A Rose-Colored Mind

"Orff and Keetman became the vehicles to express a deep need in Western culture, the need to rejoin all that had been torn asunder by the specialist nature of European civilization. The angst of contemporary alienation springs from the deliberate practice of isolating heart from mind from body, child from adult from elder, music from poetry from movement. The deep wellspring of the Schulwerk [Orff's method] is the invitation to drink from its healing waters and rediscover the intrinsic wholeness we once knew." -- Doug Goodkin from Sing, Play and Dance

What a load of horse shit!

Let's start with that doozy of a first sentence.  The "specialist nature of European civilization" has to refer to the scientific method, which seeks to break down observable phenomena into explainable parts. Specialization is required because the universe is vastly complicated and our lives are finite.  Here's the deal though: NOTHING has been "torn asunder" by the scientific method or rational thought. In fact quite a lot -- say the whole modern world (including the wealth and leisure time to teach music) -- has been created by it. Without the specialist nature of science, we would still be living the poor, nasty, harsh, and brutal lives of the middle ages and ancient times. The technology provided by modern science gives anyone with the slightest bit of interest the most powerful music making tools known to man. What's the point of going backwards?

Moving on. Most people hardly feel alienated in the modern world. Millions really enjoy it, truth be known. Billions would cut off their own left arms to be allowed in the club. This angst the second sentence speaks of is highly over-reported. Why? Because it sells and makes good television. There is no deliberate practice of isolating heart from mind from body. It is literally impossible, for the "heart" is really emotions which are generated in the brain, along with the "mind" or logical thought. Both of these are inextricably linked to the state of the body, which provides all the stimulus and physical materials the brain uses. In today's world with umpteen kinds of psychology and neuroscience, we are just beginning to understanding how deep the connections go. With regards to separating child from adult from elder, children today have plenty of interaction with adults. No one is being segregated what with mandatory schooling, after school and weekend activities, community service, and goodness knows what else. In fact I would say there is even more mixing of generations today, as children of yesteryear were frequently ordered to work/amuse themselves while adults did their own work/business. Lastly separating music from movement is overblown as well. Ancient musics had many purposes, some utilized movement, and others did not. We can move without hearing music, why can't we listen to music without moving?

"...drink from its healing waters and rediscover the intrinsic wholeness we once knew." Here's a little insight: The past was never as pretty as the Romantics painted it. I doubt anyone anywhere in the past, aside from a handful of lucky Buddhist monks, experienced any kind of "intrinsic wholeness." They were instead plagued with angst and worry about surviving until the next day, week, month, season, and year. Moments of happiness and contentment back then were few and far between. Most thoughts were mundane and depressing to modern eyes. The author is trying to invoke an idealized past history that never existed, and no amount of wishing can conjure. Just like Dewey and Rousseau and all the other well-intentioned but not-so-smart educationalists.

Orff Schmorff

One of the all-time, hall-of-fame music pedagogues is a bloke named Carl Orff. He has a music education philosophy (don't you dare call it a method) named after him. (He was also a Nazi sympathizer who stayed in Germany during WWII, but I'll let that go for now.) During the summer music teachers can spend thousands of dollars on training courses to become certified in the Orff's method philosophy. They can additional spend hundreds of dollars on books (I have lots on my shelf) detailing how a music teacher can apply Orff's method philosophy to his classes.

One such book is Play, Sing and Dance by Douglas Goodkin, a highly respected Orff pedagogue who earns thousands of dollars each year teaching training courses to well-intentioned music teachers. I am wending my way through this collection of articles (it isn't even a real book) and found some great nuggets.

• Carl Orff never actually taught children!
• The Orff philosophy of music education is not supposed to be explainable!
• But at the same time Orff teaching has plenty of processes, models, and principles.
• Carl Orff's idea of music education is an off-shoot of the Dewey/Rousseau education tree.

I had been contemplating saving up the thousands of dollars necessary to become Orff certified. Since that will result also in indoctrination of the worst kind, I'm going to pass. The money can go to that bass flute I've always wanted.

Dear Administrator: You Look Good in Motley

 [An educational makeover to The Beatles "Fool on the Hill." It's amazing how few changes needed to be made!]

