It came up today in casual conversation about how different the lives of children are these days from when I was young, centuries ago.
I couldn't help but point out that, because I do not insist that my young students practice, they tend to work on the music in their dreams, so to speak. The progress they make, though it would not get them into a music school, does get them to a rare level of rapport with Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn.
Could it be that dreaming is the cure to constant busywork, pretend learning involved in what passes for education in too many circumstances these days?
I asked one of my high school seniors (the one who told me once that she didn't have time to practice) if she had friends who liked Beethoven as much as she did. No, she replied. Why not? Because they had had it forced down their throats.
