Rethinking Genius

During the 7th European Suzuki Teachers Exchange Convention in Germany, October, 30 - November, 2 2015, teachers from 21 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, USA and Canada participated at the conference, organized by the German Suzuki Association. One of the conference highlights was the world-renowned American violinist and pedagogue Brian Lewis. As a child, he studied with and performed for Dr. Suzuki on many occasions.  As a dynamic and engaging teacher, Brian Lewis is committed to growing the legacies of the great pedagogues Dorothy DeLay and Shinichi Suzuki.

During the 7th European Suzuki Teachers Exchange Convention in Germany, October, 30 - November, 2 2015 teachers from 21 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, USA and Canada participated at the conference, organized by the German Suzuki Association. One of the conference highlights was the world-renowned American violinist and pedagogue Brian Lewis. As a child, he studied with and performed for Dr. Suzuki on many occasions. As a dynamic and engaging teacher, Brian Lewis is committed to growing the legacies of the great pedagogues Dorothy DeLay and Shinichi Suzuki.

I'd like to continue the idea of exploring "intelligence."  As discussed in an earlier post, intelligence is the ability to perceive information, retain it and then later apply that information to a different situation.  There are lots of reasons why music benefits children and I am not going to pretend that I am a cognitive development expert.  I am going to explore the question posed in the title of this post from the point of view of a music teacher and nothing else. Given the fact that intelligence centers on the application of knowledge, I think the best lesson taught by music is intense problem solving from an early age.  Consider all of the trials and errors a young student must process just to play a Twinkle.  If an odd sound happens during the piece, there are a dozen reasons why it could have occurred that the student must narrow down with lightning speed.  Was the wrong string hit?  Was the wrong finger placed?  Where was the bow? ...

It's kind of tragic that, in American culture at least, "book smarts" has fused together with the term "intelligence."  I feel that public awareness of the differences between terms has slowly been increasing these past few years.  But old habits die hard. "Book smarts" implies an ability to memorize information and regurgitate facts.  It is unfortunate that our public school system relies so heavily on this term since it usually has very little to do with the challenges of post-school life. Intelligence, on the other hand, has to do with one's ability to apply  learned information to different situations.  An intelligent person is one who is able to perceive information, retain it as knowledge and then later apply that information to an environment. I think that the most interesting thing about intelligence is that good genes alone will not determine the resulting human.  From what most studies have shown, environment must be there to develo...

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Yes.  Disc golf taught me how to practice. And it looks like this: I started playing ball golf casually while in college.  So when I heard about disc golf it was a very natural segue.  Honestly, when I first started playing disc golf, I enjoyed it enough to keep playing sporadically but little else.  Throwing the discs is challenging so I made an effort to try and improve mostly so I didn't lose them. The thing is about disc golf is that it has a very grassroots feel to it.  Tons of people play it--it's the fastest growing sport in the USA--but it doesn't have the "snooty" factor of ball golf.  The general mechanics of throwing are simple and then after that it comes down to style.  There are tons of different throwing styles and they all work. After sporadically playing disc golf for a year my musical training finally got the better of me and I decided I wanted a lesson on how to throw.  This was easier said than done because, as men...

I was never a big organized sport person while growing up.  I did kung fu and I would shoot hoops outside but the coordination of a team effort somewhat eluded me.  I liked doing "my thing" rather than going to practice and doing drills for a "team thing." I played in youth symphonies.  While you are playing as a group with the symphony it still felt like I was doing "my thing" rather than a "team thing."  If you don't know how to play a section of music, it's up to you to go home and figure it out. The long story short is that I never placed myself in a position where I had to really  examine my own mechanical proficiency.  Kung fu taught me endurance but I relied on a teacher to tell me if I was ready for the next belt or not.  Same for private music lessons and progressing through pieces.  Orchestra gave me that team experience but I only ever had to push myself hard enough at home so as to avoid messing up too much in rehearsal.  ...