"Fur Elise"

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
--Albert Einstein

In Experience and Education “The need of a theory or experience” and “Criteria of Experience”, Dewey touches on some noteworthy points about experience and education. Obviously with age comes experience, and with age and experience, wisdom. Or does it? Dewey investigates how experience can be educational as long as it promotes positive growth and perpetuates learning. Unfortunately some aspects of traditional education fragment and compartmentalize subject matters to the detriment of this continued desire to learn. The value to the individual is lost and with it engagement. Without engagement, learning ceases.

So how does one promote the “want” to learn? Dewey purports that “attentive care must be devoted to the conditions which give each present experience a worth while meaning.” This responsibility may fall on the teacher to illustrate the relevance of traditional knowledge into present situations and the application of current lessons assisting in future circumstances.

I am able to recall in my personal life, decisions conscious and otherwise, that arrest or promote positive growth and learning. For instance, when I was five I started piano lessons and have vivid memories of the intensity of the lessons. I remember the frustration of the “exercises” balanced by the patience of the teacher. I remember the hours of practice and the tangible improvement I could hear as the months went by coupled with the encouragement of my teacher. And I remember the joy of graduating from the exercises and short songs to full pieces such as the classic Beethoven’s “Fur Elise.” I came to realize the pattern of the initial difficulties of acquainting myself with a new song, the tedious period of practice to be proficient at playing it, and the final enjoyment of effortless “play.”

After two years, my teacher, unfortunately (for me), was getting married and I was her “coin bearer” at the ceremony. The wedding was the last time I saw my teacher but I was left with the “want to learn” piano further. My lessons resumed three weeks later with a new teacher. She was quite different from my last teacher. Each lesson consisted of a metronome, exercises and a rigid curriculum. She seemed more concerned about the consistency of the beat versus the feeling of the piece. She obviously had a “pre” set agenda for all her students. The lessons, though they may have been more technical, lost something -- mainly my interest. I quit after two months and regretfully haven’t played since.