An Open Letter To Dr. Gordon

Edwin E. Gordon, primary author of Music Learning Theory

Edwin E. Gordon, primary author of Music Learning Theory

Dr. Gordon and associates’ research on how children learn music addresses many of my questions on how music communicates and is meaningful to us and how I can help myself and others to gain fluency in music as if it were a language. The research gets into the nuts and bolts of music learning processes. Nevertheless, my questions that it answers are fundamental life questions because I learn how to live life more fully through the interactions with the other that music provides. Art is life, and life is art, as Bakhtin would agree. I am so grateful to Dr. Gordon!

–Carla J. Seibert

The Ways Children Learn Music

Dear Dr. Gordon,

You know, of course, that your many students all over the world are thinking of you, and we trust that you are receiving the best of care. But perhaps we haven’t told you often enough how greatly your work and your thinking have guided our teaching.

Because of you, we teach with direction, purpose, and logic.

Because of you, we design and revise tests and rating scales with confidence.

Because of you, we guide our students through the stages of music babble, rather than plunge them into formal instruction before they are ready.

Because of you, we joyfully encourage our students to create and improvise (even as the students themselves have no idea that we diligently prepared them for such tasks.)

Because of you, we know what to say to parents who ask why we do what we do.

You have been the guiding force in our…

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