It’s good to be back.
A great deal of my summer was unavoidably spent dreading the task of collecting column ideas. In between an exhausting adventure of participating in four music festivals throughout the U.S. and Brazil, I must confess the aftermath of my “ideas for columns” list didn’t leave me as many options as I once hoped.
A few of the comments on my last spring semester column warning me “I am a musician and not a social-political analyst” also haunted me in the last few months.
Surely musicians couldn’t have opinions. We only know about the subtle nature and passion of musical elements.
I dealt with this criticism and then decided to bash a social disease emblematic of the music environment. It tends to also spread its germs to all aspects of society: prodigy kids and the stupid people that praise them.
There’s nothing more disturbing to me than an 8-year-old girl playing a Paganini concerto or a one-and-a-half year-old baby reading and pointing states out on a U.S. map. Why is there an obscene desire for children to act like adults and exceed in tasks they should enjoy performing only decades later?
Oh, but it’s so cute! Look at the little boy, how he can speak like a grown-up. Or even the cute baby girl who can dance like she’s in an MTV hip-hop video.
While weak parenthood sees redemption in these things, I see sessions of psychoanalysis and years of misfit ahead. Or, to put it more simply, it’s likely a precocious learner in childhood will not necessarily be a precocious doer later in life.
And that’s OK.
For some twisted reasons, there’s an entire establishment of values out there feeding on the cruel need for younger and younger “achievers.” Having young businessmen, successful artists and professionals at the age of 18 is not enough anymore.
They have to be children.
Little children.
Take for example the remake of “Karate Kid.” If you think it is cool teaching martial arts to a 10-year-old so he can beat the hell out of bullies in school, may I suggest you don’t have kids yet.
From a very early age, when I was among musicians and music schools, I can remember a couple of teachers dying to show to the rest of the class my perfect pitch skills — at the age of 5. And then how the director of the music school in my hometown wanted me to join the adult orchestra at age 13.
Terrifying.
Now, after hitting my head against some walls, I realize it’s practice, study and determination which will give me a solid career. And, because of this, I much prefer seeing a 70-year-old violinist playing the hell out of a Beethoven concerto than a child who would probably rather be playing hide and seek or PlayStation 3.
This single topic was the subject of this year’s Association for Psychological Science convention, where author Malcolm Gladwell called the prodigy children craze  “an article of faith in our society that great ability in any given field is invariably manifested early on, that to be precocious at something is important because it’s a predictor of future success.” Gladwell himself was considered to be a promising runner.
I hope society can limit the wonder of children to what they do best — innocence and playfulness. To himself Jesus called them. Not because they could read, play the violin, run or recite the alphabet backwards.
He asked us to be like children, and it is because they’re only children.
Marcelo Vieira is 32-year-old jazz cello graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on twitter @TDR_Mvieira.
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Contact Marcelo Vieira [email protected]