Music Education

A good friend of mine, Amado Nervo wrote way back in the early nineteen hundreds an interesting article titled "Piano: an expensive taste". It goes something like this:
"To have a music teacher now a days is a must. Of course being a piano teacher (remember that the piano was the most popular music instrument in the 1900s society) is a good business. Think about it, if the teacher is a regular not-known-teacher, he will charge you between 16 to 20 pesos a month for his lessons. If the teacher has some sort of name or recognition, then he will charge you between 8 to 10 pesos per lesson.

If we consider that a young lady will study something like eight years the piano -an average-, and that her family will be paying, let's say 20 pesos a month, then we know that her family is investing $1,920 pesos for teacher fees plus $1,200 pesos for a regular piano. That is, just for the first young girl. Usually a good family is going to have have at least three daughters.

If we think that actually the average family has three daughters, then we know that they will be spending something like $6,960 pesos in music education. If we make a simple calculation, taking into account that there are around 40,000 young women in Mexico now a days, we easily can figure it out that their families will be spending $2, 784, 400,000 pesos (remember those are 1900s silver made pesos).

Now, after eight years of investment, what do we have?. Out of those 40,000 enthusiastic girls, 39,000 are just boxing against the piano. We have one thousand left. Out of these thousand, 950 will torment their neighbours -and friends- with the same tune, played over and over, as that is all they can do.

We have 50 left, 40 of which will play something semi-descent, like Schumann or an easy Chopin piece. No hearth, no passion. Just notes played like a perfectly timed machine. That give us ten young women left. Are those going to become great artists? Would they be able to understand the depth and profound meaning of the pieces they will be playing? Let's say yes, just to be optimistic.

Now, let's do some basic math: the cost for the education of each one of these ten potential good piano players is something like 27 million pesos each. 27 million!

Out of those ten, I can assure you, it exists the possibility of ONE being a great pianist. ONE."

Does that math seems familiar for a contemporary society?

I would continue writing but I have to go to my son's Summer Music Concert at the Secondary. Good grief.

*Note: a peso in the 1900s was made out of .903 silver and was a large coin. Lots of $$$$ for today's economy.