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With school 1)underway, I asked my eight-year-old son this week if he had any interest in learning guitar. He said he’d prefer the piano. I was pleased but hesitant. I had my own 2)stint with after-school piano lessons at age eight—3)plinking out notes from classical pieces that were foreign to me. My progress was agonizingly slow and I gave up within months.
Music education hasn’t changed much since the 1970s. Students are still taught to read notation so they can recite compositions that they would never listen to on their MP3 players or play with friends. The four “4)streams” in music education—5)orchestra, chorus, 6)marching band and jazz band—have remained constant for four decades, while a third generation is growing up listening to rock and pop music. Many children quit before making progress with an instrument, then regret it as adults. Playing music enriches life. The question is: Why do schools teach music in a way that 7)turns off so many young people rather than igniting their imagination? At a time when educators are desperate to engage students and improve school cultures, can we do a better job of harnessing the power of music to get kids excited about school?
The experience of an organization called 8)Little Kids Rock suggests the answer is a 9)resounding yes—10)provided we change the way music is taught. Little Kids Rock has helped 11)revitalize music programs in over a thousand public schools and served 150,000 children, most of them from low-income families. The organization has distributed 30,000 free instruments, primarily guitars, and trained 1,500 teachers to run music classes in which students quickly experience the joys of playing their favorite songs, performing in bands, and composing their own music. Along the way, the organization is working to 12)institute a fifth stream in American music education: popular music—or what it calls “contemporary band.”
The key to Little Kids Rock is that it teaches children to play music the way many musicians learn to play it—not by notation, but by listening, imitation and meaningful experimentation. “The knowledge you need to get started playing rock music is very limited,” explains Dave Wish, the founder of Little Kids Rock. “In high school, my friend Paul taught me a couple of 13)chords and my life was changed forever. Making music is as much a physical act as it is a cognitive act. We don’t begin with theory when we want to teach a child to play 14)tee-ball. We just bring the kid up to the 15)tee, give them a bat, and let them swing.” On the first day of class, Little Kids Rock teachers place guitars in the hands of their students and get them practicing chords that will enable them to play thousands of songs. The kids decide what songs they want to learn and the class is 16)off and 17)running. Their progress is remarkable. Within a year, eight- and nine-year-olds are playing electric guitar, 18)bass guitar, drums and 19)keyboards, and giving concerts, even performing their own songs. And the effect is predictable: the children can’t get enough of it.
Before launching Little Kids Rock in 2002, Wish spent 10 years as a first and second grade teacher in public schools in low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of his students had little 20)structure or 21)supervision out of school, and they would often get into trouble. He decided to start an after-school guitar program. He got instruments donated and started one afternoon a week. Within a year, he was giving classes before and after school, five days a week, and still had to 22)turn away children for lack of space. That bothered him, so he got the idea to recruit some of his musician friends to teach additional classes. “That idea failed miserably because they had no classroom management skills,” he recalled. That’s when he saw that it would work better if he focused on training experienced teachers.
Its trainings frequently attract many more applicants than available 23)slots. Teachers volunteer their time to attend trainings, which are often held over weekends. The trainings are popular because they provide simple and practical methods to get high levels of participation from students. Little Kids Rock 24)bears similarity to the 25)Suzuki method, which also stresses learning by ear (initially) over reading musical notation. Wish also draws from language acquisition theory and applies it to music. But the big distinction is that Little Kids Rock places a lot of emphasis on 26)improvisation and composing, which are rarely encouraged in traditional music education. If you wander around a public school, for example, you will find the walls 27)adorned with drawings, poetry, essays, even math problems—all done by children. “What’s 28)notoriously absent?” asks Wish. “Where’s the music the kids created? If you put a bunch of kids at a table, and give them a box of crayons and paper, and five minutes free time, they’re going to make art. Teaching a few chords is just like giving a kid a musical crayon. If you give them time, they will start to compose their own songs.”
