{"id":33968,"date":"2023-03-17T10:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T16:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/?post_type=journalarticle&p=33968"},"modified":"2024-06-18T10:49:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T16:49:46","slug":"powerful-education-suzukis-revolutionary-vision","status":"publish","type":"journalarticle","link":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/journalarticle\/powerful-education-suzukis-revolutionary-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Educa\u00e7\u00e3o poderosa: A vis\u00e3o revolucion\u00e1ria de Suzuki"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s note: We are privileged to feature this article written by Eri Hotta, the author of the new book Suzuki: The Man and His Dream to Teach the Children of the World (Harvard, 2022). Her book is essential reading for all Suzuki practitioners, and this article offers a glimpse into the beauty and depth of her writing. Please join the author for an upcoming Suzuki in Action webinar on March 13. Details are on the SAA website.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on the theme of \u201cBuilding Bridges with Suzuki,\u201d some compelling images come to mind. First of all, Dr. Suzuki built a bridge between past and present by introducing countless numbers of children to the joy of connecting with classical music. That bridge is still standing strong. Every time they play, without even being aware, Suzuki children become able to cross that temporal bridge and commune with music from long ago in a most intimate, effortless manner. Others might remark on the bridge he built between the East and West. As a Japanese man, he successfully promoted his approach and philosophy through Western classical music, thereby bridging the two putatively contrasting, some would even say conflicting cultures, together. The universalizing aspect of his teaching and learning approach continues to remain relevant today, as the classical music world seeks ways to integrate many musical traditions and musicians from a variety of backgrounds. Just as important, Dr. Suzuki tried to build another metaphorical bridge, the one connecting the world of music education and that of general education. He insisted\u2014and moreover demonstrated\u2014that the same approach he developed to teach very young children musical instruments could readily be applied to many other pursuits, be they academic subjects, arts, or athletics. It is this bridge that I would like to think about more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most Suzuki practitioners know that Dr. Suzuki\u2019s overarching educational goal for his Talent Education movement was never about mass-producing musical prodigies. Rather, it was about nurturing children so that they could maximize their individual potentials. That way, they could live richer lives, and in turn contribute to the making of a better world. That was why he said, when interviewed by a New York Times reporter in 1977, that his approach was \u201cnot education of the violin. . .It is education by the violin.\u201d It also seems safe to say, given the resilient popularity of the Suzuki Method around the globe, that enough people accept that early classical music education for children is by and large a \u201cgood thing,\u201d beyond the narrowly targeted goal of training future professionals. For instance, it is easy to see how the routine of everyday practice can help children internalize good habits, concentration, and memory that can result in creating transferrable skills and emotional intelligence lasting a lifetime. However, Dr. Suzuki did not stop at merely suggesting that music education would have such positive spillover effects outside of music. He did far more than that. He actually tried to incite a revolution in public education so that no children would be left behind in school and all children could become talented in their own ways. To grasp the grand scope of his ambitions and actions, we must know something about the historical context from which they emerged. War had a lot to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[img=https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/SzCm-8Qglt1SESwYVt71L4O1X28Xoofx86toLc9_h1Fw2DmOBwbhAzf8ZSFb4pDUaX87Qys8v9NpIbbEk47FEYasoqyrvXpFerV3MhtGhRVXtdu_LbQwdtJb773GWFODt9L_8aFOcAvPVJmaSV5H1Y8]
The cover of Suzuki\u2019s book, Powerful Education (Chikarazuyoki Kyoiku), with hand-drawn illustrations. Courtesy of the Talent Education Research Institute (TERI).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 1941, on the eve of Japan\u2019s attack on Pearl Harbor, Dr. Suzuki initiated his educational reform campaign with the publication of Powerful Education (Chikarazuyoki Kyoiku). He was appalled by the blatant militarization and indoctrination of society that began with Japan\u2019s war with China in 1937. He asserted that the key to a better world rested with a more holistic education of future generations. He had come of age during Japan\u2019s period of great experiment with liberal democracy, as well as liberal education. Similar progressive education movements that were taking place in Europe and North America were happening in Japan too, inspired by the writings of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner, all of which were contemporaneously translated and introduced to Japanese readers. Dr. Suzuki\u2019s stay in Berlin in the 1920s also informed his humanistic outlook. He believed that education and the arts, including music, contributed to character formation. And so, in this small book Powerful Education, which almost reads like a revolutionary tract, he urged the Japanese government to adopt his universally applicable methodology, an approach to early childhood education that could work anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the book did not promote music education per se, Dr. Suzuki, then in his early forties, was drawing from his decade-long experience of successfully teaching young children the violin. That success emboldened him, and