Music Examinations - necessary or uninspiring?

I'm constantly dispirited by the number of people telling me that they don't 'do' music - they either had music lessons and stopped, or didn't ever take up music lessons in the first place. Why is this?

Obviously there are economic considerations - some people just can't afford private music lessons. This is very unfortunate.

But even for those people, music lessons are normally available very cheaply or for free at school. Furthermore, there is a fantastic abundance of music available for everyone to listen to, and it's one of the most widespread art-forms in the world (yes, I'm including Pop music in this statement, and justifiably). Given that learning a musical instrument is almost always viewed as a constructive, social and enjoyable pursuit, why isn't it more widespread?

It is very tempting to lay the blame with Classical music. It's just not engaging, it's the music of the elite classes, and so on. Furthermore, when one takes up an instrument, all they are given are exam syllabuses and a torrid mixture of scales and theory exercises. Indeed, a so-called ‘exam culture’, backed up by austere Classical music, does seem to be at fault for deterring so many (especially young) people from pursuing music in the first place.

I would certainly agree that a relentless emphasis on exams and uniquely Classical music is a dire combination for encouraging people to take up learning music. However, these things in themselves aren’t the root of the problem; it’s much more to do with the amount of exams that are drilled into students, and whether they actually want them or not.

Very often a student will start learning an instrument because they have been encouraged (or coerced) by their parents into doing so. In response, the typical teacher will want to ‘prove’ to the parent that their child is making progress. This comes in the form of taking exams and passing them. This model works fine until the inevitable happens: the student eventually becomes bored and uninspired. This normally happens at around grades 4 or 5.

It’s very easy at this point to go to extremes, in particular to say that exams should be abandoned all together for instance. This is certainly what I thought when I was a youngster learning the piano.

However, I have realised more and more that ditching exams would completely miss the point. As should be obvious, taking exams is a brilliant way of setting targets and providing goals for students, and passing them is a justifiable source of pride (and looks very good on a CV). Exams can and should be ways of making music learning more constructive and coherent.

The trick, then, is to put exams in their place – they should not be, by any stretch of the imagination, the sole focus and source material for instrumental lessons. They should be used as a framework and a source of reference at most. After that, it is up to the student and teacher to work out what inspires that particular student the most, and come up with a stimulating programme that will encourage the student to want to practice. This includes choosing a selection of music that includes but is not limited to Classical music – pop, folk, jazz and anything else that inspires the student should be thrown into the mix. After all, no amount of coercion from parents is going to make the student want to learn their instrument long-term.

It seems to be a much better emphasis, and has certainly worked in my experience of teaching.