Day after day, alone in his office
The man with the foolish grin is avoiding giving offense
The teachers don't want to know him
They can see that he's just a fool
He never gives a straight answer

But the fool his office
Sees the school going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody wants to hear him
Or the sound he constantly makes
And he never seems to notice

But the fool in his office
Sees the school going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

And nobody really likes him
They can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings

But the fool in his office
Sees the school going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

He never listens to them
He believes they're the fools
They don't like him

The fool in his office
Sees the school going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

Youth of the Nation

I shall call him John. He's in kindergarten. And he's a spoiled brat.

Every time I come for music class, John throws a tantrum. The first day was because he didn't want to wear his name tag. Following week was because he refused to sing the song we were singing. The next week because I refused to stop the class (we were in the middle of a song) to listen to whatever it was he wanted to say.  I told him I was busy and didn't have time. You might think I'm mean, but he had already loudly proclaimed 10 minutes earlier that music class was boring and he hated it and he wasn't going to do it. I refuse to reward students with poor attitudes with attention; it sends the wrong message.

Now I can understand a kindergartener who takes a couple weeks adjusting to school life. But John has been whining and pouting and screaming during my class for a full month. It's becoming obvious that this kid has always been the center of someone's attention and never been required to do anything that he did not want to. The way the rest of the class ignores John suggests his problem is not confined to music class. I feel so sorry for his teacher who has to deal with this brat all day long, and yet remains completely placid. She's a saint.

QI in Music Class

Last week, I wrote about the QI philosophy and lamented about its absence in modern education. Not being a whiner or complainer, I'm trying to teach my classes in a QI type of way. This means that last Wednesday first period somehow ended up on my explaining plate tectonics to a group of fascinated 4th graders. How we got there from solfege, I'm not really sure, but does it matter? They were completely absorbed finding out where earthquakes and volcanoes come from. Yes, I did have to yank us back to music, but that's why I get paid the big bucks.

That same Wednesday, when learning "The Cat Came Back," I asked if anyone knew what the phrase "man in the moon" meant. No one did, so I talked about how some of the craters, if you look at them the right way, look like a face, and how early people had no idea what the moon was and made up stories about it. The kids tied it to an old Chinese legend about the rabbit living on the moon and the moon being made of cheese and Wallace & Gromit. We had a laugh, and then went back to singing.  It was fun.

None of this is on the official lesson plans. All they talk about is learning the song and defining the word "ostinato," which we do as well. How dull. And the students don't learn the music as well. After every digression my classes take into the meaning of the lyrics or music, the students come back singing or playing stronger. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

QI Philosophy of Education

I don't watch a lot of television. In fact, since moving from the back of beyond (where the cable was free with the flat), I've watched almost none. But every fall, I will make the effort to find a very nice YouTube pirate and splurge on Quite Interesting (aka QI). 

QI is the best television show you've never heard of.  It is a BBC production that I fear will never be imported or adapted for the US. Why? Because its style of humor is too blue and its content is too intelligent. But QI, according to its creator John Lloyd, is more than just a television show, it is a way of looking at the world.

The whole world is interesting if you look at it in the right way. There is no such thing as a boring subject, if approached from the proper direction. On the surface this is just a rehashing of that 1980's phenomena, Trivial Pursuit, but it goes much deeper than that.  The QI philosophy is about connections in knowledge, not just the knowledge itself. 

Why can't school be like this? Instead of finding the main idea of the passage on ancient Egypt, why can't we teach about the ancient Egyptians? Why are we forced to teach the writing process instead of how to actually write or where the words came from in the first place?

The world is an amazing, fascinating place. Why can't we teach that to children? Where did we go so horribly wrong?

Hut Two Three Four

Professional development this year is focused on "whole brain teaching."  Which was not what I expected.

Whole brain teaching is not whole, does not use the brain, and teaches nothing. (Think of it as the Holy Roman Empire of teaching.) In fact none of those words were ever used in the workshop.  What they have to do with "whole brain teaching" is decidedly unclear.

In reality "whole brain teaching" is a classroom management technique modeled after military boot camp.  Yes, you read that right.  Wrap it up in an innocuous, Teacher's College-esque name, and you can sell the Marine Corps to suburban, oh-so-progressive parents.  

When using whole brain teaching, the teacher is supposed to call the class to attention by yelling, "Class!" and the students are supposed to yell back, "Yes!"  Students are expected to mimic their teacher's yelling style and inflection.  Substitute "Class!" with "Ten-hut!" and "Yes!" with "Huh!" and you've got Day 1 of every military's basic training. 