convinced him that his methods could be used to teach many other subjects, and in public school settings. He explained that his approach could be boiled down to three simple principles. First, the teacher must not let the task at hand look difficult to children, as they must be able to feel that the challenge can be overcome. Second, the teacher must not expect great leaps in progress but should instead proceed in incremental steps. Third, the teacher must not obsess over tangible results, but concentrate on \u201cempowering\u201d students, so that they will eventually be motivated enough to want to aim for higher goals. These steps, he maintained, traced the general pattern by which infants are gradually and patiently guided into fluency in their mother tongues. And it is up to the teacher to make any learning manageable, even joyful, to the student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s militarist turn made Dr. Suzuki\u2019s call all the more urgent. But some specific problems had been brewing in Japanese society for some time over the course of the 1930s. This was the time when he started teaching children. The previous half century of rapid modernization, unprecedented population growth, and industrialization meant that fierce competitiveness was becoming a built-in part of Japanese society. As far as elite education was concerned, it was turning into an extremely constrained type of meritocracy in which obedience and high test scores were valued disproportionately over originality, creativity, and imagination. Through his young students, Dr. Suzuki must have noticed how children were beginning to be placed under enormous pressure to perform and compete for a limited number of places in what adults thought were desirable schools, that could lead to desirable jobs, and eventually and supposedly, to good lives. Powerful Education was Dr. Suzuki\u2019s desperate indictment, calling out for a complete overhaul of the existing school system that left too many children behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, amidst the endless war in China, and with another suicidal war with the United States and its allies looming, the Japanese government summarily ignored Dr. Suzuki\u2019s dream of public school revolution. But even during the war, he did not give up his quest, giving lectures and trying to publish another book in vain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Japan\u2019s total defeat in August 1945. Dr. Suzuki, chronically malnourished, came out of the war barely alive. At the same time, he saw in Japan\u2019s ruins opportunities for a fundamental reorientation in education. With a renewed sense of purpose, he was determined to show the world the effectiveness of his approach and so opened the Matsumoto Music School. This was soon followed by another project, one directly aimed at subjects other than musical studies. In 1948, at Hongo Elementary, a local public school in Matsumoto, Dr. Suzuki\u2019s approach was put to the test as a group of forty incoming first graders were placed in a special program. They were given no class schedule and no homework. Instead, they took part in unorthodox projects intended to train memory, concentration, motor and computational skills, and creativity that Dr. Suzuki helped devise. The children drew lines, painted with vivid watercolors, memorized through storytelling and music, observed nature, and felt music through rhythmic exercises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This experiment was made possible by the courage and maverick spirit of Principal Shigeru Kamijo, who took a major risk by defying the official guidelines set by Japan\u2019s Ministry of Education. And the gamble paid off. After two years, the success of the program was obvious for anyone to see. For example, there was a girl who simply could not count up to three when she first arrived. In any other school, she would have been labeled intellectually handicapped. But with skill-based incremental learning that was embedded in fun games, she eventually learned to stay focused and went on to succeed academically. An episode like this affirmed in Dr. Suzuki\u2019s mind that there were no \u201cdrop-outs\u201d in this world, but just \u201cdropped-outs\u201d who had been compromised by adults who did not bother to find a way to teach them effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Hongo Elementary project came to an end when, in its third year, Principal Kamijo died unexpectedly. There was no one to succeed him as standard bearer for the program. But Dr. Suzuki was greatly encouraged by its records to the point that he opened his own preschool, Yoji Gakuen (Children\u2019s Academy). As a private entity aimed at those too young to receive compulsory education, the school was free of bureaucratic meddling. And here, Dr. Suzuki replicated many of the projects proven to be effective at Hongo with even younger, more malleable children. One of the most unusual and lasting products of this preschool was Issa Karuta, a card game Dr. Suzuki created for the students. Half of the 200 cards in the deck feature a haiku written by Issa, Japan\u2019s preeminent poet from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century. The other half are pictorial depictions of the haikus. When the reader recites the haiku on a card, players then must quickly determine which haiku is being read aloud and swipe the illustrated card from an assortment spread over the floor. By playing this physically and intellectually challenging card game, children could easily memorize one hundred haiku masterpieces in no time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Suzuki knew and proved that he had effective educational methods with versatile applicability. The problem was how to convince the government so that all children could benefit from them. It turned out to be extremely difficult. The more people, both at home and abroad, took notice of the \u201cSuzuki Method\u201d as a musical approach, the wider the gap became between the goals of Dr. Suzuki\u2019s