This is a question that many parents want to know the answer to. As a piano teacher, parents often ask, "Teacher, does my child have a musical talent?" ? Many parents believe that once a child has talent, the future is equal to success. A "gifted" child is like a layer of gold, and it is different from ordinary people from now on. In fact, what is talent? How to measure talents? Generally speaking, can talent really "promise" a successful future for children? What is musical talent? When a child is superior to his peers in some way, we often like to add words like "genius" or "prodigy". Indeed, some people "seem" to have higher potential than the average person in some aspects, which may be what we call "talent" or "outstanding talent". If this outstanding ability is manifested in music, it is "musical talent" or "musical talent". As far as the history of human music is concerned, Mozart can be said to be the first in the world's recognized music prodigy list, and the status of prodigy can't be better. According to historical records, Mozart could play the piano at the age of 4, and wrote his first work "Andante in C Major" at the age of 5 years and 3 months. Although it is only 10, it shows his special talent in composition. Published "Playing Wu Qu" at the age of seven; At the age of eight, he wrote a symphony; At the age of twelve, he finished his first opera. I don't need to go into details about his later achievements. These early outstanding performances are staggering. It is precisely because Mozart's genius is unique that there seems to be no more suitable word than "musical prodigy". What is "musical talent"? I still can't find a definition and I don't have a complete answer to describe it. If children fully show their interest in music, they can naturally hum melodies or dance their bodies when listening to music, have a good voice and excellent intonation, can easily play the melodies they hear on musical instruments, have excellent hearing and sound sense, have strong visual spectrum ability or memorizing ability, have flexible playing skills, have a keen sense of rhythm and harmony, have creative interest and inspiration, and sing or play. There is no certain face shape or standard to prove musical talent. Indeed, the innate potential of human beings is so mysterious. Although scientists and biologists try to find the answer to this infinite mysterious force with limited scientific knowledge, human potential is still a very profound mystery that is difficult to explain. In contrast, most research reports on "human potential" still focus on the psychological level. Educators are also very interested in human potential, and various topics related to talent have been discussed many times. How does human potential come from, or is it inherited from parents? Is there an upper limit to potential? If so, where is the upper limit? And talent potential can be measured by methods? Is talent hereditary? Most people may agree with genetics that children look like their parents because of genetic inheritance. However, are children's talents, interests, personalities and talents all inherited? Recently, I revisited the movie Amadeus. Mozart's extraordinary musical talent in the film shocked me again, but Mozart's children in the film caused me another kind of curiosity and doubt. If Mozart's children inherited his father's musical talent, why is there no ink on this prodigy in the history of music? If Beethoven, known as the "saint of music", also married and had children, would his children be outstanding musicians? In the history of music, there are some musicians with the same father and son, such as J. S. Bach (Bach was born in a musical family, and his four children also engaged in music with him), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father (leopold mozart), and the famous Austrian waltz family-Strauss and his son (the most famous of which is johann strauss). But we know that more musicians are born in non-musical families, and even many of them are opposed by their fathers to take the road of music. Why do they "suddenly" become musicians instead of inheriting their parents' talents in law, politics or medicine? The reason why there was a class concept in the previous society was that the royal nobles wanted to keep their descendants' power status and pure blood forever, but they also wanted to prevent the middle and lower classes from usurping the throne. The ability to deliberately mislead people is a hereditary concept. The shoemaker's children can only be shoemakers from generation to generation, the slave's children will always be slaves, and the noble's children can enjoy prosperity forever without hard work. It took hundreds of years for mankind to break the wrong idea, but now it is facing the problem of education, but it is still stuck in the same quagmire. Isn't it ironic? I think people's genetic factors certainly have their influence, but they are not absolute. Perhaps it should be said that although musicians have more musical potential genes, their descendants only have a "high probability" to inherit this potential gene. The reason why a shoemaker is a shoemaker is not necessarily that he has no other talents, but that the environment in which he grew up lacks opportunities for development. So anyone can give birth to children with various potential genes, so I think heredity should be just a matter of "probability". Can talent be measured? Maybe one day in the future, when every baby is born, except height? How much do you weigh Maybe we can add "IQ"? But is this good? For more than half a century, human beings have developed dozens of evaluation tools of "intelligence test" in an attempt to measure human intelligence, resulting in the so-called "IQ". Among them, some testing tools have been widely adopted by countries all over the world, and even used by many educational institutions as a reference for admission evaluation. But can they really measure the so-called talent or potential accurately? Intelligence test may measure how high a person's IQ is, but it is only a numerical value and still can't tell us what the subject's real ability is. As far as music is concerned, there is only a musical aptitude test at present, and there is no real musical talent test. Most of the musical aptitude tests are designed by psychologists, and some of them are designed by music educators themselves. For example, Edwin E. Gordon (a famous American music educator) designed a set of musical aptitude test model and analysis standard. The entrance examination of some music classes/departments often includes the musical aptitude test, but so far, the use of these test methods is still limited to regions, and there is no unified and widely recognized test standard. The results of the sexual orientation test may tell us whether the child shows interest and inclination in music, but it cannot prove whether the child is a musical genius. In view of parents' desire for success, they flaunt all kinds of strange examination methods, and even claim that children's talents can be measured and their future achievements can be predicted by fingerprints, but do you believe it? The values measured by intelligence test or sexual orientation test may be of reference value, but it is impossible to "diagnose" a person's complete face by just one