But wait, there's more! When you want students to talk to a partner, you yell "Teach!" and the students are supposed to yell "Okay!" back before they regurgitate whatever content you just said to their neighbor who was listening to the exact same thing. If you want your students to sit up straight and look at you, you yell "Hands and eyes!" which your students are supposed to yell back while fixing their posture.

Basically if you want your class to do something, you yell at them. They then all yell back and follow the directions. Everyone does everything out loud and at the same time. Yet the quacks who invented this system claims that it fosters creativity and individuality. Oh sure, let's all be unique -- in the exact same way!

8 out of 10 Critics do Thinking

Excellent free piece in the Wall Street Journal on the phrase "critical thinking" and its slippery definition.  While focused on employers, a professional educator was used as a source.  She offered the following definition:

“Thinking about your thinking, while you’re thinking, in order to improve your thinking.” -Linda Elder, educational psychologist; president, Foundation for Critical Thinking

Huh?  What the fuck is this?!  An Abbott and Costello sketch?!!

How many people out there who know how to think are actually spending time contemplating thinking?  I'm not.  I spend my time actually thinking, and, after 30+ years, I'm getting kind of good at it.

With respect to schools, can you imagine how boring it would be to sit in a class being forced to think about your thinking?  (Yes, there are such classes.  And yes, I've seen them.)  If you were subject to that class, wouldn't you hate school too?

Instead of teaching "thinking about your thinking," how about going into the way-way-way-back machine and teaching logic?  That way students can learn how to think while analyzing other people's ideas and arguing about them.  Sounds like much more fun to me.

First Staff Meeting

A good thing about the music education Wal-Mart is we only have staff meetings once a month and the meetings have a defined purposed.  This month was the beginning of the year assessment procedure, as explained by the official curriculum writer.  Boy, what a fun meeting to attend!

One new employee is a middle-aged lady who obviously has a brain in her head.  Immediately, she laid into the crappy assessment design.  The assessments are vague and poorly worded.  One assessment question covers multiple skills and knowledge.  Last, but certainly not least, the assessments are only somewhat related to the activities they are meant to test.  Oh, and they are also full of mistakes and missing questions.  They are a classic example of a fubar project.

The official curriculum writer also wrote the assessments.  She does not have enough intellect to realize how truly terrible they are.  For example one item asks for how many students can "perform half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, dotted notes, quarter rests and syncopated rhythms."  Now laying aside the question of what is meant by "perform," eight different different rhythms are listed.  In one of my classes, everyone can perform quarter notes, eighth notes and quarter rests.  A third of the students can do half notes.  A couple of kids know sixteenth notes (they take private lessons).  Nobody knows a thing about dotted notes or syncopation.  How the hell am I supposed to reduce all that to one number?  0% of the students can do everything, 100% can do part of it.

This new employee pointed this idiocy out in great detail, and the curriculum writer had absolutely no answer for her.  The curriculum writer kept uttering inane platitudes about how the assessments are "a work in progress," and they are "new to me too."  Then came the sentence that nearly caused me to fall out of my chair, "I hear your frustrations and share them."

WHAT?!  You share our frustrations?  Well ain't that just lovely, sweetie.  Here's the thing.  You wrote the damn things, if you actually were frustrated and had a brain between your ears, you would rewrite the silly things so they'd make sense.  But sense ain't exactly your strong suit, is it? Don't tell me you share our frustrations because your actions tell me you obviously do not.

Something rotten, but not in Denmark

When I read job listings and browse prospective employer's websites, I often see references to the school using "Responsive Classroom." But I've never known what that meant, until I found this little list on one school's site. If you ever wanted a concise version of everything wrong in American education, look no further. My commentary appears in blue italics.

1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
No, no, no, no, NO!!! Just no! It's not. Why? Because most people have one chance to learn the academics they need to succeed in this world -- that's when they are in school. Everyone is forced, for their entire lives, to learn the "social curriculum." (I'm using quotes because I'm not sure what that phrase really means.)

2. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
Again, sorry, that's not necessarily true!  In elementary school music class, scientists have proven that children learn the most when they sing by themselves! Not with a group, not with an adult. By themselves, alone, without social interaction. The learning process is entirely contained within a person's head.  Take a casual look around, and you will find the most educated people you know are the most widely read, another solitary, non-social activity.

