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Am I going mad, or are some people actually suggesting that a book "Piano for boys" shouldn't be ALLOWED?

I had not heard of this before. That is why it surprised me so much, and caught me off guard. If somebody out there decides that girls are cooperative and boys are competitive, and then creates programs based on those assumptions, that does not make their natures so. We are who we are. I had no idea that programs anywhere were designed on such premises. In general stereotypes leave me very uncomfortable. It is easy to be caught out by them.

Take him to Montana. He'll meet lots of guys who ride horses .... for a living.

Bit like taking your daughter to Vegas to learn about relationships :-)

Or to the bar and lounge of the Holiday Inn in a suburb of Gary, Indiana an hour after the end of happy hour to learn about the importance and relevance of piano lessons.

That would cover Vegas as well?

Hey all, I recently wrote a post about piano music ideas for boys on my blog:

http://timtopham.com/2011/06/07/teaching-boys-repertoire-ideas/

I found it really hard when I was just beginning teaching to know about good repertoire, so I hope this may help others out there...

I would at least give a glance at a piano book for boys, since I have a son. Whether I buy or not would depend on if it adequately addressed the typical learning style differences or not.

Boys and girls are usually wired differently. Some girls really are meant to be cooperative and submissive and that is fine. There are a few boys like that too, but probably not nearly as many. I always believed girls often don't do well in mathematics and science because they process information differently than most boys. Not all of them of course.

Hey, I was a girl in engineering. I admit I am not like most other women that I know. The few (and there are really very few) that I work with are quite similar to me. I don't know why my lot was such, but there it is. How fortunate that I live in a society where I at least get a chance to do what I am capable of regardless of my gender. But I must say that I never went into engineering because of rebellion towards gender roles. I was already moving in that direction from the time I was knee high and building tiny cities out of garage scrap for my toys to live in.

I don't see any point trying to rip girls or boys out of gender roles...if they fit them. I respect house wives and working dads. Men and women are generally not the same and we shouldn't be trying to convince them they are. Neither should we be inflexible for those that don't quite fit the norm.

Also, the sciences in college take a whole different mode of thinking than liberal arts (different sector of the brain). I am not surprised most women tend towards liberal arts due to their learning and thinking style. I feel I can say that with confidence because I am a closet liberal arts person myself. It takes a noticeable shift of gears in the brain to swap between engineering and the arts.

I'm open for possibilities in individual tailored learning, so long as it fits the child.

The elephant in the room for me is this:

Advanced music does not have pictures. Difficult and rewarding music sells itself mostly through SOUND.

My students have ideas about what they want to play, and those ideas change as they get better. They don't care about pictures and are never fooled into thinking that a so-so piece of music is magically turned into something "cool" because it has a "cool" picture.

So I must be in a different universe.

Thank-you for this very sensible reminder. I will have to remember this the next time I get into a debate/discussion/argument about the need for special music/books for boys.

Another elephant in the room:

We are teachers who teach boys and girls and there is quite alot of attention in the world of education on learning styles differing between girls and boys.

This is not offensive. This is being sensitive to reality. Just type in "How Boys and Girls learn differently" in google....

And beyond that:

There are girls who learn in ways stereotypically associated with boys, and vice versa.

I have one young boy who listens to every word I say. He never argues, he is rather passive, very careful. Super student. I love teaching him. But terribly sensitive. I am working to boost his confidence, get him to make his needs known, teach him that it is OK to be a bit boisterous now and then.

Now, how would you think Martha Argerich learned? I would wager that she learned much more the way that we THINK or THOUGHT that girls learn.

I think music tends to make lies out of stereotypes.

There are gender characteristics. There are individual characteristics. A sensible teacher is informed about both.

Where mass education is required, with a limited budget, sometimes we have to tend toward "the greatest good of the greatest number". Not every pupil in a public school (using the term in the American sense) can have an individually-crafted curriculum.

But every individual piano pupil can, quite easily. As teachers, we don't require rules and guidelines, just observation and common sense.