Peru

I had a very unique opportunity at the beginning of January to participate in a Suzuki Festival in Lima, Peru. The first week included a philosophy class and the second a training for how to teach the first book for violin. It was so exciting just being around musicians from all over Latin America. Also, for a girl who rarely gets the chance to hear live (classical) music, I was absolutely dazzeled by the almost nightly concerts.
I’m really interested in this method of teaching; and many concepts can be applied to different aspects of life. The basic idea is that children should learn music like they learn their first language, by listening and mirroring…we tend to think of music as something you either do or don’t have a gift for, but according to Dr. Suzuki’s research, children’s success rate of learning their mother-tongue (unless there is a physical limitation) is 100 percent, even very difficult tonal languages. And therefore, talent for music is taught, just like talent for speaking a language is taught. People are “tone-deaf” because their mother was tone deaf or because they weren’t exposed to music enough as a child.
There is so much that can be said about my two weeks studying the suzuki method, but one concept I’ve taken and really enjoyed thinking over is that being a good teacher is about dissecting problems into little doable steps, which in the end helps students perservere through difficult situations.
During a three day break in between classes, we had the opportunity to travel to a province to the south of Lima called Ica (the more famous town in the province is Pisco, where the famous drink comes from). Also, Ica was the province most affected by a large earthquake last year which left many towns devastated with little resources for redevelopment. We had the priveledge of visiting an organization called “construyendo Peru.” (building Peru) where groups of women in neighborhoods would organize themselves and through a grant from construyendo peru, the women would be paid a stipend and they work to build sidewalks, plazas and green areas in their neighborhoods. One sad thing is that since we are white, many people we would visit thought we had money to fund their projects, and it was difficult telling them we had nothing but ideas to contribute. As we were leaving one sight where we had been received with food and pisco, as I leaned over to tell one participant good-bye she whispered in my ear, “never forget the women.”
Having these two different experiences was important for me. The Suzuki festival was held in a private school in a rich part of the capitol city, where mothers came bustling in with SUV keys in their hands, speaking to the teachers in English, as their children pulled out their violins. There were two groups of children who participated from orphanages, one close to the city and one from a province far from Lima. (this is a picture of the students from the province Huancavelica in traditional dress) Still, it left me with the feeling that we have so much work to do. There are so many children that aren’t able to have this gift of music in their lives. Dr. Suzuki left us with the lovely philosophy that “every child can,” I suppose it is the work of the next generation to figure out how to really put that into practice.