A Rat Is a Rat Is a Rat

While writing my last post about my company's truly horrible curriculum, I discovered more kinds of errors embedded in it. 

4) Piss Poor Sequencing: You know what is a bad idea in teaching, guaranteed to fail? Scheduling 2 weeks for your second graders to learn Home on the Range, not singing the song for 7 weeks, then having them play a complicated instrumental accompaniment while singing Home on the Range in Week 10. How many students do you think will actually remember the song? Yeah, none. Even the smart, native English speaking 8 year-olds cannot retain unused information that long.

5) Giant Knowledge Gaps:  One of the most useful pieces of knowledge music classes should impart are facts about the instruments of orchestra.  Does my company's curriculum cover this incredibly important topic in a systematic fashion?  Short answer: No.  Long answer:  Hell, no.  Every third or fourth lesson there is a random listening activity which purports to be for learning the instruments.  When I say random listening, I do mean random.  Disney songs, pop songs, truly obscure classical pieces.  Peter and the Wolf and Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra are conspicuous in their absence.  Most of the kids we serve are poor.  They aren't going to the symphony's young persons concert.  Yet knowing the difference between instruments is useful common knowledge.

So other than griping at length, what am I doing about it?  Slowly, ever so quietly, changing things I teach.  This year, I put in a coherent recorder scope and sequence.  Next year I am going to implement a workable music literacy strand.  After that, units on instruments and composers.

But it means I'm swimming against the current.  How long can I keep it up before I'm caught?  What will it do to my psyche, having to lie and obfuscate so much?

Stay tuned.