A second piece is prompted. Those who have not learnt it sit and look up in admiration at their more advanced colleagues. When concentration wanes and the crowd becomes restless, the teacher initiates a game. Ready, steady, go. A flutter of arms and a flourish of laughter.
Attention has been regained - the lesson can continue.
Start them young, build their intuition through repetition, insist on perfection. Dr. Suzuki's fascination with the learning capacity of infants may have been prompted by the difficulties he himself encountered in starting the violin at the ripe old age of 18. He began teaching in Japan in 1928, after studying in Berlin with Karl Klinger. The success of his lessons with very young children led to the opening, in 1946, of the Matsumoto Music School for children, and, in 1950, of the Talent Education Research Institute and its experimental pre-school. The Talent Education movement grew through demonstrations of its results in concerts featuring hundreds of children performing together.