What We Can Learn From “Stop, Think, and Play” in 2021

Over the last few months, we’ve all had more space in our busy schedules to evaluate our lives and what really matters to each of us. During this time, I’ve personally thought a lot about my teaching and how I can be more intentional in passing on what I have learned.  

Mark Twain once said, cynically, “Teaching is noble. Teaching others to teach is even nobler and less trouble.” This is probably true, but it’s also oh-so-much more dangerous. Each newly-trained teacher goes out into the field and influences many other students using the tools they learned from their trainer, whether they are good ones or not.  

I had the great privilege of studying Suzuki pedagogy with John Kendall in the late 80s. He was an incredibly inspiring teacher and had the biggest impact on my life, outside of my parents.   Across the world, I’m sure there are hundreds of string teachers he trained who feel the same about him. As trainees, we learned many fantastic teaching tools in the weekly pedagogy sessions. One of my favorite tools is Mr. Kendall’s practice proverb: “Stop, think, and play!” 

When we consider these steps in the context of a string student practicing a tough musical segment, it means: stop moving the bow across the strings, think about what you want to do, and play the passage after your brain has time to process the challenge. It’s an effective practice technique, and the more it’s used, the better the result.  But lately, I have come to realize this directive is not only one of the most important processes you can cultivate in a student’s practice, but also an excellent motto for life! 

In recent years, our way of life has been marked by overindulgence. We have a tendency to overdo, which is often revealed in our jam-packed daily schedules. Many families try to squeeze in as many activities as possible, navigating from soccer practice to art class, which overlaps with violin lessons scheduled right before dance class. Experts have found that the often over-scheduled nature of the 21st-century child’s life can have some serious consequences. Free play time has diminished rapidly since 1955, and this lack of free play time has created devastating effects on the development of children. In a 1981 study, researchers determined the average school-age child spent 40% of the day engaging in free play. By 1997, this number had dwindled to 25%.

I think Mr. Kendall may have been onto something when he chose “Stop” as the first word in his practice motto. We are wise to “stop” and take time in our practice to determine the nature of the problem and develop a clear plan to work through the issue. The directive “Stop” can also be applied to our tendency to overschedule. The pandemic cleared everybody’s calendar in a moment’s notice! In some cases, it revealed that many of us had been living our lives in hyperdrive. As the world slowly opens up after the pandemic subsides, we will have to decide whether we’ll be ramping up our schedules again to match pre-COVID levels. Will the forced break in our hectic lives change the way we think about our activities moving forward? Less is usually more when it’s all said and done. Simplified schedules will allow for the free time we need to be creative, but also provide the head space required to solve the complex problems we encounter in our daily lives.

This headspace is absolutely critical and brings us to the second stage of Mr. Kendall’s practice technique: think. The human species needs focus for deep discovery. The spirit of investigation—the need to know the why and the “how” of things—is so essential to learning.  Thoroughly investigating an issue requires extended periods of time for analysis and study, which can only be achieved by stopping the flood of incoming stimulation. The balance of our modern culture does not lean favorably towards carving out big blocks of time to think, but rather, offers unlimited access to a constant barrage of information through our various technology sources. Students write papers while listening to music, while monitoring their Snapchat, TikTok, and cell phone text messages. Research is confirming that excessive information input is structurally changing our brain systems. One study found that those who frequently engaged with several streams of electronic information simultaneously were less able to stay focused and switch easily between tasks.

Multi-tasking is not really something the brain was created to do. At a conference presented by the Learning and the Brain Society, one presenter spoke about the phenomena of multi-tasking and people’s perception of their abilities in this area. The presenter found that what we think is multi-tasking is really just jumping back and forth quickly between tasks. In other words, tasks are not happening concurrently. However, in a 2011 study, a tiny percentage (less than 5%) of people were found to be super-taskers. These people could actually do quite a number of things well simultaneously. The only problem with this finding was that a large majority of average people without this ability truly believed they were part of this elite group of supertaskers.  

If we’re willing to face the facts that we are likely not supertaskers, each individual can make the choice to claim valuable hours of thinking time from the many media sources vying for attention.  Creativity bursts forth when we have time to ponder. The essence of freedom is in the arena of ideas and thoughts. We all need to avoid the tyranny our technology might wield and cherish our freedom to generate ideas and spend time simply thinking. 

Now that we’ve stopped and thought, finally we can play! In the bigger landscape of life, “play” has a double meaning.  “Play,” as in, “Have fun, enjoy life, and spend time on things that matter.” It can also mean, “Take action!” If you have a dream, idea, or inspiration, it’s time to get busy and do something about it. It’s easy for us to become entitled, selfish, and even a little bit lazy. Or to make plans continuously, but never actually do anything, stopped by the fear of failure or other roadblocks deemed insurmountable. Circumstances can change in a heartbeat, as we all realized so poignantly last year. We might as well take action on whatever we hope to make reality!

In graduate school, Mr. Kendall gave each teacher trainee a pedagogy tree going back to Corelli and Vivaldi. The idea that something Mr. Kendall was teaching at that moment could have been on Vivaldi’s very lips was a quaint, but engaging thought. The life lessons and great pedagogy passed down by mentors like Vivaldi, Mr. Kendall, and all the other string pedagogues throughout history are invaluable. We honor their memory by continuing to teach the educational treasures they gave us, even though our way of expressing these ideas might be slightly different.  It could be, “Go slowly, consider carefully, and work hard!” Or… “Take time, investigate, take action.” Or it might simply be, “Stop, think, and play.” 

Endnotes

• Esther Entin,  “All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed” (The Atlantic, 2011).
• Peter Gray, “The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents” (The American Journal of Play, 2011).
• Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg, “Changes in American Children’s Time, 1981-1997,” in “Children at the Millennium:  Where Have We Come From? Where are We Going? Advances in Life Course Research,” vol. 6, ed. Timothy Owens and Sandra L. Hofferth (2001):  193-229.
• Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers” (2009).
• D. L. Strayer and J. Watson, “Cognitive Distraction While Multitasking in the Automobile” (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2011).