What is the Suzuki Method?
The Suzuki Method is a methodology designed to learn to play a musical instrument.
It was created by Shinichi Suzuki, violinist, educator, and philosopher around the middle of the last century. He acquired enormous fame both in his home country, Japan, and in the rest of the world and has given rise to multiple theories about child training.
What is the Suzuki Method based on?
Any child who is educated correctly can develop musical ability, and this potential is limitless. “
Suzuki observed how all children learn to speak in their mother tongue with great accuracy.
This is due to the fact that his great hearing capacity organizes and structures the words that he hears in his familiar environment in his brain.
This observation led him to think that if children were surrounded by music, similar learning could occur with it.
In this way, he stated that, just as the potential of each person can be developed, in the development of musical talent hereditary factors do not play as important a role as environmental ones.
The Suzuki Method encompasses both educational and philosophical aspects. It is based on respect for the child as a person and on the concept that the ability is not inherited but is learned.
Shinichi Suzuki names his method “Talent Education”, since talent is not something that is inherited but is educated and developed. After experimentation it has been shown that the level of each individual is much higher than what society thinks.
Suzuki did not develop his method to train professional musicians, but to empower each child as a human being.
His are these words:
“Music teaching is not my main purpose. I want to train good citizens, noble human beings. If a child hears good music from the day of his birth, he learns to play it himself, develops his sensitivity, coordination, security, discipline and patience. Get a beautiful heart. “
Through his life and work, Suzuki has inspired thousands of parents and teachers in more than forty countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and America to educate children as loving human beings through music education based on the method of mother tongue.
In the positive, respectful, and encouraging environment fostered by the Suzuki Method, children learn to enjoy music and develop confidence, self-esteem, self-discipline and concentration, as well as the determination necessary to attempt difficult things, qualities that are sorely needed in our life. weather.
As Pau Casals commented excitedly, after listening to little Suzuki students play:
“Maybe this is the music that will save the world.“