There is one barrier to overcome. Every art teacher has drawn a picture, but many music instructors have never composed a song, so they may have no clue how to teach children to do it; they may not even believe their students can do it. In trainings, therefore, every teacher has to write a song, perform it, and record it for the other teachers in the room—all in 30 minutes. For improvisation, every teacher is also asked to play a 29)Jimi Hendrix-style guitar solo, a novel experience for many. Kids think solos are very cool, and Little Kids Rock gives them shortcuts so they can learn how to play them, literally, in minutes. “I have kids who learn one 30)scale, or even two notes, and will play solos all afternoon,” explained Allan Adkison, a Little Kids Rock instructor of a middle school in Bronx. “When they start to express themselves and start to hear it, you see them become free.” It’s not just the children who have this experience. Wish recalled that one music teacher of 20 years started to cry after performing a solo in a training program. “She’d been playing music most of her life but never thought she had the ability to improvise,” he recalled. “I’ve heard that from a lot of people. I think the biggest thing that teachers leave the training with is the notion that they themselves have great 31)untapped 32)reservoirs of musical potential.”
We do a 33)disservice to children when we force them in school to learn jazz or classical music because we think it’s good for them. Too often, rather than creating an entry point for a life of music appreciation, this approach tends to 34)weed out those who don’t make an immediate connection with the music, or don’t have parents who force them to 35)stick it out. Getting children excited by teaching them to play the music they love doesn’t mean they’ll be stuck listening to three chord songs their whole lives. If children make a durable connection with music, it’s more likely that over time, their musical tastes will evolve.
One of the biggest advantages that music offers is the ability to inspire students who are otherwise bored or demoralized by school. “I’ve had students start coming back to school because of this program,” said Adkison Thomas, who 36)heads up music for the Dallas Independent School District, where Little Kids Rock serves 9,000 students in 89 schools, added: “One of the best things is that the teachers discover a new side of their students. They see kids become successful who weren’t before.”
And the connection the kids make seems to last. Erik Herndon, a Little Kids Rock instructor at the Jean Childs Young Middle School in Atlanta, told me: “I’m just starting to see kids go on to college and a lot of them are sticking with it. One kid said to me, ‘I keep playing my guitar, but now when I listen to music I hear all the parts of it.’ That’s the whole idea: to promote that lifelong love of the music, rather than feeling that we killed it out of them.”
