Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I’ve played the piano for the better part of six years, and that music is my life’s purpose… Or one of them anyway. I won’t say I was intimidated or scared of the prospect of taking piano lessons, (I created my own system for reading music around the age of ten and started playing Bach five days after my first lesson,) but in those first few weeks I realized something that holds true today- No matter how good you think you are, there is always more to learn.

When you think of piano teachers, you probably think of the harsh woman yelling at you every time you hit a wrong note. I remember during one of my lessons a few summers back, a thunderstorm rolled in unexpectedly, right in the middle of my playing (a slightly altered version of) one of Bach’s pieces. At one point, a very loud clap of thunder interrupted my performance and rattled the door, and my teacher jokingly said “It looks like Bach doesn’t like your arrangement.” She then went on to say something to the effect of “This is not Aaron Selby’s arrangement” and to "play the piece as it's written."

I don’t know why, but this has really stuck with me over the years.

Actually, I do know why.

In society today, we place more emphasis on how accurately we do things, rather than actually enjoying what we do. This is evident not only in the example given above, but also in schools across the nation. As the joke that is “Common Core” sweeps across the United States, standards (which are set by businessmen instead of actual teachers) are determined, not by what they are actually teaching students, but by TEST SCORES. Take the ACT, for example. The teachers in our school systems are trained to drill us over and over again on a checklist of things. If it’s done correctly, it can be absolutely wonderful. In my experience, however, teachers more often than not do the absolute minimum to barely touch on the standards, try to DRILL that content into our brains over the course of no more than an hour and a half, then move on to the next standard. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I have the utmost respect for teachers, and realize how hard of a job they have. But this societal system of reducing learning and education to a checklist, day in and day out, is absolutely exhausting. It’s no wonder that students so often fall asleep during these classes, only then to be labeled “lazy” or “slackers.”

Now before I start rabbit-trailing and make this longer than it really needs to be, let me clearly state my point of this article- Education, just like music, should not be a checklist of standards you have to go through or a series of notes you have to play in a particular order. Instead, it should be about actually enjoying what it is we do. If something doesn’t work for us, we should be able (within reason) to tweak it- to make it our own, and make our learning experience individualized.

I honestly think, as a society, that is a foundation we need to recover.

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” - Mark Twain