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Opponents say the Suzuki Method stifles individuality; proponents disagree

In addition to the master-disciple and mother-child relationship, the Suzuki Method adopts elements of the sempai-kohai practice. The attendance of advanced students at sessions on beginners' pieces not only means that, all through their Suzuki education, students reinforce the basics, but creates a system of peer-support in which the younger children learn from the more experienced. The group lesson inculcates respect: in Suzuki's words, "by listening to and complementing the other players, we come to understand the idea of coexistence, we learn that it is not about winning over or losing."

Developing an ability to merge in playing the violin reflects the positive way of obtaining compliance which Ruth Benedict noted as being central to Japanese child-rearing. Without authoritarian pressure, but by proper example and praise, the group is a barometer of proper action which, in the Suzuki pedagogy at least, is never ostrasizing.

While these practices may make staunch individualists shudder and say there is no place for self-expression in such a pedagogy, the Suzuki Method seems to prove otherwise by offering an alternative model to pure individualism. Solo concerts by Suzuki kids demonstrate a great deal of individual musical maturity and almost precocious self-expression through music. There is space for them to flourish in the Suzuki Method. But the important point is that the fostering of musical geniuses is only a consequence, not the aim, of the method. The children who do not push the training of intuition that far and do not become professional musicians will have picked up from their Suzuki days a moral education.