开学了，这周我问八岁的儿子是否有兴趣学习吉他。他说更喜欢钢琴。我很高兴，但有些犹豫不决。八岁时，我自己也参加过短暂的课外钢琴课——叮叮当当地弹奏那些对我来说十分陌生的古典曲目。我的进步缓慢得令人头疼，数月后，我就放弃了。
自20世纪70年代以来，美国的音乐教育没有太大改变。老师还是教学生读乐谱，让他们能够记住曲子，但这些曲子却是学生从不在自己的MP3播放器上播放或是与朋友玩时弹奏的曲子。音乐教育中的四大“分支”——管弦乐、合唱曲、进行曲和爵士乐，四十年来保持不变，而第三代人却是听着摇滚乐和流行音乐成长的。许多孩子还没取得进步就放弃练习某种乐器，然后在长大后后悔不已。学习音乐可以丰富我们的生活。现在的问题是：为什么学校教音乐的方式没有激发学生的想象力，反而让如此多的年轻人失去对音乐的兴趣呢？在教育工作者想方设法调动学生兴趣、改善学校文化的年代，我们能不能用音乐的力量来更好地激发学生对上学的热情呢？
对于上面提及的问题，“孩子摇滚”这一组织的经验给出了一个响亮的肯定答案——只要我们改变音乐教学方式。“孩子摇滚”已经帮助逾千所公立学校为其音乐课程注入新活力，服务15万名大多数来自低收入家庭的儿童。该组织已免费派发了30000件音乐器材（主要是吉他），还拥有1500名训练有素的音乐老师。这样的音乐课让学生快速体验到乐趣：他们可以演奏自己喜爱的歌曲、在乐队中表演，还自己创作音乐。与此同时，该组织正在努力创立美国音乐教育的第五分支：流行音乐——或者称为“当代音乐”。
“孩子摇滚”取得成功的关键在于它教导孩子演奏音乐的方式正是许多音乐家学习演奏音乐的方式——不是通过记谱法，而是通过听、模仿和有意义的实践。“孩子摇滚”的创始人戴夫•维士解释说：“演奏摇滚乐所需的入门知识不多。高中时，我的朋友保罗教我演奏一些和弦，我的生活从此就改变了。音乐制作既是一种认知行为也是一种实践行动。我们教孩子打乐乐安全棒球时，也不是从理论开始的。我们只是把孩子带到发球区，给他们一根球棒，并让他们把球棒挥动起来。”在第一天上课时，“孩子摇滚”的老师们把吉他放在学生的手中，让他们练习能使他们弹奏出数千首歌曲的和弦。孩子们自己决定他们想学的歌曲，吉他课就此火热开课，一发不可收拾。他们的进步是显著的。在一年之内，八九岁的孩子开始弹奏电吉他、贝斯、鼓和键盘乐器，还开演唱会，甚至演奏自己创作的歌曲。效果不出所料：孩子们的兴头不减。
在2002年创建“孩子摇滚”之前，维士在旧金山湾区低收入社区的公立学校当了10年一、二年级的老师。放学后，他的许多学生由于缺乏组织和监督，往往会陷入麻烦之中。他决定开办课外吉他班。他获赠了一些音乐器材，于是开设了每周一个下午的课程。在一年之内，他开始实施每周五天制的课程，利用课前课后的时间上课，却仍然因为空间不够而接纳不了所有来求学的孩子。这让他很困扰，他想到一个主意，招募他的一些音乐家朋友来加课。“这个想法惨遭失败，因为他们没有管理课堂的能力，”他回忆说。这时候，他想到了如果要把工作做好，就得专注于培养经验丰富的教师。
该组织的教师培训吸引的申请者远比实际需要的多。教师们自愿花时间去参加通常在周末举行的培训。这些培训很受欢迎，因为它们提供了简单而实用的方法让教师得到学生高度参与的教学。“孩子摇滚”采取了与铃木音乐教学法相似的教学办法，更强调用耳朵听（初期）而不是识谱。维士还吸收语言习得理论并将其应用在音乐教学上。不过，与传统音乐教学相比，“孩子摇滚”更看重的是即兴演奏和创作，这在传统音乐教育上是很少被鼓励的。比方说，如果你在一所公立学校周围游荡，你会发现墙壁上的装饰有绘画、诗歌、散文，甚至有数学难题——所有这些都是孩子们做的。“那么，墙壁上明显缺了什么呢？”维士问，“孩子们创作的音乐在哪里？如果你让一群孩子围坐在一张桌子旁，给他们一盒蜡笔和一些纸，再给他们五分钟的空闲时间，他们就会画画。教给学生和弦奏法，就像给了孩子一支音乐蜡笔。如果你给他们时间，他们将开始谱写自己的歌曲。”
有一个障碍需要克服。每位美术老师都画过画，但许多音乐教师却从来没有创作过歌曲，所以他们可能不知道如何教孩子去创作；他们可能甚至不相信学生能做到这一点。因此，在培训中，每一位教师都得写一首歌，进行演奏并把它录下来放给其他老师听——所有这些事情要在30分钟内完成。即兴表演的部分还要求每一位教师弹奏一曲吉米•亨德里克斯风格的吉他独奏，这对很多人而言都是全新的体验。孩子们认为独奏很酷，“孩子摇滚”让孩子们以一种快捷的方式学习如何演奏，几乎是在几分钟之内学会。阿兰•艾齐森是纽约布朗克斯区的一位中学教员，他解释说：“我有学生学习了一个音阶或者甚至是两个音符，接着一个下午就开始独奏了。当他们开始表达自己，并开始听到自己演奏的音乐时，你会看到他们变得无拘无束了。”不仅仅是孩子们有这样的体验。维士回忆到，一位教授音乐长达20年的老师在一个培训项目中表演完独奏后竟哭了起来。“她大半辈子都在与音乐打交道，却从没想过自己拥有即兴创作的能力，”他回忆说，“我听到很多人都这样说。我觉得老师参加完培训后最大的感触是了解到自己其实有着未被开发的巨大音乐潜能。”
当我们自认为爵士和古典音乐对孩子们好而逼着他们在学校里学习这些音乐时，我们其实帮了倒忙。太多的时候，这种办法没有为孩子终生的音乐爱好创造一个切入点，如果孩子对那种音乐并非一听倾心，又或者其父母没迫使他们坚持下去，那这些孩子往往就被排挤出音乐的国度了。教孩子们他们喜欢的音乐能让他们兴奋不已，但这并不意味着他们一辈子都只会听三和弦歌曲。如果孩子坚持音乐的浸淫，随着时间的推移，他们的音乐品味将获得提升。
音乐其中一个最大的优势是能够鼓舞那些对学校生活感到枯燥无味或无心向学的学生。“因为这个项目的出现，已经有学生开始重返校园了，”艾齐森•托马斯说，他负责达拉斯独立校区的音乐教学工作。在该地区，“孩子摇滚”为89所学校的9000名学生提供教学服务。他补充道：“其中最棒的一点是，老师发现了学生的另一面。他们看到那些以前不怎么样的孩子们取得了成功。”
孩子们对音乐的热爱似乎持久不息。埃里克•赫恩登是“孩子摇滚”设在亚特兰大让查尔兹青年中学分支机构的一名老师，他告诉我：“我开始看到孩子们去上大学，其中很多还坚持着自己的音乐梦想。一个孩子对我说：‘我还有坚持弹吉他，但现在我听音乐时，能听出音乐的所有部分。’那正是‘孩子摇滚’的核心理念：促进孩子对音乐的终生热爱，而不是感到我们扼杀了孩子对音乐的热忱。”