3. To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
To be successful socially, yes, these skills are of the utmost importance.  To be successful academically, not so much.  Those stereotype nerds and academics came from a reason.  Academically minded people tend to be socially awkward; social skills are not needed in the realm of knowledge where the academics (both professional and amateur) spend their time.  The world of ideas does not require social skills, it requires the ability to think logically and make accurate observations. 

4. Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach.
Another half-truth.  We do need to know our students as individuals, what knowledge they have of the subject, how they react to specific pedagogical methods.  But we don't need to know them on the same level as their friends and family.  For ours is not that kind of relationship.  The teacher-student relationship is one founded in that world of knowledge.  If the teacher does not have a truly deep knowledge of the subject at then he is doomed to failure.  Without intimate subject knowledge, the teacher is forced to rely on inferior materials and rigid, one-dimensional instruction that does not take the individuality of the students into account.  

5. Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education.
Um, no.  If the teacher knows his students as individuals, then he will have all the knowledge he needs of the family.  The family is not doing the learning, the child is.  There should be good two-way communication between family and parents in the early grades to provide accountability for the child.  But as the child gets older, she as an individual should be held responsible for learning (or not learning) in school.

6. How the adults at school work together is as important as their individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Yes, by all means, let's devalue actual knowledge and demean the adults who have it by saying that it really isn't all that important anyway.  This is an apology for teachers who cannot think their way out of a paper sack!  It gives cover to all those elementary school teachers who do not understand fractions, but have to teach it anyway.  (Yes, that is a true scenario.  I worked at such a school.) If you have incompetent employees who the hell cares if they work well together?  The students that graduate from that school will have learned nothing.  And that is a crime. 

Yippee-Ki-Ai-Yay!

Ah, spring!  The flowers, the searing heat, the wildfires.  The job interviews.

Not being all *that* satisfied with working for the music education equivalent WalMart, I will be hitting the interview trail yet again this year.  Not that this will lead to anything worthwhile; it never has before.  For mine is a rare talent: I am everybody's second choice for their teaching job.

Being the bridesmaid and never the bride means I have serious experience with the dog-and-pony show private school interview.  Whether it is far away (like the all-expenses paid 48 hour trip to Florida) or close to home, the routine is same.  Spend the day on campus, talk with everyone and his cousin, teach a demonstration lesson, and then go home and wait two weeks for the rejection letter/call/email.

I've done dozens of these interviews over the last 10 years.  (Not counting the public school ones; that's another post.)  It doesn't take me long to decide whether the school would be worth working for. Usually about 10 minutes is enough. 

Take this gem from six months ago.  It wasn't a school I was all that excited about to begin with.  They are obviously a dysfunctional revolving-door.  Every spring they list 6-8 openings, in addition to multiple vacancies during the school year.  Any school with that kind of turn over is one to run away from fast -- really fast. I nearly cancelled the interview.  But I'm not the kind of person who bails on her commitments, so I rose early in the morning, drove 50 miles and showed up on time...

...to wait in the lobby for 20 minutes.  Nothing shows professionalism like making the interviewee sit around twiddling her thumbs.  It turns out this was a preview of the rest of the morning.  I sat twiddling my thumbs in a religious service (it's a religious school), I sat twiddling my thumbs in a music classroom, I sat twiddling my thumbs in an administrator's office.  Oh yeah, these guys were real interested in hiring me.

The music class was a clinic in how not to teach.  These kids did nothing but play around with the keyboards and computers for 45 minutes.  The "teacher" proudly told me how these "music centers" worked and how he presented this concept at a national music educators conference.  (Good, another reason not to join NAfME.)  I worked on my acting skills by feigning interest and enthusiasm, while observing the total lack of teaching, learning, and classroom management.  These kids were literally doing whatever they wanted, including talk to their friends in the corner.

By the time I got to teach, the only thing on my mind was where to go for lunch.  Needless to say my insistence on student participation, focus on quality music making, and lack of toys to play with did not go over well with the over-stimulated, spoiled students.

Thankfully, I never heard from the school again.

An educational "ohm"

I know, after a promise to return, I go and disappear again.  The road to hell and all that.  My schedule has some opportunities for writing in the coming weeks, so I'm hoping to get back to a regular production schedule and stockpile some posts.  My fingers are crossed.

---

Great teaching still exists, you just have to look for it in places outside an American school classroom.

