Ignition!

I have just finished reading Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, and I was especially interested in his idea of there being, in the learning journey, points of igniting desire to commit to deep practice of skills – Coyle says that along with master coaching this leads to being an expert of whichever discipline is involved. This ignition could also be termed as intrinsic motivation. We used this term a lot in our discussions and writing during the Fellowship, but we didn’t have time to really unpack what it means.

Coyle cites the following factors as tinderboxes waiting to ignite a passion for ‘deep practice’:

1) Having an expectation and understanding of commitment involved: Gary McPherson studied students new to music in 1997:

“We instinctively think of each new student as a blank slate, but the ideas they bring to that first lesson are probably far more important than anything a teacher can do, or any amount of practice. It’s all about their perception of self. At some point very early on they had a crystallizing experience that brings the idea to the fore that says, I am a musician. That idea is like a snowball rolling downhill”.

2) Role models

3) Sense of belonging to a group 

4) Sense of danger or lack of safety - dissatisfaction leads to efforts to change our situation or the pressure of impending accountability such as a concert or exam

5) Being the underdog

6) Praise of effort rather than achievement

Daniel Pink is his book Drive adds the following:

7) Autonomy – Being able to choose your own direction

8) Mastery – Satisfaction of getting better at something 

9) Purpose - this could be personal “I want to be the first person who goes to college in my family” or seeking a change in the lives of others “I empathise with this person’s situation and I want to do something to help”.

I’m writing this at a Lutheran missionary hospital in Tanzania. As the hospital approaches its 60^th anniversary, you can’t help but consider the ‘deep practice’ of Norwegian missionaries who built the best equipped hospital in the country, in the middle of the bush, surmounting cultural, logistical, geographical, financial and linguistic barriers, and who have sponsored children from primary school age to have them return to the hospital as surgeons. I’m not sure you could even grasp a sense of the commitment that would be needed from those early years to now, although there was and is a sense of danger in terms of providing decent medical services to a catchment area of 2 million people. It is their sense of purpose that has ignited their commitment and perseverance in this task.

I have one more point to add:

10) Personal relevancy – searching and learning about yourself leads to personal satisfaction, relaxation and often emotional and spiritual uplifting.

 

The El Sistema program in Venezuela has been able to create a culture that ignites many of the above:

1) Understanding of expectations - Students see the progression from paper violins to to youth orchestra level in the nucleo and the daily commitment to the program.

2) Role models - Along with the inspiring figure of Dr Abreu, Dudamel is the hero of many musicians in Venezuela.

3) Sense of belonging - Students go through their years in the nucleo belonging to the ensemble, and the Venezuela jacket is their uniform showing that they belong to a greater group of the Venezuelan people.

4) Sense of danger  - not just a feeling of unease on the streets of Caracas, but that the music education available to them at the nucleos is not found elsewhere and is therefore to be treasured and appreciated. Some facilities are barely suitable for their purpose but they soldier on regardless. Students are also prepared for a performance shortly after starting to play their instrument.

5) Underdog – Venezuela has no strong history of classical ensembles or a place in the classical world compared to the cultural bastions of Europe and the US.

6) Tochar y luchar – 'fight and play' rather than you’ve either got the X factor or not.

7) Autonomy - One aspect of motivation that El Sistema may not be encouraging; there doesn’t seem to be much choice of instrument and repertoire, and there is lack of opportunities to study other musical disciplines such as composition and improvisation. There also doesn’t seem to be much flexibility in terms of how much you want to commit to the program, the daily rigorous rehearsals and regular performances, and there is not uniform access to auditions, more advanced ensembles and touring opportunities throughout the country.

8) Mastery - Many El Sistema commentators remark on the sheer brilliance of students, the joy apparent in performances and how many hours they are willing to commit to practice. Being invited to take over the Salzburg Festival must say something about the excellence of the musicians in the program.

9) Purpose - The corporate mission that music belongs to the community and exists to serve others.

10) Personal relevancy - Eric Booth: "El Sistema conductors and teachers invest far more instructional time in describing sections in terms of stories, or giving visceral images for a note or a phrase, than do traditional conductors. This enables the musicians to make stronger emotional and physical connections to the music. This investment in emotional connection fuels the Sistema teaching truth that “passion provokes precision”—meaning that a young artist’s emotional investment leads to mastery more reliably over the long haul than technical drill; indeed, the hunger to express more fully drives the improvement and creates motivation for technical solutions more than compliance or a generalized hunger for improvement."

Maybe the fact that El Sistema reaches 9 out of 10 'ignition' points explains why so many people devote their time to the program, both in and out of Venezuela.