Music education hasn’t changed much since the 1970s. Students are still taught to read notation so they can recite compositions that they would never listen to on their MP3 players or play with friends. The four “4)streams” in music education—5)orchestra, chorus, 6)marching band and jazz band—have remained constant for four decades, while a third generation is growing up listening to rock and pop music. Many children quit before making progress with an instrument, then regret it as adults. Playing music enriches life. The question is: Why do schools teach music in a way that 7)turns off so many young people rather than igniting their imagination? At a time when educators are desperate to engage students and improve school cultures, can we do a better job of harnessing the power of music to get kids excited about school?
The experience of an organization called 8)Little Kids Rock suggests the answer is a 9)resounding yes—10)provided we change the way music is taught. Little Kids Rock has helped 11)revitalize music programs in over a thousand public schools and served 150,000 children, most of them from low-income families. The organization has distributed 30,000 free instruments, primarily guitars, and trained 1,500 teachers to run music classes in which students quickly experience the joys of playing their favorite songs, performing in bands, and composing their own music. Along the way, the organization is working to 12)institute a fifth stream in American music education: popular music—or what it calls “contemporary band.”
The key to Little Kids Rock is that it teaches children to play music the way many musicians learn to play it—not by notation, but by listening, imitation and meaningful experimentation. “The knowledge you need to get started playing rock music is very limited,” explains Dave Wish, the founder of Little Kids Rock. “In high school, my friend Paul taught me a couple of 13)chords and my life was changed forever. Making music is as much a physical act as it is a cognitive act. We don’t begin with theory when we want to teach a child to play 14)tee-ball. We just bring the kid up to the 15)tee, give them a bat, and let them swing.” On the first day of class, Little Kids Rock teachers place guitars in the hands of their students and get them practicing chords that will enable them to play thousands of songs. The kids decide what songs they want to learn and the class is 16)off and 17)running. Their progress is remarkable. Within a year, eight- and nine-year-olds are playing electric guitar, 18)bass guitar, drums and 19)keyboards, and giving concerts, even performing their own songs. And the effect is predictable: the children can’t get enough of it.
