The 6 Biggest Challenges in Music Education

The 6 Biggest Challenges in Music Education

1. Commitment:

Many students would like to be able to play a musical instrument but truly lack to the commitment needed to do so.

Many hours of practice are required every week to be able to master rhythms, technique and repertoire.

Students see their teacher or other artists performing with ease and fail to understand the depth of the commitment that was needed to achieve this standard of excellence

2. Priority:

So often music education is not seen as a priority but instead a luxury item. When someone understands the long reaching benefits that music education has to all forms of learning, it becomes a priority to involve their child.

Education systems also often fail to see the arts as being necessary or beneficial, totally disregarding the effects that learning music can have on maths and cognitive reasoning as well as social issues such as self-esteem and confidence.

3. Financial:

This is the biggest challenge in music education. Many music teachers have trained for many, many years on their instrument to master the technique and become proficient.

You can never convert all of this commitment into financial value otherwise no one would be able to afford to pay what a teacher is worth.

On the other hand, many people fail to see the value in an excellent teacher and would like to pay next to nothing to receive expert tuition.

In the end, a great teacher is worth every penny!

4. Adaptation for Student Needs:

Every student has different motivations for learning music and every student has different ways of learning new things.

The challenge is to be flexible and cater to the students learning style and adapt each lesson to the students needs and interests.

5. Motivating Students:

A motivated student will go far. Even students with moderate talent can succeed with motivation and the drive to practice and improve.

You really can’t encourage motivation in a student when they just don’t want to play or practice. This is often due to the parent wanting the lessons, not actually the student.

Motivation is best encouraged by improvement and this in turn by practice which requires motivation in the first place.

6. Assessing Progress:

Progress is subjective and can only be measured incorporating effort, the amount of practice achieved and the improvements gained over a specific amount of time.

Comparing one student to another is a recipe for disaster as everyone has different capability, talent, and learning abilities.

The best gauge of progress is a measure of improvement over effort by the individual student.