test. Unfortunately, many great scientists, such as Edison, Newton and Einstein, were born before the development of intelligence tests, so we never know how smart they really are. Interestingly, Edison and Einstein were also regarded as students with learning disabilities by teachers when they were children. Smetny & In his book How to Teach Your Gifted Children, Winks said: "Talent has many characteristics, which cannot be measured by intelligence tests;" There are many very talented children who may not get surprising results when they take the exam. Can talent really "promise" a successful future for children? More notably, the book also points out that some reports on gifted children find that "intelligence" does not mean "talent", and ordinary people often confuse "talent" with "precocity". Some children perform better than children of average age, or show superior ability earlier, because they are precocious rather than really talented. The cruel fact is that precocious children will be caught up by other children later. However, many talented children may not get ahead early, or they may be reflected in their excellent academic performance. Many proverbs that have been circulating in China for a long time, such as "when you are young, it is not necessarily good", "when you are late" or "when you are late", are not also explaining this truth? These situations are just as the author said: "There is no certain track for the development of talents. When your child shows no signs of developing earlier than usual, it doesn't mean that he has no talent; Moreover, children who show special abilities very early may not necessarily have talents in the future. Given proper encouragement, children's potential will be continuously developed. There are many different tendencies and differences in human potential. Perhaps in our imagination, people with more musical talent or potential will certainly walk more smoothly and easily than others in learning music and achieving higher musical achievements. Is it really easy? I dare not say, after all, no one can succeed without hard work, and even qualified people need hard work to realize their ideals. Is it fair and objective to say that we often measure a person's intelligence by his external achievements, so as to judge whether a person has talent or not? More appropriately, whether you are really talented or not can not be decided by one or two tests, but also requires long-term observation, which may take years, decades or even longer. And when a person finally succeeds, can you really tell how much is talent? What's the percentage of effort? In fact, everyone only saw the successful results and forgot the process of hard work behind them. They only saw the calm and elegant performance on the stage, but they never imagined that the performer was locked in the practice room because of several technical obstacles. Exquisite performance on the stage brought the sweat of countless efforts from the audience. Therefore, success can not be easily achieved by talent alone. What's more, a person's talent does not necessarily have all the advantages. Personal efforts and the cultivation of the acquired environment are the most important factors to create the so-called "successful genius". Imagine that a person has excellent talent, but he has no environment to cultivate him, or he is unwilling to work hard. Can his talent be brought into play? Only the fate of being buried. E Gordon ·CRME put forward the viewpoint of "Heredity &:Environment": Musical talent is the combination of "congenital and acquired", and both are indispensable. Even children with high musical talent will eventually lose their potential if they are not properly influenced by the early environment. Everyone comes into this world, that is, they are born with the highest potential to achieve every achievement. Even if some people have higher potential than others in the field of music, there is no guarantee that they will give full play to the greatest achievements of this potential, which depends on the acquired environment and education. Howard gardner, another famous psychologist who advocates the theory of multiple intelligences, holds the same view. He believes that musical ability is an independent intelligence among many intelligences possessed by human beings, but not everyone can get the opportunity or environment to develop this ability. This also illustrates another myth. Many people may think that students in music classes/departments must be people with strong musical ability. But it should be more correct to say that students in music classes/departments only have more environment and opportunities to develop their musical ability than ordinary people. Perhaps after examination and screening, the proportion of them with higher musical potential may be more, but it doesn't mean that other people who are not in the music class/department don't have the same or higher musical potential, just don't have opportunities and opportunities. Musical ability will not be different because of appearance, gender, race, education, social status and economic conditions, or even hearing (special attention: it has nothing to do with sense of sound). People with absolute pitch are really easy to identify in the learning process, especially "pitch", but it has no decisive influence on the development of the overall musical performance. There is no decisive relationship between IQ and musical potential. Heredity may cause individual differences in musical ability (as explained earlier), but the acquired environment, physical coordination and flexibility, personal accumulated experience and, most importantly, one's own efforts have a more critical impact on music learning. Have you given your child enough nutrition? In the previous article, I have explained that no one is without "musical cells", and every child can learn music, regardless of his personal potential. As for what kind of musical achievements a child can achieve in the future, it depends on his own ability and personal efforts. No matter how talented you are, you can't succeed without continuous efforts. Parents and educators should try their best to provide a suitable music environment for their children and improve their parenting conditions, instead of focusing on learning and proving whether their children are gifted or not. Whether a child has talent or not is an existing fact and will not be changed by artificial identification. Therefore, actively stimulating children's potential is the right way. I sincerely hope that after reading this article, parents will stop obsessing over the question of "talent" or "endowment" and be eager to get an answer. Don't be complacent or discouraged even if the answer given by the teacher or tester is yes or no. Moreover, based on the above analysis, the expert's opinion may still be wrong! We should all think, "Have I given my children enough nutrition?" ? It's too late to change the natural part, and it's even more regrettable if the acquired part is out of tune. Today's children have achieved something. If they can't continue to work hard, no one can guarantee that they will be so good in the future. On the contrary, if they are willing to study, falling behind now does not mean falling behind forever. Before reaching the finish line, there are endless possibilities.