Reflections on Yehudi Menuhin and on teaching

Edited: November 22, 2025, 11:55 AM · I have recommended the book 'Conversations with Menuhin' before on this site, but at the risk of seeming repetitive I am doing so again. It's a series of conversations with Robin Daniels, in which Menuhin talks about his life and on becoming a violinist; about music, diet, politics, schools, and particularly his own music school and his philosophy of teaching and learning. As a schoolteacher, now retired, I often drew ideas and wisdom from Menuhin, even though it may have seemed slightly off-field, as I taught literature, language and English to speakers of other languages.

One of the emerging trends that I was happy to escape on retirement was an insistence that planning and teaching should move in lockstep. This is partly an industrialization of the classroom, and it would have horrified Yehudi Menuhin. The idea, false but powerful, is that there is a 'best way' to teach, which can be universalized and applied by all teachers. Another thing driving it is that school managers are perhaps unable to help struggling or weak teachers, and therefore prefer to apply a blanket method. This is an error, as the often younger teachers who are struggling are desperately hoping for some strengthening and sympathetic guidance.

School managers, I feel, sometimes fail to recognize that there are aspects of teaching that make it an art, or a craft. The material a teacher works with is not all the same - kids vary hugely and must be understood to be individuals. Neither are teachers all the same. Robots and assembly lines have no place in the classroom.

A reflection on Michaelangelo's 'prisoners' could be part of teacher training: recognizing that Michaelangelo saw each individual future sculpture in the uniform blocks of marble could help new teachers to visualize the potential within each student. So often on this site we discuss the endless variety of our instruments: a Stradivari violin is different from a Guarneri; and Agustin Hadelech finds different things in performance of Mendelssohn's violin concerto to Zino Francescatti.

Schoolteachers should be nurtured in their training and careers to think and work in a similar discourse, and in fact, their salary structures should be adjusted to reflect that the real work and the minor miracles happen almost unseen and behind classroom doors, rather than in board meetings, curriculum authorities, ministries of education or senior management councils.

Menuhin's ideals are applicable to all levels of schooling, and perhaps particularly to the formative early years. My hope is that music teachers, so increasingly undermined and undervalued (at least in the UK), can help to push against the tide, with their creative comrades in science, art, physical education and languages.

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Reflections on Yehudi Menuhin and on teaching

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