Before launching Little Kids Rock in 2002, Wish spent 10 years as a first and second grade teacher in public schools in low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of his students had little 20)structure or 21)supervision out of school, and they would often get into trouble. He decided to start an after-school guitar program. He got instruments donated and started one afternoon a week. Within a year, he was giving classes before and after school, five days a week, and still had to 22)turn away children for lack of space. That bothered him, so he got the idea to recruit some of his musician friends to teach additional classes. “That idea failed miserably because they had no classroom management skills,” he recalled. That’s when he saw that it would work better if he focused on training experienced teachers.
Its trainings frequently attract many more applicants than available 23)slots. Teachers volunteer their time to attend trainings, which are often held over weekends. The trainings are popular because they provide simple and practical methods to get high levels of participation from students. Little Kids Rock 24)bears similarity to the 25)Suzuki method, which also stresses learning by ear (initially) over reading musical notation. Wish also draws from language acquisition theory and applies it to music. But the big distinction is that Little Kids Rock places a lot of emphasis on 26)improvisation and composing, which are rarely encouraged in traditional music education. If you wander around a public school, for example, you will find the walls 27)adorned with drawings, poetry, essays, even math problems—all done by children. “What’s 28)notoriously absent?” asks Wish. “Where’s the music the kids created? If you put a bunch of kids at a table, and give them a box of crayons and paper, and five minutes free time, they’re going to make art. Teaching a few chords is just like giving a kid a musical crayon. If you give them time, they will start to compose their own songs.”
There is one barrier to overcome. Every art teacher has drawn a picture, but many music instructors have never composed a song, so they may have no clue how to teach children to do it; they may not even believe their students can do it. In trainings, therefore, every teacher has to write a song, perform it, and record it for the other teachers in the room—all in 30 minutes. For improvisation, every teacher is also asked to play a 29)Jimi Hendrix-style guitar solo, a novel experience for many. Kids think solos are very cool, and Little Kids Rock gives them shortcuts so they can learn how to play them, literally, in minutes. “I have kids who learn one 30)scale, or even two notes, and will play solos all afternoon,” explained Allan Adkison, a Little Kids Rock instructor of a middle school in Bronx. “When they start to express themselves and start to hear it, you see them become free.” It’s not just the children who have this experience. Wish recalled that one music teacher of 20 years started to cry after performing a solo in a training program. “She’d been playing music most of her life but never thought she had the ability to improvise,” he recalled. “I’ve heard that from a lot of people. I think the biggest thing that teachers leave the training with is the notion that they themselves have great 31)untapped 32)reservoirs of musical potential.”
We do a 33)disservice to children when we force them in school to learn jazz or classical music because we think it’s good for them. Too often, rather than creating an entry point for a life of music appreciation, this approach tends to 34)weed out those who don’t make an immediate connection with the music, or don’t have parents who force them to 35)stick it out. Getting children excited by teaching them to play the music they love doesn’t mean they’ll be stuck listening to three chord songs their whole lives. If children make a durable connection with music, it’s more likely that over time, their musical tastes will evolve.
One of the biggest advantages that music offers is the ability to inspire students who are otherwise bored or demoralized by school. “I’ve had students start coming back to school because of this program,” said Adkison Thomas, who 36)heads up music for the Dallas Independent School District, where Little Kids Rock serves 9,000 students in 89 schools, added: “One of the best things is that the teachers discover a new side of their students. They see kids become successful who weren’t before.”
And the connection the kids make seems to last. Erik Herndon, a Little Kids Rock instructor at the Jean Childs Young Middle School in Atlanta, told me: “I’m just starting to see kids go on to college and a lot of them are sticking with it. One kid said to me, ‘I keep playing my guitar, but now when I listen to music I hear all the parts of it.’ That’s the whole idea: to promote that lifelong love of the music, rather than feeling that we killed it out of them.”