Talent Education movement\u2014maximum personal development for all human beings through effective learning\u2014and the role of talent education in practice, which tended toward effective musical training for children whose parents were willing and able to spend significant resources supporting their studies. But he was not ready to give up, and so, in the early 1960s, he took his business to the prime minister of Japan. His proposal to Japan\u2019s top politician retraced much of what had been laid out two decades before in Powerful Education. He argued that the Japanese state\u2014actually, all the world\u2019s states\u2014should take charge of early childhood education so that opportunities for learning become available to all children irrespective of their family and social backgrounds. (He even tried to convince President Jimmy Carter when they met.) This is a plea he would repeat to every prime minister, as well as education minister, whenever there was a change in the government. As with Powerful Education, his direct appeals were ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet by then, Dr. Suzuki was not completely alone in his crusade. In fact, he had two well-known brothers in arms who shared his passions. One was Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Sony, and the other was Toru Kumon, founder of the now globally popular Kumon method of learning. Ibuka was a committed philanthropist whose interest in Dr. Suzuki\u2019s philosophy resonated with his experience of raising an intellectually handicapped daughter. In his quest to find ways to help her become as independent and active in society as possible, Ibuka came to endorse Dr. Suzuki\u2019s view that all children, including those with disabilities, have enormous potential to grow and learn. Kumon, on the other hand, was a high school math teacher who saw immediate use for Dr. Suzuki\u2019s approach to teaching and learning mathematics. He came up with a program of worksheet-guided self-study that emphasized repetition and incremental learning at an individually determined pace. Kumon said that \u201cSuzuki-sensei\u2019s and my programs are one and the same, both methodologically and philosophically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite those high-profile supporters, however, the bridge connecting the land of Suzuki music and the land of general education never took off as a public works project\u2014in Japan, or anywhere else. And it remains up to individual and private efforts to reap rewards from Suzuki-style learning beyond the realm of music. (One might argue that the closest his dream came to be realized was in Venezuela. With a government willing to implement the idea of improving lives by offering social and musical opportunities to all, some of Suzuki\u2019s goals may have been fulfilled in the El Sistema music program. It was the violinist Takeshi Kobayashi, one of the first of Dr. Suzuki\u2019s students from the 1930s, who introduced the Suzuki Method there in the late 1970s.) But that is no reason to conclude that it cannot ever happen. Appearing on a Japanese television talk show, in his eighties, Dr. Suzuki was asked why he thought too many people misunderstood the real point of his Talent Education movement. Without a moment\u2019s hesitation, he replied: \u201cThat is because we have not tried hard enough to get people to understand.\u201d With so much work he felt he still had left to do, how Dr. Suzuki would have loved to live another 100 years. For sure, he would have spent every minute of his extra time trying his hardest to nurture and guide as many children as possible. If that is not an inspiration for educators, I do not know what is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

[img=https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/c8m90KD4f_5UfNfZc4Ck-R-UPcGkz_GJ8E9_q6b07fonGVon02f6Tqgf8qy9_uj4JbFzEluE5hEUgceHW9YbLgraeb_s8J7qJmT5QMkaD4nUXrFl6749MfRuuoHA9ja-heXFqeggkU4QvYClAZgNoi4]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**Eri Hotta **is the author of *Suzuki: The Man and His Dream to Teach the Children of the World *and other English and Japanese-language books including *Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, *a history of the attack on Pearl Harbor. She has taught at the University of Oxford, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. She was once a struggling yet passionate Suzuki parent to Josephine Buruma, who is now in high school and is a dedicated chamber musician doubling in violin and viola.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nota do editor: Temos o privil\u00e9gio de apresentar este artigo escrito por Eri Hotta, autora do novo livro Suzuki: The Man and His Dream to Teach the Children of the World (Harvard, 2022). Seu livro \u00e9 leitura essencial para todos os praticantes de Suzuki, e este artigo oferece um vislumbre da beleza e da profundidade de...<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":34768,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"pmpro_default_level":"0","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":""},"article-tag":[815,821,787],"journalsection":[],"class_list":["post-33968","journalarticle","type-journalarticle","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-tag-dr-suzuki","article-tag-educational-methods","article-tag-suzuki-philosophy","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"article-tag":[{"value":815,"label":"Dr. Suzuki"},{"value":821,"label":"Educational Methods"},{"value":787,"label":"Suzuki Philosophy"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Untitled-12-748x1024-1.jpg",748,1024,false],"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journalarticle\/33968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journalarticle"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/journalarticle"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-tag?post=33968"},{"taxonomy":"journalsection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/journalsection?post=33968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}