T&L Music and Language - Here, There... Where?

Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber...

The contexts in which private music classes for beginners are held and a school classroom are surprisingly similar in certain ways.

Anyone who has studied in an Indian school is familiar with how classrooms look and classes function. With no change over 60 years that I remember. (That dates me, eh?) About 40 students at least squashed into a room meant for half that number. Desks in straight rows, facing up front. The aisles too narrow for an average teacher to walk to the back of the class. Or for students from Row 3 to approach the teacher. So any movement is confined to the teacher oscillating in the narrow strip of space between the board and Row 1. So students through the day see a succession of teachers and the uninformative backs of their classmates' heads. The room is bare with no charts or posters on the walls.

More progressive schools may have round tables with chairs in the kindergarten and perhaps even in Grades 1 and 2. But by upper elementary the teacher is expected to be the focus of all students’ attention and we are back to serried states of desks and chairs. Some teachers may put up student work on the walls but most have artistic work done by teachers. Still, some colour in the room to feed the aesthetics of students.

What do music classes look like? In my salad days, the music teacher came home. The classes were one-on-one and were held in a secluded room just off the main part of the house. Both teacher and student sat on the floor with the harmonium between them. I remember my first teacher Soundaram mami easily able to lean over to keep rhythm on my thigh quite forcefully. No frills, at least no more than the room always did. My grandmother always kept an ear open to the doings in the class though she did not sit in on the class.

Much has changed since then. No more individual classes. By and large, they are small group classes of 3 to 10. Students assemble in the teacher’s house. It is usually crowded with little wiggle room. Students usually still sit on the floor. 
The teacher may or may not, depending their age and physical limberness. There is still not much to indicate that this a room devoted to music. Maybe a thamboora in a corner. No bookshelves with music books or pictures of musicians and composers. Parents who hang around waiting to collect their child are discouraged from sitting in on the class but urged to socialise in another room.  

So two or three times a week students essentially go after 6 hours in a regimented, unaesthetic environment of their classroom to another closed, confined room for 30 to 45 minutes, which may be more homely. Getting to look more and more a regular classroom, isn't it?

Music teachers moan that fewer young people are interested in classical music, that they have neither the patience nor the time to invest in learning it. Well, if it is an extension of school, why would students be enthused about it?

Private music teachers are also heard to chastise children with, ‘Would you behave like this in school?’

No, probably not.

But why would you want children to relate back to school, where they have just spent 6 hours, and are longing for something different? And being one of 40 in a larger group of 2000 to 5000 is not what a child would want to repeat through the evenings or weekends.

So how can music classes look and feel differently from school? More like music and less like English or Hindi? Remember that music classes are not school classes, I guess. Music is primarily an aesthetic experience. Cater to it. Allow students to express themselves freely.

Dress! In a music class, we can see children dressed in anything from shorts to flowing skirts to pavadais. It adds colour and vibrance to the room, and it will change the mood of the child. A far cry from the constricting and unimaginative uniforms prescribed by most schools. If anything, discourage children from wearing their school uniforms to music class. A young friend recounts a tale of an established and very well-respected teacher who threw him out of her class because he showed up in shorts. I understand the respect for tradition but can we focus on the joy that music should bring?

Brighten up the room with pictures of musicians and composers, easily available in calendars and flyers, and on the web.

Encourage students to socialize before and after class. Forming friendships will keep children attending music classes long after the pull of the art has faded away.

Schools are institutions with a specific role in the larger society. Private music classes do not have to seek to replicate that purpose or process to justify their existence. Children need different learning contexts, not the same ones twice over…. Hmm, need to explore this more in another post.

Image: https://musicacademymadras.in/academics/part-time-classes/