Originally written on Medium: July 12, 2016

I have always believed that a crucial driving force behind personal growth is curiosity — our inherent desire to understand or achieve what we thought was impossible. Curiosity has this incredible ability to push us beyond our limits. We want to top ourselves, we want to know more about what we don’t know, we want to try again and again.

"I see you" - curious child

In contrast, we also have a tendency to become complacent. In my opinion, complacency occurs when we lack the drive to keep pushing ourselves. We think, “That’s good enough”, and at that point, we have settled and allowed our growth to be stunted.

I see complacency in my students all too often, and as educators, we have a job to motivate our kids to get to the next level. They are unaware of what they can accomplish and they lack the desire to find out.

On top of that, our reaction to complacency is completely backwards. When a students stops pushing themselves, parents try to push them through tougher pieces or stricter lessons. We have to understand though that we cannot force motivation upon our kids.

I asked the listeners of my podcast to respond to my episode on complacency with their own stories of complacency. There seemed to be a common theme of how they overcame it — a change in mindset.

The first way complacency happens in my students is through the beginner mindset. I define this beginner mindset as the view where the students appear to be complacent because they don’t know that there is more to achieve. They learn notes, but they are not articulating, using dynamics, or shaping the music. Because of complacency, their potential is cut short. The fix here is simple — expose them to what they can achieve. It’s essentially giving the students a goal or sense of direction with their learning.

The next way is more difficult to aid. It’s when the student understands that there is more to achieve, but they lack the curiosity to achieve it.

A wise man once told me that you can never teach something to someone who doesn’t want to learn it. I agree with his statement, but I also think it’s possible to make him or her want to learn. A student of mine around 12 was complacent in her music. She would do “what was good enough” and would rarely push herself to go beyond the notes. Being 12 and having played piano for a year or so, she knew what possibilities were out there and she knew she could achieve them. The reason why she didn’t was because she wasn’t curious enough.

I spent the next year trying to help her out of this complacent manner with conversations that sparked questions. While working on a piece, we would say, “What if we played everything at forte? What if everything was legato?” It was shifting her mindset from “that’s good enough” to “let’s be curious”.

Now, I might be biased, but she has improved significantly. She has become more expressive with her music and has started to connect with it. All it took was getting her to want to learn.

A complacent student does not need us to force motivation upon them through higher expectations. A complacent student’s focus should not purely be on dynamics or articulation either. What they need is to learn how to be curious. That will fuel independence in their education.

Once they have that desire to push themselves and truly understand their music, they will have become developed people. And so, as educators, we have an obligation to instill curiosity within our students. If we cannot do that, then we are doing a huge injustice to the world.

JT