What does former Attorney General William Barr have in common with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken? Well, they’re both accomplished musicians! No wonder, since music boosts successful kids and adults in a range of cognitive skills and soft skills.
Old news? Well, yes: studies suggest music correlates with good reasoning, memory and grades. But here are additional socioemotional angles that might be unexpected, valuable, or particular to the fiddle — an instrument and genre that is inherently social and multimodal:
Healthy attitudes about learning
Kids today face an unreasonable burden of perfectionism. It’s difficult for even the best schools to alter the ingredients of this, including structures like grading and external reward. But music allows us to cultivate a very different mindset. Some lessons that kids find surprising (and valuable):
- Mistakes are good – they’re how we learn
- The pros get there less by repetition, and more by understanding
- Finding joy makes us better
Fiddle lessons also put kids in the driver’s seat to ask their own questions and choose their own goals, and give lots of practice with one of the toughest things: intentionally switching priorities (bringing focus to one area, then to another). For those of us who need to practice self-forgiveness and gain warmer self-image, and/or to boost our ability to allocate focus where we want it rather than where it leads us, these can be powerful lessons!
Relationship-building
A huge part of successful work relationships is the ability to build strong relationships while focusing on particular goals or outcomes. And this takes practice! Some kids are great relationship-builders but weaker on careful study; other kids focus heavily on meeting expectations to the detriment of building friendships and memorable moments. For all of us, learning to balance the two is part of a healthy, meaningful life.
Fiddle lessons are a great way to practice this. Student-teacher about music, and an occasional dash of real life, give many opportunities to practice warm conversation while retaining a goal-oriented focus. This right here is a life-skill!
Verbalizing
This is another social-adjacent one. By talking through musical situations, kids gain an ability to verbalize complex tasks, ideas, and feelings. This is a great skill for assertiveness as well as for kids’ confidence in communicative problem-solving.
Music appreciation and lifelong musical self-sufficiency
Of course we should finish with the music. My goal is for every learner to be a lifelong musician and active listener. That means a whole range of things. Through our work, kids encounter a broad range of music and history; play collaboratively with kids and adults; understand the thought processes of professional musicians; and make lifelong memories, images, and self-image. And, they learn a set of tools beyond note-reading that prepare them for a dorm-room jam, group talent show, family wedding band, and many more settings.
The fiddle is particularly good at connecting kids with this range of musical skills and musical literacies. My analogy for preparing a life-long musician would be to design an off-road vehicle rather than a sports car – better to be able to hear, produce, and adapt to music with several different schema (chords, melodies by ear, written notes) than through a single skill set (reading).
For this reason and all the socio-emotional ideas, study of the fiddle is a great tool to grow your kiddo’s horizons, skills, and way of being for the life they’re growing into.
Matthew Christian 