The Future of Music Teaching: Looking Back From the Year 2100

If you could hop in a time machine and sit in on a piano lesson in the year 2100, what would you hope to find? New technology? Updated pedagogy?

If we could whiz back to a piano lesson in 1948 I think we would feel quite at home. The WWII rationing might still be limiting us to spam dinners (depending on where we lived), but the piano lesson would most likely look fairly familiar.

There would be a young student sitting at the keys and a teacher sitting or standing beside them. The teacher would instruct the student in how to play scales, they would listen to the pieces the student had practised, the teacher would correct them and introduce new repertoire.

Relatively little has changed in the last 76 years in the world of piano teaching. But the world outside the studio is changing at an increasing clip.

Instead of putting our hands over our ears while humming Gymnopédie No. 1, hoping that the piano studio of 1948 will work in 2100, I believe we need to take action for the future of our industry.

If we don’t, music lessons may go the way of Latin lessons – relegated to the realms of the unusual enthusiast. 

Something needs to change right now if we’re going to keep our industry alive into the 22nd century. Here are a few of my suggestions, hopes and dreams for the year 2100. 

22nd Century Aspiration No. 1: Music Lessons Are Not Music Reading Lessons

I would love to get my hands on a time machine so I could discover when exactly this change happened.

When did music lessons become all about reading music?

It certainly wasn’t true in 1750 or 1850, but at some point in the 20th century this seems to have become the predominant focus.

When I tell you that music lessons are not supposed to be music-reading lessons, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement.

It’s obvious, isn’t it? Music is something we listen to. So, hypothetically, if we had to choose between a child learning to read music or to play music, we should choose playing.

Yet, we still plan our lessons as if reading is paramount. Reading is great; it’s just not all there is to music lessons.

The late Forrest Kinney summed this up well when he wrote about the Four Arts of Music: Improvisation, Interpretation, Arranging and Composing.

Too often, music lessons are focused predominantly – or entirely – on interpreting written music. We need to move towards a complete musical skill set that lets students write their own music, converse and tell stories if we want to claim our place as a creative art.

22nd Century Aspiration No. 2: Students Understand Why

One of the biggest differences that has happened across the millennial generation and Gen Z is a refusal to do things “just because”.

Whether it’s work or school homework or societal norms, people are increasingly averse to accepting rules when they can’t see the reasoning behind them. Depending on your generation and personality, this may irk you. But it does make sense. Because the world, and especially the world of work, has changed.

If Gen Z puts in the work and pledges loyalty to a company, they are not guaranteed a lifelong job and a comfy pension. That’s not the reward they get at the end of the rainbow. Instead, they want the work itself to feel meaningful. 

Ergo, they need to know why they are doing something. 

I think this holds true in piano lessons as well. Our students now, and in the future, need to understand the reason they are doing something in order to feel motivated to do it.

They (mostly) won’t practise scales just because we say they should. They want to feel the value of scales, and then they will be more driven to put in the work.

You can amp up a student’s scale practice with a fun scale level challenge. Enter your info below, and we’ll send Level 1 – the one-octave major scales – straight to your inbox.

If you’re part of the Vibrant Music Teaching membership, you can download a set of booklets with all 5 levels from the Printable Library. Not a member? Visit vibrantmusicteaching.com to learn more.

The younger generation is not lazier. They’re just rebelling against the industrial education system and the model of the teacher as the all-knowing being on high.

We need to collaborate with students and give them experiences that reveal why something is important, and how it will help them achieve their goals.

22nd Century Aspiration No. 3: All Learners Are Appreciated

Gradually, neurodivergent students and those with additional needs have become more accepted in many studios. Even over the last decade, I have seen a sea change happen.

In my dream version of 2100, 100% of studios are open to students with different learning needs. 

But that’s not enough.

It’s wonderful that more teachers are open to taking different types of students, but we need to go further. If we accept neurodivergent students into our studio we need to invest in our own professional development so they can thrive.

We can’t teach everyone the same way. We can’t sit a student on a bench for 30 minutes and then, when they don’t succeed on our terms, declare them not ready for music lessons or even “not musical”.

We need to change the way we teach so that every student can become the musician they’re capable of being. I hope that no child in the year 2100 believes they are tone deaf or unmusical.

Our centralised ‘Studio Business’ hub page has an entire section devoted to professional development. Check it out today.

22nd Century Aspiration No. 4: Group Lessons Are More Common

Stay with me—I’m not saying all individual tuition will be abolished. I think there’s enormous value in one-on-one lessons. But I do think there will be a lot more group, buddy and lab lessons in the future.

I believe these kinds of lessons serve a broad range of students who are not always getting what they want or need from individual private lessons. We all know that many students are in more activities than ever. I don’t see this changing any time soon. So, instead of lamenting their lack of singular dedication to the piano, we need to embrace the idea of students “testing out” music lessons.

In my studio, we have classes for beginners that specifically do not require any home practice.

Parents get to choose whether to start their kiddo in one of these classes, where there is slower progress but also less time and money commitment, or to start right away in buddy lessons where they will be expected to support home practice. 

Group classes, whether in this kind of hybrid format or in a fully group studio, provide more opportunities for social and experiential learning. They can be more inclusive, too, if we take the opportunity to incorporate singing, movement and games to keep everyone engaged the whole time. 

22nd Century Aspiration No. 5: All Music Is Real Music

One of my pet peeves that shows up in the classical music world is the snobbery against…well, basically anything that’s not classical music.

There’s this idea that only Bach, Beethoven and the boys (with maybe a bit of jazz and The Beatles) are of sufficient quality and that anyone who values anything else is simply ignorant.

Thankfully, I’ve noticed this less and less over my 20 years of teaching. However, this view is definitely still out there. Some know they’re not supposed to say it outright anymore, but others clearly didn’t get that memo. 

Whether you believe this whole-heartedly and shout it from the mountaintops, or it exists only as a little undercurrent in the back of your brain, students can pick up on it.

When you give them a selection of music to choose from, but describe some in great detail and just give a nod to the others, they can tell which one you think is the “right” choice. If you never include any music from their favourite genre or from their own cultural heritage, they get the impression that it’s not welcome in music lessons.

My goal is to present music with a neutral lens. I want my students to really listen and choose the pieces that they find interesting, beautiful, curious or confronting. 

We had a great example of the result of this in my studio recently. I gave a selection of books to another teacher at Colourful Keys (we’ll call her Tanya) for her to bring to a lesson with a 16-year-old student (let’s call her Stephanie). There was:

• A book of pop and film arrangements
• A floaty new age book
• A jazzy book
• A rock-style book
• A book of arrangements of famous classical pieces
• A level of Masterwork Classics by Jane Magrath

Guess which one Stephanie picked? Yep, Masterwork Classics. 

This shows me that Tanya did a great job of presenting them neutrally. She didn’t give away that she expected a teenager (especially one who has only been in lessons for a couple of years) to pick one of the “cooler” options.

When we encourage listening and exploration, and avoid showing our music biases, students can surprise us.

I hope by the year 2100 we teachers won’t need to check our genre biases at the door because we won’t have picked them up in the first place.

22nd Century Aspiration No. 6: 80% of Kids Take Music Lessons

If we achieve all of the above, I believe we can also increase the uptake of music lessons among the population.

We’ve known for a long time how beneficial learning an instrument is for children in terms of brain development as well as the secondary skills they pick up, even if they do not go on to play music in later life. 

If we embrace the future instead of clinging to the past, we bring the joy of music into many more lives.

What are your dreams for the future of Music teaching?

Let us know in the comments below if any of the above resonate with you, or if you have other aspirations that we didn’t mention. 🙂