Stop Obsessing Over Talent — Everyone Can Sing

A Hungarian film titled “<a href="http://www.singshortfilm.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Sing</a>” won the 2017 Oscar for best short film. “Sing” tells the story of young Zsófi, who joins a renowned children’s choir at her elementary school where “everyone is welcome.” Soon after joining, Zsófi is told by her teacher Erika not to sing, but only mouth the words. On the face of it, she accepts her teacher’s request stoically. But later in the movie, her anguish and pain become obvious, when she reluctantly tells her best friend what happened. The movie goes on to reveal that Zsófi isn’t the only choir member who has been given these hurtful instructions. The choir teacher’s defense is, “If everybody sings we can’t be the best.” I have been a professor of music education for the past 28 years, and I wish I could say that the story of a music teacher asking a student not to sing is unusual. Unfortunately, I have heard the story many times. In fact, research shows that many adults who think of themselves as “unmusical” were <a href="http://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/1105940/whidden-paper.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">told as children</a> that they couldn’t or shouldn’t sing by teachers and family members. <a href="https://betterhumans.pub/stop-obsessing-over-talent-everyone-can-sing-2e9c5b24a2be">Click Here</a>