Trevor Wye is an English flautist and teacher.  What sets him apart from other famous pedagogues is his six-volume series of books on how to practice the flute.  Mr. Wye has taken the time to methodically explain the purpose of his exercises, sometimes going far from the practical field to give the reader enough background information to make sense of the music skills he will be learning.  His books are unlike anything I've ever come across in my private practice, in such a good way that I have adapted his teachings to other woodwind instruments.

Mr. Wye has a mantra found throughout his books that should be written in every English speaking classroom in the world.  "It is a matter of time, patience, and intelligent work."

Time. Learning takes time; how much time depends on the individual. Learning does not happen on a schedule, despite what administrators and educational gurus claim. Students are not widgets, you cannot program them on a nine month production schedule. Suzy may take six months to learn multiplication, and Johnny may take 18 months. Giving students the time to learn is a must.

Patience. Learning to do anything is a complex mental process. Real teachers, unlike educational gurus and administrators, know that there will be set backs. Progress will be uneven, or sometimes not at all apparent. But instead demanding instant positive results "or else," real teachers stick with what they know what works, even if the student does not succeed the first time (or the first 117 times).

Intelligent Work. Good teaching takes analysis. The teacher must know where the student is going wrong, where the student has it right, how to improve the former, and how to capitalize on the latter. This takes a lot of knowledge on the part of the teacher, particularly of the subject matter to be taught. What the teacher knows is massively important; they must know which work will be intelligent for their students. Real teachers also know that learning is work. They know that continuous, consistent practice is a positive requirement, not the undesirable option as administrators and educational gurus claim.

Learning is a matter of time, patience, and intelligent work.  Chant it quietly to yourself as you sit through the training for the third reading program your school has adopted in three years.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

I think I'm back.

It was my intention to blog over the summer, and write about things like the school interview process and other forms of institutional insanity. But then I housesat the happiest cucumber plant in the whole city along with the happiest peach tree, a herd of tomatoes, and well, you get the picture. I ended up canning 80+ pints of pickles and peaches and tomatoes and other assorted vegetables. Keeping up with produce left ate up a considerable chunk of time.

The other enormous chunk of time got used redesigning the curriculum I use. My employer - the WalMart of music education - provides a curriculum for their instructors. I've mentioned it before: It sucks. Sucks like a Dyson vacuum. Supposedly it is Kodaly-based. Yeah, right. Kodaly recommended preparing a concept weeks before presenting it to a class, not 10 minutes. Lesson 3 in second grade introduces singing rounds, not with something easy and familiar like "Frere Jacques" or "Row Row Row Your Boat," but with a 16 measure piece in triple meter. ("Frere Jacques" and "Row Row Row Your Boat" are both half as long and in the much more accessible duple meter.) I tried teaching it my first year, the only result was 28 frustrated and confused second graders.

I got tired of teaching garbage, and tried a few of my own experimental lessons at the end of last year. They went waaaaay better than the pre-printed refuse. The kids loved them, and so did I. That gave me the impetus to go whole hog and wrote all my own lessons, preschool through fifth. Granted I've designed curricula for other schools I've worked at, so it wasn't like I had to create anything from scratch.  Third grade music is basically the same no matter where you are.  But writing 216 lessons takes a fair amount of time.

That's where I've been.  With a little luck, the writing groove and timely posts are back too.

Institutional Memory

The quality of the writing and reporting at the Core Knowledge blog has declined precipitously since the departure of Robert Pondiscio, but even so, they can still hit a good one now and again.

But my take away from the article is rather different. That Washington Times article was from 1948.  About the same time in suburban Southern California, my grandmother was forced to teach her son to read (using my grandfather's textbooks) because the schools had failed to teach him. The problems enumerated in the article were not local to Washington DC, they were widespread, and growing.

Over 65 years have passed since both article and my father learning to read at his mother's kitchen table. During that time, the strident drum beat of constructivist educators has only grown louder. Almost three generations of teachers have come and gone through the classroom, being trained in nothing but progressive pedagogy and dogma. That's a long, long time. 

Have we forgotten how to teach effectively? True there are tiny islands of sanity (Core Knowledge, Precision Teaching, classical education, and others) within this sea of lunacy. But they are small and under the constant stress of erosion.  It's impossible for them to have preserved every nuance, every technique. A lot has been lost, and we seem to be going backwards. More and more people are successful in spite of their education, not because of it. Is this what the beginning of the Dark Ages looked like? 

teachers are dumb, part 1

This comment was written in response to Education Week's article on the return of Balanced Literacy to NYC.  

