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Gérard Authelain

Teaching and trusting

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From time to time, the older generation is called upon and asked about how they perceive the differences between the current situation and what they experienced some fifty years ago. Beyond a general consideration of whether the glass if half full or half empty – which is more a feeling than routed in analysis – I have agreed to consider two points concerning education in general; and the access to an artistic world for children in particular, concluding with a reminder of what I have always believed in, despite all opposition, including the original place of music in a child’s development.

My first step is to bring to light the mental representations of children from the perspective of those who hold positions of authority in an education setting. In this category, I include the inspectors from the Ministry of national Education or the Ministry of Culture, teachers (in primary and secondary schools, and in conservatories), parents, elected representatives, trade unionists, and administrators from the ministries, etc. knowing that there are polar positions between these categories and within them.

Obviously there is no unanimity. All can claim with conviction that there is a civic priority in our society: education. But the divergences of opinion, when it comes to tackling matters of goals, methods, contents, devices, time management… take root in the mental representations of children that they each have, whether they are children in wider society, or those children they have been entrusted with in particular.

Our relationship with children is never neutral, but always fits into a series of expectations, images, presupposed ideas, or objectives, which are more or less stereotypical, more or less clearly perceived and clarified, leaving room for a part of personal history and a part of social mythology – a symbolic and imaginative projection of what children should become.

I am not convinced that many of these people in charge really and truly believe in the capacities of children. Thus, our ministries are creating education curriculums and aim for a result that is a sort of preformatted norm. Success is this or that, depending on the subject, pathway, school; it is something that is projected far into the future as an ideal. It is verifiable in the field of artistic teaching as well as in mathematics or any other subject: you have to reach the standard level. If a child does not reach that level, he or she needs to go look elsewhere. But what is that standard level? For whom? To what end?

When Philippe Meirieu and many others wrote at the end of the last century that children should be at the center of educational concerns, we saw an army of great minds go to war. They believed it was the return of the children of Summerhill and of the libertarian pedagogy advocated by Alexander Neill. They had forgotten for that matter that a more remote ancestor, Celestin Freinet, had put in place a pedagogical approach based on the child’s interest in learning and his or her capacities to build a system of knowledge and behaviors.

I am not against curriculums, I am not against objectives, but I truly believe that the educational tools are tarnished if they are not based on a preexisting trust in the capacities of each and every child. I have often been accused of positivity when it comes to them and I take pride in such criticism. Children possess strengths and the energy to venture beyond the areas initially set out by adults, including those where we want to lead them. They do not always think they are capable, sometimes they are in doubt, we (us and them) do not know where their desires will lead them.

It is our job to put them at ease so that they try to follow the path they believe to be theirs and to stay close to them if they happen to stumble. This is the heart of the matter: trusting without being naive and being ready to raise the bar more than once. Let me come back to the initial question of mental representations: what kind of imagination, stated or repressed, stored and anchored within us, do we possess when it comes to the children we are to look after?

In order to measure the legitimacy of this question, let us reverse it: on what occasions (plural) did we, as children or teenagers, take a different path than the one chosen for us by our parents or tutors? What was the mental image that was established in us, which broke from the mental image of the legal authority supposed to govern us?

The second point is that there is no belief in the role of the emotional as a pathway towards knowledge. This assessment concerns both parents and inspectors or teachers rooted in their particular subject. I believe that teachers and musicians in schools are most inclined to understand what we are talking about when we talk about the emotional, because they are not just concerned with the result in a specific subject taught in school, but have a habit of seeing the child in his or her entirety, with his or her family, social or cultural situation as well as his or her behavioral development, and at school.

Twenty years ago, Alain Mingat and Bruno Suchaut (IREDU, University of Bourgogne) had questioned in their studies if practicing music in the last year of nursery school was helping with the development of reading and arithmetic in the first year of primary school. We were glad to find a positive answer, even if the enthusiasm was tempered by the danger of exploiting music to ends other than for its own value. In reality, the question was essentially asked on the cognitive level. The concern is knowing the part the emotional (meaning the type of relationship of trust between the educator and the student) plays in the discovery by the student of his or her potential and hence his or her growth. This implies that knowledge is more than a fully stored hard drive and that the learner is attributed an autonomy and a mastery when using his or her acquired knowledge. One can enjoy listening to a gameshow everyday on the radio and marvel at the answers given by some contestants – this tells us nothing about what these people do with their encyclopedic knowledge.

It should be clear that the focus on the emotional has nothing to do with a kind of mothering, but is to do with the previous point about trust. In a singing class or an improvisation workshop, when we ask a child (or even an adult) to have a go, the answer is often: ‘no, no, no!’ Beyond encouragements, it would be better to tell them: ‘when you say no, you really mean that you would like to, but you are not sure you can do it’. Most of the time, they just need to tell their defensive selves this – if we give them time to clear their head, the moment will certainly come when, with minimal support, they will decide to take the next step.

We shouldn’t think about the emotional as something stuck in a little glass jar; it’s about relationships. Is the matter of the emotional in the relationship between teacher and student the subject of professional training? I doubt it. This notion usually escapes the scope of priorities of those who devise national curriculums, including in the arts. Yet, it is a concept that is important when it comes to musical practices, by virtue of education in general and in virtue of what music is at the core.

We can further the previous remarks by addressing the matter of what is required. Trusting by focusing on the relationship with the child is not a form of demagogy that settles for a sort of approximation or some other form of seduction. On the contrary, it means requiring everyone to go as far as their possibilities take them, trying to diagnose the difference in the subject of what comes from fear and what comes from mere laziness. Such requirements should be adjusted according to the capabilities of each and every one and never become an exterior norm, uninhabited and uninhabitable, in the actual realm of its representations.