开学了，这周我问八岁的儿子是否有兴趣学习吉他。他说更喜欢钢琴。我很高兴，但有些犹豫不决。八岁时，我自己也参加过短暂的课外钢琴课——叮叮当当地弹奏那些对我来说十分陌生的古典曲目。我的进步缓慢得令人头疼，数月后，我就放弃了。
自20世纪70年代以来，美国的音乐教育没有太大改变。老师还是教学生读乐谱，让他们能够记住曲子，但这些曲子却是学生从不在自己的MP3播放器上播放或是与朋友玩时弹奏的曲子。音乐教育中的四大“分支”——管弦乐、合唱曲、进行曲和爵士乐，四十年来保持不变，而第三代人却是听着摇滚乐和流行音乐成长的。许多孩子还没取得进步就放弃练习某种乐器，然后在长大后后悔不已。学习音乐可以丰富我们的生活。现在的问题是：为什么学校教音乐的方式没有激发学生的想象力，反而让如此多的年轻人失去对音乐的兴趣呢？在教育工作者想方设法调动学生兴趣、改善学校文化的年代，我们能不能用音乐的力量来更好地激发学生对上学的热情呢？
对于上面提及的问题，“孩子摇滚”这一组织的经验给出了一个响亮的肯定答案——只要我们改变音乐教学方式。“孩子摇滚”已经帮助逾千所公立学校为其音乐课程注入新活力，服务15万名大多数来自低收入家庭的儿童。该组织已免费派发了30000件音乐器材（主要是吉他），还拥有1500名训练有素的音乐老师。这样的音乐课让学生快速体验到乐趣：他们可以演奏自己喜爱的歌曲、在乐队中表演，还自己创作音乐。与此同时，该组织正在努力创立美国音乐教育的第五分支：流行音乐——或者称为“当代音乐”。
“孩子摇滚”取得成功的关键在于它教导孩子演奏音乐的方式正是许多音乐家学习演奏音乐的方式——不是通过记谱法，而是通过听、模仿和有意义的实践。“孩子摇滚”的创始人戴夫•维士解释说：“演奏摇滚乐所需的入门知识不多。高中时，我的朋友保罗教我演奏一些和弦，我的生活从此就改变了。音乐制作既是一种认知行为也是一种实践行动。我们教孩子打乐乐安全棒球时，也不是从理论开始的。我们只是把孩子带到发球区，给他们一根球棒，并让他们把球棒挥动起来。”在第一天上课时，“孩子摇滚”的老师们把吉他放在学生的手中，让他们练习能使他们弹奏出数千首歌曲的和弦。孩子们自己决定他们想学的歌曲，吉他课就此火热开课，一发不可收拾。他们的进步是显著的。在一年之内，八九岁的孩子开始弹奏电吉他、贝斯、鼓和键盘乐器，还开演唱会，甚至演奏自己创作的歌曲。效果不出所料：孩子们的兴头不减。
在2002年创建“孩子摇滚”之前，维士在旧金山湾区低收入社区的公立学校当了10年一、二年级的老师。放学后，他的许多学生由于缺乏组织和监督，往往会陷入麻烦之中。他决定开办课外吉他班。他获赠了一些音乐器材，于是开设了每周一个下午的课程。在一年之内，他开始实施每周五天制的课程，利用课前课后的时间上课，却仍然因为空间不够而接纳不了所有来求学的孩子。这让他很困扰，他想到一个主意，招募他的一些音乐家朋友来加课。“这个想法惨遭失败，因为他们没有管理课堂的能力，”他回忆说。这时候，他想到了如果要把工作做好，就得专注于培养经验丰富的教师。
