This chapter continues with the interviews from Chapter 5 with more focus on the realm of creativity and comparative and international topics in the teaching and learning of music. In this chapter, the author focuses on the Japanese and American voices from experienced teachers, researchers, professional musicians, and eminent artists. In this chapter, the author focuses specifically on the creative learning of children's violin learning in Japan. The author shared the video clips with violin teachers, private instrumental teachers, as well as music education specialists in Japan. Finally, the author showed the videos to music education professors and professional string players in the U.S. Most of the interviews were conducted by visiting their homes, offices, and schools. For overseas participants, the YouTube link of the videos was sent via email, and the interviews were conducted via Skype.
TopIntroduction
How we view children’s music learning, especially in the dimension of creative learning and potential, depends on adult perspectives that are pervasive in personal background and culture. From a comparative and international perspective, there is a famous story by a leading scholar of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner (1989).
On a visit to China, he stayed at the hotel in Nanjing with his wife and one and a-half- year old son. Gardner’s son was making noise by trying to put his room key into the key slot at the front desk. As a Western parent, Gardner was not bothered at all by the fact that his son was making a little noise and making experimentation with failure; however, a hotel worker came to the son, and held his hand gently with smile, and guided his hand to put his key into the slot. Indeed, for the hotel worker, it was a better decision to teach the correct way of putting key in the lock rather than encouraging exploration. Gardner described that Westerners tend to encourage children’s exploratory behavior and creativity while Asians focus on teaching performance and the way it should be.
Clearly, from our daily lives to educational settings, there are diverse views on how we recognize and understand children’s creativity.
This chapter continues with the interview in Chapter 5 with more focus on comparative and international topics in creative teaching and learning of music. In this chapter, the author focuses on the Japanese and American voices by experienced teachers, researchers, professional musicians and eminent artists focusing on the creative learning of a violin student in Japan. The author showed the videos to violin teachers, private instrumental teachers as well as music education specialists in Japan. Finally, the author showed the videos to music education professors and professional string players in the U.S. Most of the interviews were conducted by visiting their homes, offices, and schools For overseas participants, the YouTube link of the videos was sent via email, and interviews were conducted via skype.