The last point concerns the place of music in the child’s development. Translation: how is an artistic experience a constituent element in the personality of a child or a teenager? There are two premises to be explained in this formulation:

- — what is an artistic experience for a young person?

- — what is a budding in the making for this same young person?

An agreement on semantics does not imply a convergence in understanding. It is better to take a few examples and draw conclusions from them. Therefore, I asked myself what a culinary experience meant for me and whether or not it was creative. The question doesn’t exist in my daily food routine, but it does exist as soon as I share a meal with others. I admit it. I sometimes go to the frozen food store because I have nothing in the fridge and because I don’t know when I can find the time to cook up a nice dish. However, on certain occasions, I would be ashamed if I didn’t force myself to cook instead of settling for a ready meal. I don’t use a recipe; I have my favorite dishes, which I adjust depending on the guests… more spices… fewer spices, more fish for one, absolutely no fish for others. My dishes are more or less a success but they are entirely mine. I learned from recipes books, I learned even more by tasting and then liking what I felt like reproducing after eating somewhere else, by discovering flavors that I thought worked.

In other words, my culinary experience comes from what I have received from others, and building on such discoveries, I put on my stamp to create unofficial trademarks. I would not call myself a creator but it is my signature. It is what I can give knowing that much better can be achieved. I use the word ‘give’ on purpose because it has to do with giving. Artistic experience is of the same nature, even for children. A child is not a creator per se. He or she becomes one with the discoveries he or she makes with others, and with the manner he or she has been conditioned to make something that belongs to them and reinvest it in his or her own way. In other words, a child is nourished by others and is also able to give something of his or herself to others.

The child, when he or she has heard Stripsody, André Minvielle or others in the same vein, is in turn ready to have a go at daring vocal endeavors and is able to find a lot of pleasure in it – especially if they are allowed to. This is why it is not optional to set up concerts when the child takes the role of the said artist to produce his or her own creations; whether they be the interpretation of existing repertoire (meaning the appropriation of what he or she has received in order to perform it again in front of others) or actual invention (a truly creative process).

We have not really carried out our responsibility of the artistic education of children if we have not offered them also the possibility of having their turn on the stage. This isn’t to show what they are capable of, or validate their progress throughout the year, and is even less to satisfy some need for recognition. But to get to the heart of what the artistic experience is, we are in fact giving others a part of ourselves. The child must be on stage as an actor, not just as a listener in the audience.

The problem is not only that children should be given the complete course of the artistic experience but also to convince adults of the whole chain of responsibilities. Inspectors or elected representatives, who come to listen to a concert given by children in their reserved guest seat and who play on their smartphone, do not really play along. Parents are always hurtling down the stalls to take a picture of their kids; making gestures at them if needed in order to point their camera, precisely miss the point. Let’s not forget the children themselves when they are on stage, when they need to invest their energies into the performance by sharing the best of themselves as opposed to playing the clown or getting easily distracted.

I don’t remember who said ‘a man – I don’t know what he is, but it is what he becomes.’ My educational attitude has been completely shaped by this saying. I can maybe have objective criteria to assess what a child has learned, the progress he or she has made during the trimester or the school year, I cannot know in absolute terms what his or her future evolution will be and yet it matters just as much to me. I can only have intuitions, convictions; in other words, a degree of confidence that I measure and assert based on a child’s past on the one hand; and on his own capacities on the other hand. And such capacities that build confidence have nothing to do with technique, or a capital of knowledge already obtained. It rather has to do with these elusive things I previously mentioned: giving, the emotional, the relationship with others to which I add the word ‘personality’.

‘We teach these children how to live’ is what people say when they are perceived as impolite or selfish. In fact, we all have to, whoever we are, learn how to live, meaning to be interested in other subjects than our immediate and essential concerns. Personality cannot merely alone be measured by originality, skills, or a single personal form of authority. It is not transposable from one being to the next; it is the faithfulness of someone with the people surrounding them. Verum index sui is the Latin proverb. The truth reveals itself. The truth for everyone reveals itself sooner or later and often more quickly than one thinks. It becomes obvious when you hear stage performers. Fakery cannot deceive for long. Personality, as the thing we try to bring about in children, is of that nature: being in tune, not only with a tuning fork, but also with one’s personal needs.

It is a pity that the saying ‘bond of trust’ became popular with an electrical appliances distributor. It could well have become the rallying cry of all educators. In any case, artistic education has the same goal in music, dance, the fine arts or the circus arts: teaching everyone to be themselves, accepting to be so and recognizing the self of others. This is already a great way to develop one’s own personality.

Translation: Paul Warusfel

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The author

A hands-on man, practicing music on stage and at school, displaying his talents in painting, literature and philosophy, Gérard Authelain is also a doctor in musicology, an expert in songwriting, and an author of many reference works and documents such as the annual publication of the Francofolies, Les Enfants de la Zique. He took part in the creation of the CFMI at the beginning of the 1980s and was the director of the CFMI of Lyon (University Lumière Lyon 2) until 2002. He keeps on promoting musical practice and creation, notably as the president of Mômeludies.

Teaching and trusting
Gérard Authelain

Éclair #6

Collection of the Centre de Formation de Musiciens Intervenant à l’école de l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, CFMI de Lyon

Resources center in artistic and cultural education cfmi@univ-lyon2.fr – www.cfmi-lyon.fr

ISBN: 978-2-490238-19-4

ISSN: 2270-7263

Free

Editorial organization: Amandine Monnet and Marion Orlandi

Translation: Paul Warusfel

Graphic design: Pascale Péronnet ij design

© CFMI, Lyon, 2018

© CFMI, Lyon, 2014 for the original draft in French

Copyrights reserved in all countries

Legal submission 2nd trimester 2014 for the original draft in French

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Digital version: https://edition-cfmi.univ-lyon2.fr

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