该组织的教师培训吸引的申请者远比实际需要的多。教师们自愿花时间去参加通常在周末举行的培训。这些培训很受欢迎，因为它们提供了简单而实用的方法让教师得到学生高度参与的教学。“孩子摇滚”采取了与铃木音乐教学法相似的教学办法，更强调用耳朵听（初期）而不是识谱。维士还吸收语言习得理论并将其应用在音乐教学上。不过，与传统音乐教学相比，“孩子摇滚”更看重的是即兴演奏和创作，这在传统音乐教育上是很少被鼓励的。比方说，如果你在一所公立学校周围游荡，你会发现墙壁上的装饰有绘画、诗歌、散文，甚至有数学难题——所有这些都是孩子们做的。“那么，墙壁上明显缺了什么呢？”维士问，“孩子们创作的音乐在哪里？如果你让一群孩子围坐在一张桌子旁，给他们一盒蜡笔和一些纸，再给他们五分钟的空闲时间，他们就会画画。教给学生和弦奏法，就像给了孩子一支音乐蜡笔。如果你给他们时间，他们将开始谱写自己的歌曲。”
有一个障碍需要克服。每位美术老师都画过画，但许多音乐教师却从来没有创作过歌曲，所以他们可能不知道如何教孩子去创作；他们可能甚至不相信学生能做到这一点。因此，在培训中，每一位教师都得写一首歌，进行演奏并把它录下来放给其他老师听——所有这些事情要在30分钟内完成。即兴表演的部分还要求每一位教师弹奏一曲吉米•亨德里克斯风格的吉他独奏，这对很多人而言都是全新的体验。孩子们认为独奏很酷，“孩子摇滚”让孩子们以一种快捷的方式学习如何演奏，几乎是在几分钟之内学会。阿兰•艾齐森是纽约布朗克斯区的一位中学教员，他解释说：“我有学生学习了一个音阶或者甚至是两个音符，接着一个下午就开始独奏了。当他们开始表达自己，并开始听到自己演奏的音乐时，你会看到他们变得无拘无束了。”不仅仅是孩子们有这样的体验。维士回忆到，一位教授音乐长达20年的老师在一个培训项目中表演完独奏后竟哭了起来。“她大半辈子都在与音乐打交道，却从没想过自己拥有即兴创作的能力，”他回忆说，“我听到很多人都这样说。我觉得老师参加完培训后最大的感触是了解到自己其实有着未被开发的巨大音乐潜能。”
当我们自认为爵士和古典音乐对孩子们好而逼着他们在学校里学习这些音乐时，我们其实帮了倒忙。太多的时候，这种办法没有为孩子终生的音乐爱好创造一个切入点，如果孩子对那种音乐并非一听倾心，又或者其父母没迫使他们坚持下去，那这些孩子往往就被排挤出音乐的国度了。教孩子们他们喜欢的音乐能让他们兴奋不已，但这并不意味着他们一辈子都只会听三和弦歌曲。如果孩子坚持音乐的浸淫，随着时间的推移，他们的音乐品味将获得提升。
音乐其中一个最大的优势是能够鼓舞那些对学校生活感到枯燥无味或无心向学的学生。“因为这个项目的出现，已经有学生开始重返校园了，”艾齐森•托马斯说，他负责达拉斯独立校区的音乐教学工作。在该地区，“孩子摇滚”为89所学校的9000名学生提供教学服务。他补充道：“其中最棒的一点是，老师发现了学生的另一面。他们看到那些以前不怎么样的孩子们取得了成功。”
孩子们对音乐的热爱似乎持久不息。埃里克•赫恩登是“孩子摇滚”设在亚特兰大让查尔兹青年中学分支机构的一名老师，他告诉我：“我开始看到孩子们去上大学，其中很多还坚持着自己的音乐梦想。一个孩子对我说：‘我还有坚持弹吉他，但现在我听音乐时，能听出音乐的所有部分。’那正是‘孩子摇滚’的核心理念：促进孩子对音乐的终生热爱，而不是感到我们扼杀了孩子对音乐的热忱。”