In thinking about the question for this week's live Twitter chat on Wednesday #mufuchat - I found that for once I truly did NOT have a quick answer. The question posed by @MusicalFutures is a question I have been struggling with for the past few years, "do you have to be a musician to teach music?" At least once a week I work with teachers and adult students who are becoming teachers, to help them gain some skills in teaching music. Most of them are self-described "non-musicians". If I didn't truly believe that music could be taught by "non-musicians", I would not be investing so much of my time and energy in this process. But, to come up with a well-constructed answer to this question seems a daunting task.
Instead, I decided to share the questions that plague me as I try to construct an answer. Even as I read it back, more questions are emerging...
Do you have to be a
musician to teach music?
How do you define musician?
Am I a musician because my parents put me into piano lessons
when I was 5 years old and I stuck with it and am trained to play the piano?
Does that make me a musician?
Is being proficient at playing the piano proof that I can
teach students?
What does it mean to teach music?
Does it mean training students to sing? play instruments? read
and write the language of music notation? understand the rules of musical
composition? listen and interpret music?
What are the essential qualities of musicality that we need
to teach?
It ALL comes down to the essential question – what does it
mean to be musical?
Can you be a weak musician and be a good music teacher? (Definitely
Yes – I have seen it)
Can you be a great musician and a terrible teacher? (Absolutely
– I’ve seen that too)
So, maybe the question is, what does it take to be a good
teacher, no matter what the subject content?
And to refine it – what does it take to be a great music
teacher?
Is the teacher who calls him/herself a musician and commits
to learning about music alongside their students the best teacher?
Is being a musician a self-imposed definition?
Or does our society and culture define who is a musician?
Have we allowed only the elite, trained musicians to carry
that title?
Will we also allow popular musicians who have acquired fame
and a following to use the title,
“musician”?
If I sing to my baby and make up songs to calm her cries and
help her fall asleep – am I a musician?
If a child picks up a toy and repeated plays a rhythm with
it on the floor – is that child a musician?
At what point does one become a musician?
Are we ALL musicians, since music is so primal?
Can a musician simply be someone who makes music?
Do we need to understand the structure of music in order to
call ourselves musicians?
Or is every musician who shares his or her music, in a way,
teaching us something about music?
Can ANYONE who makes music, TEACH music?
Oh, gosh – I think I’m back at the beginning…
