only play what you can read. That means you’ll be playing Jingle Bells for the next ten years.
What The Old School Believes
Your personality can best be described as dry and unsympathetic. If you are young, you only want to get to the next page. If you are old, you only want the lesson to be over. Be very strict about assignments. Get mad when they are not done exactly as you say. Give the child a practice schedule and demand that the parent initial it every day. Get mad if they miss a day. Anger always motivates children, right?
Your Standards Are Impossibly High
If you want to be really old fashioned, get a ruler and whack the child’s finger when that finger goes off track. That will help cement the idea that piano lessons are drudgery devoid of fun and games. You give out pain and work. You demand endless effort at a task only dimly understood by the hapless student.
Deepen the pall of gloom. Make it very clear that your standards are impossibly high, and that no one except the wonderful, hypothetical Joe Perkins lived up to them. The hypothetical Joe Perkins practiced the master’s method six hours a day and hates piano now, by the way. Sneer at child psychology. Children are lazy, ignorant slackers who would rather play with their iphones (the iphone part is actually true).
Every Lesson Follows The Same Roadmap
Choose a pace for lessons that is set the same for each student: you must learn page 7 this week, and page 8 next week, no exceptions, no diversions, no tangents, no nothing. Follow the rules. There is nothing else except reading music. When, if you play for 20 years, you can finally read that song you always wanted to play, let’s hope you’re still interested in the piano. Willing to wait 20 years? I thought not.
Never simplify anything. If the child wants to play a song they cannot read, veto the choice, and substitute a boring exercise piece that is “at their level.” Never take their choice of music and simplify it, bringing it down to their level. The teacher is always right, and the student is always wrong.
REFERENCES
Quit Piano
My Kid Says He Hates His Piano Teacher
Why Your Child Has Rejected Piano
Why Does My Child Want To Quit Piano?
Kid’s Piano Lesson Survival Statistics
Allow Your Child To Be Honest About Hating Piano
Should Parents Force Kids To Take Piano?
How Come My Kid Hates Piano?
Some Kids Don’t Like Piano
Dad Made Me Hate Piano
How To Make Your Kid Hate Piano
Nagging Your Child To Practice Piano