"It is a long story but phonics is not the end all of reading. Matter of fact it is what holds many kids back. Our language is not phonetic so the strong emphasis on phonics creates poor spellers and poor readers. It is an assumption some have made that fluency and good decoding when reading out loud is a skill needed for comprehension. For some students that is true but for the majority comprehension comes more from context and visual strategies. The majority of our students today are visual thinkers and the auditory.. and oral approaches like reading out loud do not help them. Phonics can be taught more successfully when children have a fully developed language system. More like age 8.. We have a deficit based system.. if someone is stronger visually and decoding is hard for them then we must focus on the weakness.. instead of instructing from the strength.
As for the common core.. standards aren't bad.. and common standards aren't bad. What is bad is the lack of understanding what is developmentally appropriate. I cannot believe what is expected of kinders.. who should be learning through lots of play and exploration. Not lots of sitting at a table with pencil and paper."

Here is a teacher who, in a rational world, would be fired post-haste.  She knows precisely nothing about the English language. 

English IS a phonetic language!  Why?  Take a close look at the symbols you are currently reading.  What do they represent?  Words?  No.  Phrases?  No.  Syllables? No.  The symbols, also known as letters, represent the sounds of the English language.  This is the definition of phonetic. In fact, English has 74 sounds, all of which are represented by the letters of the alphabet, either individually or in combination.  Knowing these 74 sounds will allow you to read and spell 98% of the 1,000,000+ words of the English language. Just how does this "[create] poor spellers and poor readers?"

While English is phonetic, it is not an easy language to learn.  The reason for this is tied up in the history of the language and the tiny island from which it comes.  England has been invaded many times in the last 3,000 years.  And each invader had brought their own language and, in order to establish dominance, tried to eradicate the native tongue.  A lot of these invader languages, especially back in the early days, were not written down and/or predated the Latin alphabet.  So when it came time to write down these words, scribes had to force-fit foreign sounds into the Latin alphabet. Or, if the invaders were literate, the scribes wanted to keep their masters' spellings and language. Every invasion and foreign language adoption adds another layer of complexity for us modern speakers. The history of English is an ungainly, but fascinating, mess. 

I have more to say about this inane comment, but have run out of writing time.  I will continue next week with her putting the cart before the horse.

At the intersection of Teacher Blvd. and Curriculum Way

This is another, "Everything you need to know about education can be learned from a musician" post.

Because I'm a curriculum junkie, I hang around (virtually) with a lot of homeschoolers.  They (and Robert Pondiscio) seem to the be only ones willing to talk openly about curriculum.  A lot of homeschoolers are public-school refugees, and so conversations comparing the two are frequent.

While reading, it hit me.  Curriculum is just like a musical instrument, and teachers are just like musicians.  Let me explain.  A great curriculum is like a Stradivarius, anyone who can play just a little can pick it up and sound fantastic.  A mediocre or bad teacher who is given a great curriculum and sticks with it, will do well.  Her students will have the opportunity to learn the subject.  (That's all teaching does, it gives students the opportunity to learn, what they chose to do with that opportunity is a another post.)  It won't be inspiring or life-changing, but it will get done.  If you hand that Stradivarius to Itzhak Perlman, his playing will transport you to places you've only dreamed of.  Same goes with curriculum, a great teacher with a great curriculum has the potential to change the lives of her students forever.  (And end up the subject of a Hollywood movie.)

Now for the other side of the coin.  If you hand Mr. Perlman my violin, which is a $40 no-label garage sale special, you will still hear some good music.  Mr. Perlman's expertise and artistry can make any instrument exceed its abilities.  If you give a great teacher a lousy curriculum, the teacher will overcome it, just like Mr. Perlman would.  She will supplement and reorganize like the dickens; giving her students the opportunity to learn.  It won't be as good, a lot of her time and energy will be put into the curriculum rather than the teaching, but she still does her job adequately.  However, when I play my $40 violin, I don't sound all that great.  Nobody wants to hear me play, because it sounds dreadful.  That's what happens when a bad/mediocre teacher is paired with a bad curriculum.  Any opportunity for learning is lost before the class even sits down at their desks.  A bad/mediocre teacher does not have skill or knowledge or artistry to overcome a flawed curriculum.  In fact, she may not have the ability to recognize the problem.  And just like my dreadful violin playing, the end result is dreadful teaching.

