Let’s call this what it is. I am cherry-picking. I am plucking anecdotal evidence from another person’s life and using it to corroborate my preconceived ideas about something — specifically, in this case, my preconceived ideas about the need to give children breathing room to discover their own passions.
The audio above is from one of my local public-radio stations. It’s an interview with an accomplished 17-year-old cellist named Julian Schwarz. His father is the Seattle Symphony’s musical director. So the kid grew up around music. What struck me, listening to this interview today as I drove to pick my own kids up from school, was hearing about the moment Schwarz realized that he had a passion to live his own life in music. That is the anecdotal evidence I would like to cherry-pick right now by transcribing it here in this post for you to read.
Here’s the setting, the context. Schwarz was about 10. He was doing what he so often did as a boy: attending a concert. In this case, though, something was different. The concert was outside, part of a festival in a park in New York. Schwarz picks up his own story …
Usually when I went to performances when I was younger it was a given: I went. I sat down and I was … listening to the performance, but it wasn’t really my choice because I just had to go with the family. So at this spot, I was actually hanging out with a few of my cousins backstage during the second half. So I didn’t really have to be in the concert. I didn’t really have to listen. And then, I heard the opening few bars of this gorgeous symphony and I realized, Wow. I need to be listening to it. And so it was that realization that I actually wanted to be listening instead of just there because my family was there. So I walked out and I sat next to this one lamppost right in front of the stage. And that was it.
It was in that moment, according to Schwarz, that he realized “I have to do this. It’s just too much of a passion for me not to be able to pursue it.”
My post, as I warned, is all about my preconceived ideas, about my belief that kids must not and cannot be bullied, pressured, hassled, bribed, or guilted into truly caring about the things their parents want them to care about. More broadly, it’s about my belief that one of the highest callings of parenthood is simply this: to support kids in their eccentric, all-consuming passions. Their passions. Not the passions we wish they had.
Still, as parents, we meddle. I’d like to pretend that I don’t meddle, that I spend every day soaring up to “the highest callings of parenthood.” But of course I meddle. It’s virtually inevitable. Which brings me to the second part of the Schwarz interview that struck me. I’m going to cherry-pick that, too, because it’s in harmony with another preconceived idea of mine. Here is how Schwarz describes the experience of studying with his first cello teacher, the late David Tonkonogui:
What I most appreciate is the love of music he really gave to me. A lot of teachers, when they’re starting children out playing an instrument, it’s about how you hold the bow, how you put your fingers on the string, how you do everything technically. And that’s extremely important. But for David, the most important part of what he was teaching me was the music: playing the music, loving the music. Because his philosophy was such that if you got a child or a young musician to love music so much, then eventually the technique and everything would follow. And it’s necessary to get that love instilled in the student so that they sustain their study. Because so many people give up musical instruments after a few years, and that’s mainly because they don’t feel a connection to the music. David, really, for the first few years I was playing, made sure that I loved it, which I did. And that has been so valuable. That is one of the reasons I’m still playing and still love it so much today.
I remain skeptical that anyone can make a child love music — or tennis or calculus or anything else. But I’m glumly certain that a kid’s small initial spark of passion for, say, the cello can absolutely be extinguished by a grown-up’s dour preoccupation with “how you hold the bow, how you put your fingers on the string, how you do everything technically.” So it’s fantastic that Schwarz, who is still in high school, is out there spreading the word about a better way to teach, about a better way to parent, about a more enlightened way to help any small initial spark of passion grow into something brighter, warmer, and more lasting.
