We hear a lot these days about the importance of teaching critical thinking. And rightfully so. The ability to analyze, evaluate, and make sense of complex ideas is essential. But I recently watched a YouTube video and it reminded me of something that gets left behind in this push for higher-order thinking: you can’t think critically about what you don’t know.
In other words, literacy matters. And in music, that means understanding the fundamentals like rhythms, intervals, articulations, cadences, harmonic function, form, style, terminology, etc. They’re the foundation from students can develop opinions that are anchored and not floating freely without the weight of understanding behind them.
Knowledge + Thinking = Literacy
True literacy is a blend of two things: The retention of key information, and the ability to make connections and interpret meaning from it.
You need both. Critical thinking doesn’t replace remembering, it requires it. A student might be able to articulate a beautiful emotional response to a piece of music, but without recognizing that it’s in major or minor, or identifying and being able to articulate modulation they hear, or understanding the phrasing, they’re only accessing one layer of what the music is saying.
Try This “Listen and Label” exercise:
Play short musical excerpts. Ask students to identify ONE basic element like key (major/minor), texture (homophonic/polyphonic), articulation (smooth/detached) etc. Once they’re comfortable, extend the activity with longer excerpts and guide them to label multiple elements at once.
Music is a system of patterns and relationships. The more a student can recall and recognize, the deeper their understanding becomes. And I believe they become all the more expressive too.
Are We Teaching Students to Hold Knowledge Anymore?
I sometimes wonder if education today has swung too far toward the open-ended. It feels like we emphasise questioning over knowing, process over content, interpretation over memory. And while there’s incredible value in inquiry-based learning, I also notice something concerning: more and more students seem unable to stay focused long enough to retain information. They expect instant answers. They’re uncomfortable with delayed gratification.
And in music, that’s a problem. Because music demands both patience and accumulation. You can’t shortcut your way into understanding polyphony, or sight-read in solfège, or improvise with harmonic awareness unless you’ve done the slow and honestly difficult work of learning, recalling and applying.
The Mind Can Only Connect What It Holds
I’m not saying we need to return rote drills and rigid fact tests. But we do need to re-centre the importance of mental discipline, knowledge retention, and the deliberate building of understanding over time.
Design a “knowledge anchor” moment into every rehearsal. Pause after teaching a concept (e.g., dotted rhythms or suspensions) and ask students to:
1. Say what it is
2. Show where it appeared in the music
3. Find where it might come up next
Teaching music reminds me that meaningful analysis is only possible when there’s something in the student’s mind to analyze. Their success depends not just on how creatively they think, but how much they know, and how well they can retrieve it.
Critical thinking isn’t enough. Not without memory nor structure. And definitely not without content to think about in the first place.