Guess which of the four options is most favored by American schools?

Sage: It's Not Just an Herb

Wandering around the internet lately, I came up on this:  R.I.P Sage on the Stage.

The article, which is really just an enticement to click through to an interview, asks several rhetorical questions.  All of which I will now answer from the contrarian viewpoint.

1) But why is it important for students to own and direct their learning?
In many ways it is folly for students to direct their learning.  You've got 30+ kids in a class who are interested in 30+ different subjects, the vast majority of which do not over lap.  So immediately, you have a classroom management and lesson planning nightmare.  These interests are often random and fleeting.  They are frequently dead-ends in the long-term.  They involve knowledge and skill acquisition which require a slew of fundamental, and seemingly unrelated, work.  For example, if you cannot do arithmetic, you have no shot at doing mathematics or science properly.  If you cannot hold a saxophone there is no way on Earth you will ever figure out how to play "Tequila." 

2) Will students meet academic standards if teachers give them control of their learning? 
No.   Students lack the discipline and the knowledge to direct their own learning, particularly in the elementary years.  (If educated correctly early, they can and should have major input on their secondary school studies.)  Allowing students to control their own learning is the intellectual equivalent of allowing children to choose what they eat for every single meal.  Neither one is healthy and both will lead to disastrous consequences later in life. 

Academic standards are predicated on the wisdom of adults, who (theoretically at least) know what knowledge and subjects are of use later in life.  That's called curriculum.  They also know how to organize that knowledge so fundamental ideas/skills are learned first and more advanced ones later.  That's called scope & sequence.  They also know the resources and methodologies appropriate for each age group.  That's called pedagogy.  Children know none of these things. 

3) Why are teachers reluctant to let students learn independently?
Because good teachers are wise and know that not all learning can or should be done independently. Intellectually challenging material (particularly abstract subjects like music and math) is nearly impossible to learn correctly without a proper teacher.  The teacher has all of the knowledge mentioned in #2 above, and by using it appropriately, can guide the student through the cognitive thicket. 

Without a curriculum, a scope, a sequence, and pedagogy, students trying to learn on their own are lost in the tall grass.  Not only do they have to master the outer surface knowledge, but also have to recreate the inner structures from scratch.  This is like trying to learning how to fly an airborne plane while building it at the same time.  Again, unless you are a statistical outlier, a recipe for disaster.

4) What can teachers do to begin the process of letting go?
I would start by letting go of silly, pie-in-the-sky rubbish such as espoused by this article.  Then I would let go of all modern teaching theories taught in university education schools.  After that I would let go of every one who preached this nonsense as if it was the Gospel. 

After all that letting go, I would learn something about curriculum, scope, sequence.  For pedagogy, I would turn to those who teach people like pilots, or welders, or soldiers.  They are the true keepers of the lost art of teaching.

Humans as a species cannot make progress as a civilization if every generation has to reinvent the wheel.  By learning from masters, from teachers, we can stand on the shoulders of past giants and progress further.  After all, that's exactly how we got to this point.

Miss Friday's Room 101 - Kids' Music

I hate kids' music.

I know, I know.  A music teacher is not supposed to hate music.  But I do, and for a very good reason.  There is literally a metric shit-load of outstanding music out there.  Folk, rock, jazz, classical, you name the genre, and there is great music.  But kids music is all too frequently written for teaching purposes.  And it's written badly.  Really, really badly.

First as a point of comparison, let's look at a high quality traditional folk song:

Now to assist the casual observer, I marked up the song a little.  The boxes show examples of how the important words of each are placed on the beat.  Important words are also set with quarter notes which are twice as long as the eighth notes prevalent in the piece.

The unimportant words, and the unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words, are places off the beat.  I've highlighted a few of those with red circles.  These unimportant bits are always set with the short eighth notes.

Lastly, each line is comprised of full measures.  This makes the rhythm and meter simple to understand and read.  Learning this song is easy, as is teaching it.

Now let's turn to a song written specifically for kids.  For the sake of politeness, I've redacted the composer and lyricist.

