A Song Inside

It never even occurred to me to take music at school. I dropped out as soon as I could. I can’t remember a thing about my music lessons, except for a brief, messy period, attempting the cello. Otherwise it’s all a blank.

So how do I find myself here today, gaining my greatest pleasure from writing songs.

I don’t know precisely, except that I alway loved music. I just didn’t like a class called “music”. Something wrong there, I think.

I’m grateful that there are still teachers in my memory (particularly one English teacher called David Bennett) who rose above the constraints of an education system that seemed, and still seems, to drain the life, not always, but often, out of the very stuff that children were born to do.

Learning. Creating. And finding joy in doing so.

I hope my grandchildren hang on to their passion for life. I hope they discover their future sources of pleasure as they grow. I think they might just do that, and I’m sure that there are still teachers who rise above the constraints. But sadly I think all of this will be despite, and not because of, the school system.

Maybe that can change, and there are a lot of new challenges facing the educational world, and the wider world, that may force the issue. But we need to find a way to make 'that wonderful sounding phrase “child centred learning”, which has been around for a long while, become a reality and not merely an empty slogan.

Children aren’t empty vessels, needing to be filled with the Right Stuff that only we adults know about. They almost always have a song, a light or a purpose, already welling up inside of them. They just need a little encouraging support to nurture it, and a platform to let it shine.