Richard Morrison
The dilemmas of planning my twoyear-old daughter’s music education
My newspaper once had an editor who opined regularly in print about how to improve London’s public transport, yet privately admitted that he had last travelled by bus or tube in the 1970s. Until recently I felt a similar unease when writing about music in schools. My three offspring had long since passed through childhood, more or less unscathed. I still felt I should take part in the music-education debate, but I was one step removed, emotionally and philosophically.
Then something mad happened. Shortly after I qualified for my bus pass, I became a father again. My latest sprog, Alice, is now pushing stridently through the terrible twos. Suddenly, I’m revisiting all those educational dilemmas I faced 30 years ago.
Do I attempt to buy a broom cupboard in the ever-receding catchment area of the only top-rated state primary school in our neck of north-west London? Do I withdraw a chunk of my shrinking pension-pot to pay for a pre-school nursery? And what musical future do I envisage for a little person whose life after 25, according to brutal statistical reality, I probably won’t be around to see?
It’s this last question that’s most perplexing. Thirty years ago, for ideological as well as financial reasons, my first wife and I sent all our children to state schools and trusted in what was then an excellent borough youth music system to give them a taste of choral and orchestral life. None of them chose music as a career, but I felt I had provided enough opportunities for them to decide how far, and in what direction, they should take their love of music.
Today? Even that top-rated primary school near us doesn’t have a music teacher on its staff. That’s a huge change from 30 years ago, when most primary schools could field at least one teacher who was competent on piano or guitar, and confident about leading classroom and assembly singing. And trusting that there will be a good music hub in your area seems, increasingly, a foolish gamble with your child’s music education. In fact the gap has grown alarmingly between what private schools offer musically and what the state sector can muster. A top private school will have about three or four fulltime music teachers and dozens of parttime instrumental tutors on its books. Compare that with the state secondary school close to us, where music is not offered to any pupil over 13. Sending Alice there is a horrendous prospect. Yet putting her into private education, even from 11, would require such a financial commitment that there would be little money left to give her other desirable formative experiences like foreign travel.
Choosing an instrument for her is just as hard. One good thing about being a very old parent is that, compared with when I was a frantically ambitious 30-something, I now have more spare time to supervise instrumental practice. I neglected that with the other three, and I regret it (though they assure me they don’t). Does that mean, though, that at my advanced age I should become a ‘Suzuki dad’ and start learning a stringed instrument alongside Alice? Is that even possible with 60-something fingers? Or should I turn her into a mini-me, and teach her the organ and trombone as soon as her little arms and legs grow long enough?
It’s not just a question of (let us be frank) what sort of noise you can stand round the house. The choice of instrument also defines the social dimension of your child’s musical life. Strings, flutes, oboes, bassoons and horns give you access to the whole orchestral repertoire but generally don’t feature (double bass excluded) in jazz or pop bands. Trombones and clarinets are more genre-hopping, but you don’t get to play Bach and Handel. As for pianists and organists, well, you spend a lot of time in solitary confinement.
And at least half the fun of making music, especially as a teenager, is being part of a team.
In one respect musical opportunities for children have been transformed in the past 30 years. It’s now possible, as it wasn’t when my first daughter was growing up, for hundreds of girls to enjoy the benefits of singing in a cathedral choir. But there are issues here, too. Do I want our family life to be shackled to the liturgical demands of a cathedral? And is spending 1,000 hours of her youth sitting in a choir stall the best way to nurture Alice’s personality and talents?
Decisions, decisions! Maybe in ten years’ time I’ll report back. Doubtless by then I will be, like the wedding guest in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sadder and a wiser man. And very wrinkly.
Should I become a ‘Suzuki dad’ and start learning a stringed instrument with Alice?