Waste in Unimportant Subjects
There is a general impression among teachers to-day that much time might be saved by a more careful selection of studies, and by a better adaptation of the studies to particular pupils. For instance, Carl Czerny wrote over one thousand opus numbers. He wrote some of the most valuable studies ever written, but no one would think of demanding a pupil to play all of the Czerny studies, any more than the student should be compelled to play everything that Loeschhorn, Cramer and Clementi ever wrote. Studies must be selected with great care and adapted to particular cases, and if the young teacher feels himself incapable of doing this, he should either use selections or collections of studies edited by able authorities or he should place himself under the advice of some mature and experienced teacher until the right experience has been obtained. It would not be a bad plan to demand that all young teachers be apprenticed to an older teacher until the right amount of experience has been obtained. The completion of a course in music does not imply that the student is able to teach. Teaching and the matter of musical proficiency are two very different things. Many conservatories now conduct classes for teachers, which are excellent in their way. In the olden days a mechanic had to work side by side with his master before he was considered proficient to do his work by himself. How much more important is it that our educators should be competently trained. They do not have to deal with machinery, but they do have to deal with the most wonderful of all machines—the human brain.
Some studies in use by teachers are undeserving of their popularity, according to my way of thinking. Some studies are altogether trivial and quite dispensable. I have never held any particular fondness for Heller for instance. His studies are tuneful, but they seem to me, in many cases, weak imitations of the style of some masters such as Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., who may be studied with more profit. I believe that the studies of Loeschhorn possess great pedagogical value. Loeschhorn was a born teacher: he knew how to collect and present technical difficulties in a manner designed to be of real assistance to the student. The studies of Kullak are also extremely fine.
This is a subject which is far more significant than it may at first appear. Whatever the student may choose to study after he leaves the teacher, his work while under the teacher's direction should be focused upon just those pieces which will be of most value to him. The teacher should see that the course he prescribes is unified. There should be no waste material. Some teachers are inclined to teach pieces of a worthless order to gain the fickle interest of some pupils. They feel that it is better to teach an operatic arrangement, no matter how superficial, and retain the interest of the pupil, than to insist upon what they know is really best for the pupil, and run the risk of having the pupil go to another teacher less conscientious about making compromises of this sort. When the teacher has come to a position where he is obliged to permit the pupil to select his own pieces or dictate the kind of pieces he is to be taught in order to retain his interest, the teacher will find that he has very little influence over the pupil. Pupils who insist upon mapping out their own careers are always stumbling-blocks. It is far better to make it very clear to the pupil in the first place that interference of this kind is never desirable, and that unless the pupil has implicit confidence in the teacher's judgment it is better to discontinue.