Living out their parents' dreams?
"In fact, I don't feel that my child has to be a musician," says Ms. Chang, whose child is currently a student in the music program at Taipei's Kuting Primary School. She herself was already a student at a normal college when she first placed her hands on a piano keyboard and discovered the beauty of music. To prevent her daughter from having the regrets she felt at her late discovery of music, she hopes to provide her with as much formal musical education as family finances will allow. But she does not insist that her child pursue a career in music.
While many parents hope that their children will live out their dreams, still more parents have practical considerations in mind.
"Many parents feel that there are great benefits to a musical education," says Lin Chiung-hua, who has taught in the music programs at a number of schools. Music teaching is a high-status job, one which can bring both fame and fortune, and which earns its practitioners high pay for relatively little work. In addition, musical skills are the best dowry that a woman can offer. Therefore, even though most of the brightest talents in the music world are men, in Taiwan there are far more girls than boys enrolled in music programs. In fact, in a class of 30 students, there are usually only three or four boys. But with more and more "new talents" returning to Taiwan from studies abroad, competition for jobs has become fierce. Forget about secondary schools and universities, where a glut of candidates has meant that regular jobs have been hard to come by for many years, these days even finding students to give lessons to has become difficult.
"There are fewer practical incentives to study music now, so there aren't so many kids trying to squeeze into music programs for career reasons," says Chen Liu-mei, principal of Kuang-jen Catholic Primary School. Smiling, he says that this isn't a bad thing.
In the eyes of teachers, approaching study as an exploration of one's interests is a healthier way to learn. "Primary school students don't yet have a lot of homework pressure. Getting them to learn a little more is certainly better than letting them spend their time on computer games and TV. Besides, the study of music trains their hands, minds and senses to better coordination. It not only keeps them from becoming 'bad,' it makes them smarter," says Chan Yi, the director of Kuang-jen's music program and herself a onetime music-program student. A one-way street
It is saddening that although most parents have no idea as to the purpose of the music programs and claim to have no intention to force their children to study music, once they have started down this road, they are sometimes shocked to discover that their children are traveling a one-way street. Music somehow becomes an unbearable burden. And it's not only the parents who become anxious and confused; it is also a tremendous struggle for the children.
Hsu Han-jung, a fifth-grade student in Kuang-jen's music program is an example.
"It started when my mother was talking to a neighbor. She said that since I'd already studied piano, I might as well take the entrance exam. If I passed, I could study music." They never imagined that what they so casually talked about would actually happen. Han-jung passed the exam, but her father, who runs a bed and bedding shop, was opposed to his daughter going to another school district to study in "some music program." It became a point of contention between her father and mother.
To vindicate her mother's decision, Han-jung took part in several competitions. Unfortunately, she never won a prize. This left her in tears, and her mother blamed her for not practicing hard enough. Later, they heard that the pianos used at the competitions were concert grand pianos with stiffer keys. A child who wasn't used to playing on such a piano would not be able to play with enough strength. In order to improve Han-jung's standing at competitions, her mother decided to spend the NT$500-600,000 to buy a grand piano. The huge amount of money her family has invested is now a source of tremendous pressure for Han-jung.
Little Miss Lee, a fifth-grade music-program student in Kaohsiung County, is another example. Lee practices her major instrument, the piano, for two hours a day, and the violin for one hour. On Saturday afternoon, she practices still more intensively because early every Sunday morning she has to fly to Taipei for her piano lesson. As a result, she describes weekends as her most anxious "evaluation days." On days on which her teacher sardonically says, "Why practice so hard? Just treat playing the piano as a hobby," the exhausted and disappointed expression she sees on her mother's face leaves Miss Lee afraid to say a word or let a careless smile cross her face for the whole day. Not a way to make a living?
Ms. Chan, director of the music department at Kaohsiung County's Fungshan Primary School, and her husband are a little different. When their son tested into his first choice of school and study program-the music program at Kaohsiung High School-his father, a lecturer at the Pingtung University of Science and Technology, decided that "music is no way to make a living. You've already studied enough." He forced his son to take the regular high-school entrance examinations, and the boy ended up studying at Fungshan High School. But their son could not let go of music. When Kaohsiung High held its anniversary celebrations, the boy left to attend the festivities with his old classmates without saying a word his parents. In the end, his father "surrendered." At the end of his freshman year, the boy traveled to the US to pursue his music studies with his younger sister, herself just graduated from middle school and also a music program student.
Among the 30 students in each music program class, there are always three or four for whom both the music and academic classes are a piece of cake. These students can choose any direction they like for their future careers. Cheng Chun-jen, a sixth grader at Kuang-jen, is one such student. Last year he won second place individual honors for violin at the Taipei City violin competition. Cheng is also the number one student at his school academically. Even though his mother bit the bullet to buy him an NT$600,000 violin two years ago, he doesn't feel that much pressure.
"I'm an asthmatic, so I want to be a doctor when I grow up. Then I can develop a new treatment and cure myself." As he speaks, Cheng gestures with long, slender hands well suited to playing the violin. But given his outstanding grades, his teachers are more supportive than disappointed with his ambition.
