The Conservatory Piano Course would not exist without certain convictions. The first is my conviction that, as a teacher, if I am to take credit for students who succeed, then I must also take responsibility for those who fail. Students are failing when they progress slowly, practice irregularly and poorly, seek recreation rather than learning, need remedial work, and finally, quit lessons. Students, parents, lack of motivation or lack of talent cannot be blamed for poor results.
This conviction stems from the notion that it is possible to overcome the difficulties brought to lessons by students, and that their performance is shaped more by the teacher’s expectation than by students’ virtues or aptitudes.

These underlying convictions caused me to believe that what I was doing, or not doing, made students succeed or fail. But not until I made a resolute decision to attempt change did I come up with solutions found through a process of documenting results and weeding out methods that were ineffective. Once everything that was ineffective was eliminated, the remaining material resulted in constant progress, at a surprising rate.

This material evolved into a course that was further refined as it was used with thousands of students and by all the teachers of the Hovland Conservatory of Music. The school turned out to be the perfect testing ground for developing a piano course, because feedback from teachers provided a faster means of correcting the method than would ever be possible with only one teacher using it.
The results of thirty years of experience, ten of which were spent in experimenting and research, is a systematic method which works for all students, not just the ideal ones. For it is the students that fail academically and technically that are the best teachers of teachers. These delicate students are the ones that show when teaching is incorrect, because they are the ones that are unable to make order out of disorder. Eliminating the methods that cause students to fail also results in better and faster progress.

Armed with a successful method, the problems that formerly required tenacity and persistence to overcome have been eliminated naturally. No longer do teachers need to give lengthy explanations, nor do students ask questions for clarification. Students are so actively learning the musically interesting piano literature that they no longer seek to play popular music at the lesson. Taught according to objective criteria, students do not need help from parents in order to practice correctly at home because they are prepared more fully at the lesson. And finally, basic technical skills that previously required perpetual correction are resolved easily using the means for development contained in the manual. The natural result of using this course is an eventful and productive lesson experience.

The reason this course is able to produce such consistent and progressive results is:

1. It follows a natural progression, which is the order in which ideas evolved over the course of the historical development of music. This ensures that only historically-credible facts will be taught, rather than the modern teaching tricks invented over the years for teaching young children (see Correcting Modern Teaching Errors, page 20 in the Teachers Manual) and that they are taught in the order that is most understandable.

2. It teaches proactively, which means to teach students to read and play correctly the first time. A proactive approach anticipates and prevents problems before the arise, by putting into students’ minds what they need to know before they come to erroneous conclusions, and by training accepted piano technique before students choose incorrect ones. A reactive approach means to assign a piece for practice, then to assess at the next lesson what needs attention, adapting to the student’s problems after they have developed.
The advantages of a proactive approach over a reactive approach are many, with these four being the most important:
• First of all, the course eliminates an enormous amount of wasted time and effort spent trying to correct bad habits and thought patterns.
• Second, it greatly reduces the need for adapting curriculum to the student by narrowing the natural range of variation between students. This allows teachers to focus on accomplishing the objectives of lessons, rather than on striving to analyze each student to see what they need.
• Third, the course makes students enjoy lessons more because they experience repeated success and very little correction, and this in turn discourages premature quitting of lessons.
• Fourth, using this approach, teachers acquire more control of the lesson and are not so dependent upon their students and parents to achieve success professionally or to make the job of teaching satisfying work.