Develop Attention Span of Your Child With Music. Part 3

Frustration and Cramming

Attention does not like inefficient projects. With each failure, the energy of attention decreases until it is completely depleted.  Depletion of attention leads to frustration.

Cramming is an aggressive intervention into organic development of the energy of attention in order to achieve short-term results dictated by outside conventions.

Forcing a student to mindlessly copy achievements of another, leveling his own progress, is as detrimental as forced blooming.

Cramming impedes natural development of the student's cognitive musical functions as well as weakens him physically (tense muscles) and emotionally (dependency, lack of confidence in his abilities, apathy, unwillingness to improve, low self-esteem, lack of motivation).

In order to avoid cramming, a teacher must respect the student’s imperfections. It is necessary to understand that the student does not have to fit the mold. It is the teacher’s duty to develop his unique talents in the most optimal way from ground zero.

Reality is such that for some time the student will not play with a perfect hand, use ideal finger positioning or be able to directly control the touch quality of piano keys. All these skills as well as many others are objectively superstructural and may only become relevant once the energy of attention is freed up from solving physical problems.