wrote:
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Eh, I'm not a fan of group lessons on piano. You
don't get near enough attention, and the early years are
really important for hand position. It's *really* *really*
hard to break bad habits in hand position.

This is why I'm not really a fan of violin Suzuki instruction, or of
taking only the school orchestra classes and not also lessons from a
private instructor.

I would estimate, *especially* with beginning students, that I say
something or other about hand position about every five minutes while
I'm teaching private violin lessons. The same frequency holds in my
lessons with my private teacher, and I've been playing the violin for a
quarter of a century. At least some of that is ongoing correction of
residual habits from when I was 11, although violinists do talk about
hand position absolutely all the time as well. :-)

;-) I think that issues vary somewhat by instrument,
but it always helps to have good instruction. The boys did
spring piano festival about a month ago, and it's always
an eye-opening experience for me. An astonishing number
of students were *very* ill prepared, had terrible hand
position, and so forth. Now, a poorly prepared student
or a student with poor technique isn't *always* the fault
of the teacher, but there are clearly many teachers who
either don't place a priority on good technique or don't
have effective means of teaching good technique. DS1 has
started percussing in band at school and I don't have him
in private lessons yet. However, he is actually getting
good instruction at school and is being taught good
technique. We'll likely do some lessons this summer
to get his feet wet, and if he keeps it up, he'll start
lessons a bit later.

Best wishes,
Ericka