Now instead of emphasizing the important words and syllables with longer notes, this song does the exact opposite.  Look at the examples in the circles.  The words "the" and "so" get the longer quarter notes.  As do the unstressed second syllables of "bongo" and "player."  Granted these quarter notes are in metrically weak upbeat positions, but the rhythmic accent overwhelms the note's position.  The result makes the song hard to sing.  The words you naturally want to lengthen and accent, you can't because the unimportant words are instead.

Particularly awful in this song is the treatment of the word "the."  In the places I've circled, it is accented, which is about half the time.  The other half of the time, "the" is treated as it normally should.  In those underlined spots, "the" is set with a short note in an metrically unaccented place.  The inconsistency adds further difficulty in performing this song.

The last example of poor writing is a purely visual one.  At the plus signs, the measures are incomplete.  The use of partial measures is supposed to highlight musical phases, making them easier to learn.  Okay, I can see that, but what about phrases that end in the middle of the line?  Again inconsistency.  Plus, a nightmare when trying to teach the concepts of meter and time signature.  You can't teach the rules and the logical design when your music breaks them.  I would never put this sheet music in front of my students.

From here on out, I won't teach them the song by rote either.  It is a piss-poor song setting.  There are plenty of other short, peppy songs which use syncopation properly.  And if I want to teach Latin music, I'll reach for the traditional songbooks on my shelf.  The ones with the well-constructed tunes that have passed the test of time.  

Almost Like Being in Love

I just finished reading Teacher Proof, and I gotta say.......

....wow..... just wow.

It has been a long time since I've had that much fun reading a book, paper, article about education.  A long, long time.  Not since Mr. Teachbad's heyday, have I felt as much kinship with an education author.

Tom Bennett is snarky and witty.  (He's also English, which I think helps in the creative insult and sarcasm departments)  His bullshit detector is finely tuned; he has a brain in his head and is not afraid to use it, and he accepts nothing at face value.

What I have to admire most is Bennett's ability to translate the tortured language used in educational research writing to readable prose.  I've tried many a time to read music education studies.  Either I end up falling asleep or daydreaming about the surfeit awful writers and fatuous research topics.  Bennett has done the legwork to disprove some of education's most entrenched fallacies: learning styles, group work, multiple intelligences, flipped classrooms, and emotional intelligence.  If I had been blessed with a better memory, I would memorize large chunks of his book and recite them chapter and verse at staff meetings.

But nothing is perfect; Teacher Proof is not without flaws.  The first is its title.  This may be a function of the differences between American and British English.  To your average American, the title sounds like something an administrator would read in order to figure out how to keep his serfs teachers from screwing up his latest master plan for educational domination.  The second problem is the book's cost.  $26 for the e-book, and $30 for the paperback.  Zounds, that's expense!  Worth every penny, but if Bennett's publisher brought the price down to $10, he would make a killing.

Along with Dan Willingham's books, Teacher Proof sits on my shelf as a must-read for every pragmatic teacher in the English-speaking world.

What's Wrong with American Education - Reason #3450695

Like they say over at the KTM blog: "It's always worse than you think."

Today, in what I thought was a decent first grade, I nearly stopped teaching, so gobsmacked was I by the poster hanging there above the whiteboard.  I desperately wish that I could have taken a picture of it to post here, but alas, I was never alone in the room.  It would have been highly impolitic for me to say, "I'd like to photograph your poster so I can post it on my blog as a prime example of American educational stupidity."

Thankfully, it was all text, and easy to memorize:

3 Ways to Read a Book
   1) Read the pictures
   2) Read the words
   3) Retell the story

You don't need to pinch yourself, you are indeed awake.  This is what passes for reading instruction in suburban first grade.

For those of you slow on the uptake and those progressives who wandered in by mistake (The door is over there, you can show yourselves out at any time.), I'll break down why this poster is the most fatuous thing I've seen this year.

First, let's define the word "read."  Webster's defines it as, "look at and comprehend the meaning of (written or printed matter) by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed."

Now using that definition as a foundation, let's return to the poster:

3 Ways to Read a Book
   1) Read the pictures - by definition, pictures are not composed of characters or symbols, and thus cannot be read. 
   2) Read the words - words are in fact made up of characters or symbols (called "letters") and can be read.
   3) Retell the story - assumes that you have already done #1 or #2 and does not involve, by definition, reading

As you can see, there are NOT, in fact, 3 ways to read a book.  There is only one.  The entire poster is both a waste of paper and a source of boundless confusion for poor, impressionable six year-olds.

Here endeth the lesson.