But children like Cheng are rare. For most, music takes up so much of their time that they find themselves unable to compete academically with children following the normal curriculum. Even though the admissions requirements for middle-school music-program students going into a high-school music program are not stringent (middle schools only require that students have an overall average of 60 in Chinese, English, math and science to be put on the recommended list), some students still complain that they have too much homework to bear.
A tug-of-war
Should kids in the music program spend all their time on music? Or should they split themselves equally between music and academics? This question has been argued back and forth for more than ten years now, but no consensus has been reached.
In terms of their consumption of educational resources, these music programs are the most expensive educational investments in Taiwan. In a pretty good primary school concert hall, the acoustic panels alone cost upwards of NT$10 million. In order to provide each child with individual lessons, a school must build a dozen or so good, sound-proofed practice rooms. If the school is going to put together an orchestra, it must buy instruments, but a set of four timpani costs more than NT$1 million by itself. All in all, it's not cheap. In addition, in the cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung, which are wealthier, schools even cover the children's tuition for classes in their major. If, after using so many public resources, these children choose careers in business or medicine, it makes one wonder at the point of all this expense.
But education can't only be considered from the perspective of money spent by adults. "How many Yoyo Ma's can China produce?" asks Chan Yi, who herself took the musical route through school and then struggled over the question of whether to continue with music or study medicine in college. Chan says that if you want to be successful in music, talent and dedication are important, but timing, geography and connections are still more important. For this reason, she has never encouraged students to pursue music as their only career option. "You can't help children to build empty dreams and deprive them of other opportunities to develop. If you do, they may end up with nothing."
Tchen Yu-chiou goes further, cutting to the heart of the matter: Originally, the music classes were for "exceptionally talented children." The growth in facilities for educating these kids has been explosive, and there's no way that the growth in the number of "exceptionally talented" kids has been correspondingly high. "If a child is clearly not exceptionally musically talented, yet you force him onto the path to being a musician, both the adult and the child are going to have a rough time of it."
Destroying the myth of genius
Many people wonder who has natural musical talent. Can a seven- or eight-year-old child demonstrate remarkable natural talent? "Absolutely," says Hsu Bor-nien, who teaches percussion at a number of schools and is the man behind the Forum Music Ensemble. Hsu says that you can get an idea of a child's natural talent from his sense of pitch and rhythm, his sensitivity to music, his sight-reading ability and the speed at which he memorizes scores. There are also other things which are more mysterious, like natural perfect pitch.
However, "The issue is not whether a child has natural talent, but how he uses it." Taking his own students as an example, Hsu says that over the years, he has only encountered two child prodigies. Without having to work at it, one of these learned more in six months than most students learn in six years.
Sadly, "God is fair. Students with natural talent always take it for granted, never valuing it." Hsu laments that that child whose talent so excited everyone in those days gave up music long ago, even sending his long-unused instrument to Hsu.
"Great natural talent is secondary. Most of those people who become successful in music are people of moderate natural talents. What they rely on is their persistence," says Kuang-jen's Chen Liu-mei.
Natural talent can't be relied on. Frequently, too, there are "compatibility" problems between talented students and their schools. Most teachers know that in the past, when primary schools were selecting students for their music programs, they typically chose "little ladies" and "good boys." These were children who could follow the curriculum laid out for them and learn from it. But the best artists are either wild and unmanageable or sensitive and fragile. They are people that can't be trained by the educational system.
Another point, as Hsu Bor-nien mentions, is that there are big differences between someone like him, who picked up music in secondary school by playing in a marching band and came to an understanding of it largely on his own, and someone like his wife, the pianist Luo Mei-ya, who was immersed in formal musical training from an early age. Doing vs. playing
"To me, music is something that you can feel your way around. You can 'play' it. If music weren't there, life would still go on and it would be okay." Hsu's attitude is much more easy-going than that of his wife, who was taken to piano lessons at her teacher's house by her mother from the age of two-and-a-half and taught how to do everything "properly."
Over the last few years, a number of primary schools have used extra-curricular clubs to arrange wind-instrument, stringed-instrument, and choral classes. Hsu feels that this club approach to music education places much less of a burden on students and their families. Students don't have to pass entrance exams, don't have to worry about grades, and don't just memorize musical principles without understanding them. They don't have to feel inferior because they don't have a famous teacher or brand-name instrument. And they don't have to view their classmates as future competitors in the job market. Perhaps in this way, students can more actively and comfortably develop an appreciation of music.
Lin Chiung-hua agrees that many music-program students wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they didn't play music. But do these children really love music? That's not at all certain. Because they have been half pushed, half shoved into music by their parents, they usually lack a heartfelt enthusiasm for it. Moreover, their memories of learning an instrument include more stick than carrot and a lot of tears. To them, music is homework and stress. This is the reason that many music majors rarely go to musical performances for pleasure.
Can these unique music programs help Taiwan to produce world-class musicians? The answer is a disappointing one.
