Learning is annoying

Every morning (along with lunchtime and after school), the piano at The Little Middle School is overtaken by a series of students. Each one informally shares the music they can play. This ranges from video game themes, classical pieces, folk songs, songs we’ve learned in class, to just messing around. Each student will continue to play until they have run through their repertoire to their own satisfaction or find themselves jostled off the bench by the next person (usually the latter).

Let me say this: It takes a long time for anyone to get tired of playing the same song over and over, day after day. It is relentless.

As someone who taught piano lessons for over a decade, it is downright painful to listen to this music sometimes. I have to hold my musical snobbery in check. I have to suppress the urge to offer suggestions. And I also have to work hard to not ask them to stop. It takes a lot of mental energy to tune out the theme to Super Smash Bros for thirty minutes while trying to accomplish some lesson planning.

However, the kids have free rein. They have only two rules: Fingers only (no fists), and only one song at a time — we can’t have three different people banging out three different tunes simultaneously. (Also, they know that they will be expelled if they play “Baby Shark.”)

It’s important to give them the space to experiment and play however they want. This is what it looks like when we let kids follow their passions and learn at their own pace.

It would be nice if free rein led kids to spontaneously memorize and stage scenes from King Lear, or practice factoring quadratics, or study the latest scholarship on Mansa Musa, or research successful implementations of public transit. It sometimes goes that way — but not always. More often, the things that engage kids are annoying. The topics they want to learn about seem lowbrow, the stuff they want to do appears to be mindless and repetitive, and the way they want to do it is performative, messy, and loud.

There’s always a balance — kids need structure as much as they need freedom. The structured part is easy for adults; it’s the unstructured stuff that takes some getting used to. If it’s so annoying you almost can’t stand it, you’re probably on the right track. And so are the kids.