I am a Suzuki-trained piano teacher - a child-centred method of music education transmitted by Shinichi Suzuki.

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During the 1930s whilst teaching the violin in Japan, Suzuki had the insight:

'children everywhere are speaking Japanese'

- difficult dialects that a grown adult would find challenging to master.

Given the hardness of this task, he concluded that every child speaking their native language must possess profound talent for....doing just that. And given that no child can speak as soon as they come out of the womb, talent is not innate.

He went on to devise a system based on this discovery which became known as the Talent Education Movement.

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Underpinning the method are the following core observations:

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- Sound then symbol

Children speak before they read; children are taught to play music before they read scores.

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- Tone development 

Tone (the quality of the sound that is being made) is what affects a listener so time is spent developing a ringing tone: 'Beautiful tone, beautiful heart' - tone communicates heart.

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- Mother-tongue ability and the environment 

A child's ability to speak their native language rests on the fact that they have first heard this language spoken many times. Young children must therefore listen first to the music they will play.

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- Every child can

Given the right kind of nurturance, all children can develop talent. This is independent from the capacities or lack-there-of that they initially demonstrate. Talent can only be assessed after it has developed. 

 

- Ability breeds ability

Having ability motivates a child to develop it more. Ability-rich environments (observing lessons, group classes) contribute to nurturance.   

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- Retention via Repetition 

Short first words such as 'mama' must be both heard and practised many times to achieve mastery. Once mastered, a child continues to use these words throughout their life as they form more complex sentences. The Suzuki method starts by teaching basic skills and pieces that prepare the way for playing more complex music. Children continue to play all the music they have learnt, maintaining the foundations for ever-greater proficiency. 

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​Traditional methods tend to follow a linear progression where repertoire is learnt in isolation and then 'completed'.

Suzuki is a spiral model where the same skills are returned to and honed again and again as they are needed in each new piece of music.

At the centre lies listening, tone and ultimately the heart.

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