(Blog post by Suzuki violin teacher, McKenzie Clawson.)
Every so often I have a parent ask me if I think their child is talented. My answer is always a variation on, “I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter.”
What is talent anyway? For many, talent is a skill that comes easily. Well, I’ve never met a person who played the violin who thought it was easy. So I guess no one is talented at the violin.
Shinichi Suzuki talked about talent as an acquired skill. So in that case, when someone asks, “is my child talented?” I can answer, “They will be.”
The talent question sometimes is another question in disguise. “How is my child doing compared to other kids?” To that, the answer is similar. “I may know, but it doesn’t matter.”
Even if ranking children was a good idea (which it definitely isn’t), the information would be changing constantly anyway. Sometimes a student moves quickly through the early stages of violin learning and takes more time through some of the intermediate steps. Sometimes a child can spend years learning Twinkle and then zoom through advanced techniques.
I spent much of my teenage years worried if I was talented enough to succeed at the violin. Someone would tell me I was talented and I would practice hard for weeks. Then, I would tank an audition or competition and stop practicing because I was obviously untalented and destined for failure. What a waste of my time. In retrospect, I needed to work to develop a growth mindset.
Most of the things that can look like talent are a previously developed skill. Sometimes students who take their time in the beginning (who are “untalented”), learn things deeply and don’t get stuck later. They’ve learned to manage the discomfort of difficulty. They know that if they break things down, keep working, try a different angle, that they’ll figure it out. That’s way better than talent.
An Incomplete List of Teachable Skills Easily Mistaken for Talent:
- Task Initiation
- Inner Sense of Rhythm
- Audiation
- Fine Motor Skills
- Motivation
- Task Initiation
- Proprioception
- Memory
- Motivation
- Reading
- Organization
- Respect for the Teacher
- Grit
- Growth Mindset
Is my kid talented?
I don’t know. I don’t care.
How far will my child go?
That’s the exciting question.