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A HAPPIER NOTE JOAN KOENIG’s revolutionary approach to musical education draws on cutting-edge science to unlock the potential of every child
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s teachers, caretakers, and parents continue to face the reality of Covid-19, we’re only beginning to understand the effects that school closures, isolation, and screen exposure will have on a child’s development. How can we help our children become happy human beings? We have a powerful ally: it’s music, and the earlier we begin, the better. At my school, we have more than 30 years of research in music and the brain, showing that music helps develop physical coordination, fine-tunes speech and reinforces memory. Most importantly, musical practice lifts us out of ourselves into an intuitive, cooperative, and satisfying relationship with others. My book The Musical Child outlines this research in an accessible manner, alongside fun-filled activities that require no professional training. How did this book come about? I moved to Paris in 1981 after graduating from The Juilliard School in New York. In 1986, I decided to create an alternative to the French music conservatories
It was a pivotal moment: I wanted to make this research available to parents, institutions, and decision-makers – to benefit all children. To understand the role of music in human evolution we need to look at musical practice across the globe, not just western classical music. This is a crucial distinction, because music is one of our sapiens universals along with language. Children all over the world learn to speak long before they learn to read. In classical music instruction, we teach children to read notes on a staff and count rhythms. This is as absurd as teaching a child to read before they can speak. Science indicates that music can accelerate all learning. What if we're overlooking the period in a child’s life before she or he can read or write? When she makes music spontaneously, singing, dancing, and making up songs and elaborate emotional soundtracks? This later turns into musical improvisation, one of the most extraordinary of human abilities. The links between rhythm, literacy, and health are compelling. Music brings children
Joan Koenig is the founder of L’Ecole Koenig Conservatory, Pre-school and Kindergarten in Paris
AT THE KOENIG SCHOOL, WE SEE children learning their letter sounds instantly by singing and dancing their phonetic ALPHABET SONG. MULTIPLICATION TABLES ARE MEMORISED IN A SINGLE MORNING WHEN THE CHILDREN RAP THEM that I found too focused on solfège and theory. The school grew steadily in size and scope. In 2008, 22 years later, I felt the need to open a new door. I'd witnessed young children’s extraordinary musical ability in weekly music classes and wanted to see what happened if children learned in music every day. So, we opened a trilingual pre-school where the children speak French, English – and music. In 2014 I was invited to the Salzburg Global seminar conference, The Neuroscience of Art. Salzburg Global organises conferences on matters of global importance – bringing together people from all over the world to reflect, learn from one another, and bring about change. The resulting collaborations with neuroscientists have deepened my understanding of the human mind and the vital place that music occupies in our human construction. I had the empirical evidence before; now, I understood the supporting science as well.
together; they love it viscerally and wholeheartedly. There are many excellent music programmes in the world today. What I'm proposing is an earlier start, and the use of music and dance to support all learning. Reading, writing, and even maths can be taught with music and movement. At the Koenig School, we see children learning their letter sounds instantly by singing and dancing their phonetic alphabet song. Multiplication tables are memorised in a single morning when the children rap them. We see the rapid acquisition of essential cognitive building blocks. More importantly, we observe children of more than 20 different nationalities joyfully singing and dancing together: learning and communicating through their common language of music. The Musical Child: Using the Power of Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy, Healthy, and Whole by Joan Koenig (William Collins, £18.99) AUTUMN 2021 | independentschoolparent.com
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