"Given Taiwan's population and the popularity of music studies, as well as the money and effort put into the music programs, the results to date are not good," says Tchen Yu-chiou. The trap
Some serious and long-standing problems are widely known to lie beneath the surface. The most significant of these is the chronic problem of the domestic educational system-the desire for quick results.
"Can you imagine these 10-year-old kids, their hands still developing, whose reach is less than an octave, beginning to play Liszt and Rachmaninov?" asks Lin Chiung-hua, who then points out that this is commonplace. The reason is simple: when parents see their children playing major works, they feel that their tuition money hasn't been wasted. Moreover, judges at competitions award extra points for difficulty. And the difficulty of a piece played as part of the admissions screening for middle- and high-school music programs is also often a decisive factor.
But to play through scales quickly, children must forcibly extend their hands, making their wrists very tight. And playing fortissimo quickly can harm little hands. When these injuries accumulate, they can destroy the career of a budding musician.
But even though everyone knows this, these are taken to be "the rules of the game." Hsu Bor-nien, who in recent years has cut back his teaching in the music programs out of disappointment, asks who dares experiment on their own students. If a child doesn't get into a music program because his performance piece wasn't difficult enough, have you protected him or harmed him?
Liao Chung-chi, who teaches in music programs at several schools including Hsiushan and Nanmen in addition to directing a wind and strings ensemble, says that music-program students who go abroad to study are often refused by foreign teachers. The reason is that these kids are "like a beautiful house on the outside, but their foundations are not firm. The house has already been built. How can you tear it down and start over from scratch?"
In addition to the length and difficulty of their performance pieces, music-program students also have to contend with the breadth of the material they are expected to learn. In addition to their major and minor instruments, some schools also require them to study a traditional Chinese instrument as an "elective." Further, sight-singing and transcription by ear, as well as music theory, are requisite skills which require tutoring. While most kids don't know the difference between the name of a note and its position in the scale, music-program kids are learning chords, harmony and counterpoint. Lin Chiung-hua comes right out and says, "The children's sharp musicality is crushed out of existence by their curriculum." Getting into a school. . .
Looking for quick results and stuffing information down the children's throats. . . . That's the way education is done in Taiwan and it is not necessarily related to the difficulty of getting into a school. Chu Ming-chu, the director of the music department at Nanmen Middle School, points out that over the last few years schools at all levels all over Taiwan have established music programs and music departments. As a result, it is now much less difficult to get into a music program. There are currently 31 primary schools with music programs, and 32 middle schools. Looking at the numbers, there's a place for everyone. Looking up the ladder, the students from the 32 middle schools have 24 high schools which are possibilities, and there are also 24 colleges and universities with programs. In short, the musical route is a fairly smooth one in terms of advancing through the educational system.
There is now less pressure to get into a school, and less vicious competition between classmates, but with the glut of music program and music department facilities (and thus a glut of students), it is hard to maintain a high standard of student. Not only has this standard not been improving, it has been falling. These numbers also mean that after graduation, there is more competition for jobs.
"Not long ago, Hsiushan was looking to hire two new music teachers. We didn't expect to have 20 to 30 applicants for the position, however. Many of them were even outstanding alumni of our school now holding MAs," says principal Chiu Chung-hsien. In Taiwan, the market for the performance of classical music is not large. Lately, the teaching market has become pretty saturated as well. After years and years of hard work, children might not have a stage on which to display what they have learned. This greatly concerns Chiu. The sound of music
Although there are many areas where the music programs could be improved, after more than 20 years of cultivating talent, it can't be denied that a lot of good musicians have been trained. Take Hsiushan Primary School, which has been cited nationally for its excellence for several consecutive years, as an example. Chiu Chung-hsien points to a detailed accounting of what the students from the 16 music program classes Hsiushan has graduated in the program's 22 years of existence have done with their lives. More than 70% of these graduates have stuck to the musical track laid out for them in their childhood and work in the music industry.
When the National Concert Hall was completed 22 years ago, it was difficult to arrange a decent show with local musicians. Now, the concert hall not only plays host to several symphonies, but also many chamber music ensembles and soloists. And if you take a walk around greater Taipei on a holiday, you might just run across a concert being sponsored by the city government or a business group. And performers are sometimes even seen playing at construction sites to attract home buyers.
"There are a lot of musicians around. This promotes creativity and pushes them to find their own ways of getting by," says Lin Chiung-hua. She cites her husband, the flautist Tsai Cheng-kuo, and her brother-in-law, the oboist Tsai Hsing-kuo, as an example. Together they have founded a management company which books performers for shows. Much to their surprise, they have more business than they know what to do with-corporate anniversaries, weddings and performances in the countryside.
Although views on this sort of thing vary in the classical music world, which tends to hold the attitude that "if it isn't the classics, it isn't music," Lin Chiung-hua feels that if you want music to put down roots, those who study music need to get out of the ivory tower of the concert halls and take the music to the people.
The music programs were originally intended to produce top-notch performers, but now seem likely to become a force driving Taiwan's enthusiasm for music. While the programs might not have resulted in the glorious command performance that many had hoped for, maybe they have given us something that more people can enjoy.
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