Another day, another political education story

A few hours ago, a friend sent me this story about someone running for governor of Oregon to make a point about literacy rates of Oregon 4th graders (spoiler: it's bad). As the story goes, the "Pencil" (complete with mascot suit) is running against the largely uncontested Democratic incumbent, Tina Kotek. And given the current state of national affairs and Oregon's political population distribution, it's highly unlikely Governor Kotek will lose her seat in the general.

First thought: That is the most Portland story I've ever seen about Portland and I'm FROM there.

Second thought: I've also seen the stories about Ms. Kotek's beef with the teacher's union. I don't have all the facts on that one so I'll leave that out of this blog, but it does seem to revolve around...surprise! Money.

As it turns out, I happen to know quite a bit about Oregon's history of school funding. But I read the story about The Pencil and their particular argument angle seems to be that "if Mississippi can raise literacy rates with no extra money, why can't Oregon?" The implication being, of course, that it must have something to do with the wrong curricular approach (Whole language! Phonics!)  or teacher laziness or funds being allocated incorrectly or something else singular and overly simplistic.  

I have a hypothesis for a possible contributing factor--not whole explanation--that almost never gets discussed. And happily, it's something Governor Kotek could probably look into and implement without spending more precious dollars on a magical corporate curriculum designed by profiteers who've never been in a classroom.

    IMPORTANT HISTORY SIDENOTE: The difference between Oregon and Mississippi isn't racism, in case you were wondering. Oregon was founded as a white supremacist "sundown state"--it's how they got their statehood (1859) approved by the soon-to-be Confederate states. "We won't let black folks move here." Derrick Bell was called by black parents to testify in Portland in the 1980s that they wanted segregated schools again because of how horribly their children were being treated in the "integrated" schools. So...

Anyway, the hypothesis is not funding, not in the general sense. It's the consistency of funding. The boom and bust and wild swings in years where things are fine versus years where hundreds of people are laid off. See, in 1992, in response to MASSIVE property tax restrictions, Oregon had to change their school funding system. They went to a strict per-student formula that is, I believe, mostly the same today (not 100% sure about that, my dissertation analysis was 1990–2017). And those property tax restrictions plus the formula caused huge budgetary problems, and left Oregon districts vulnerable to every little swing in school-age population. Then you add unfunded mandates at the state and federal level, recessions...there has never been a whole decade since 1990 where Oregon didn't have some financial crisis that caused cuts to the education budget.

Here's where it gets interesting. When schools lay off teachers during a budget crisis, there's sometimes strategy to it, but if there's a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), there are often rules about seniority and subject areas that have to be followed.

(YES LONGVIEW I'M STILL MAD ABOUT BEING CUT A WEEK AFTER COMING BACK FROM MATERNITY LEAVE IN 2009 WHEN THE FIRST YEAR ENGLISH TEACHER AND THE TERRIBLE 70 YEAR OLD ORCHESTRA TEACHER GOT TO STAY). 

One of the common rules in a CBA is that teachers with seniority get to keep their jobs when there are cuts. But it doesn't guarantee you will get to keep the same teaching assignment that you had before. Maybe you move schools, maybe teach a course you've never taught because they had to cut back sections of a class, maybe teach a grade level you've never had experience with. All the CBA guarantees is that you continue being employed.

Do you see where I'm going with this? 

We know for a fact that consistency of instruction and teacher expertise matter in student learning. What if every year or every three years, a school district is scrambling to find teachers? Burnout, attrition, unfilled positions, or the layoff shuffle I just described above. You think those kids are getting consistent instruction?? Are the teachers always experienced in THAT age level with THAT subject matter? Which is not to say that the teachers aren't doing their very best, but adjustment takes time. Do the teachers get to be in that space long enough to adjust and really get GOOD at the new thing before being shuffled around again? Do we have those numbers? Do we know how many teachers have been moved around like that? Do we have data that looks at which districts have done the layoff shuffle the most? Who has the most unfilled positions or occurrence of long-term substitutes/emergency licenses? Can we test those things as a contributing factor to the reading scores?

Or is it just easier, politically, to slap a curricular band-aid on it and tell the schools, again, to just make do with less? Knowing that Oregon isn't going to elect an (R) anytime soon? *cough cough*

I can't speak to Mississippi's school funding formula, or how protected their school funding might be from boom and bust cycles. I know it's just at the bottom of the barrel in strict (very low) numbers for overall funding and teacher pay. But I also know it is overly simplistic to say that the only factor in their success is their curriculum and that teachers are somehow, on the whole, more dedicated there than in Oregon. 

Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions. And it ain't always about the pay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Open Letter to Leaders of Gresham-Barlow School District

  

It’s happened again.

A school district is facing budget pressures and decides tocut what they have deemed “unnecessary” as a form of triage and survival.

And as usual, elementary music is on the chopping block. Even though music is a protected core subject in federal law.

I’m sure you’ll tell me in response that music is important of course, but that you have to prioritize reading and math for state and federal accountability measures. When I was a student teacher 25 years ago, I attended a professional development where the superintendent said to his entire district “don’t let your students turn into THIS.” And he held up an Excel spreadsheet printout.

You all have lost the plot in your quest for data reporting. And have learned nothing from 1990 to now about planning for Oregon's janky school funding formula.

And rather than fight for more funding from the state, you’re choosing to give the humans in your care a sub-standard educational experience. 

Nevermind that there is a wealth of research that says language acquisition is helped by music—training the ears to hear beat, rhythm, cadence, pitch, dynamics, tone of voice. Nevermind that we have a wealth of research that says music can help with attention span, pattern recognition, social emotional health, mood regulation, fine motor skills and a host of other things that are not taught in any other subject in such an integrated, holistic way.

Seems like language acquisition reinforcement would be a priority in a district that serves so many immigrant and refugee children whose first language is not English—especially for younger ages where it’s most effective. Or to help support the supposed priorities of reading and math. But I guess not.

Which brings me to the question of why elementary music? Why not the high schools which surely cost more? The list below doesn't specify that music will be protected at the high school, but I suspect that even the most musically ignorant school board member or administrator recognizes the public relations embarrassment of not having the band at football games and parades or having no choir to sing the national anthem. But that same ignorance refuses to pay attention to how music is, and always has been, the example of scaffolding, spiral curriculum, and vertical alignment you're always trying to get all the other subjects to do. 

Guess what? You’re going to lose the high school classes anyway. It’ll still be the PR nightmare you’re trying to avoid, but it will happen in 6-8 years rather than right now. I suppose that makes sense, because then you can pin blame on the teacher or building principal instead of your policy decisions.

Cutting music won’t save your district. It’ll just shortchange a whole generation of students unlucky enough to live within your boundaries. And in true American tradition, it’ll be the most vulnerable, impoverished, and marginalized that suffer most.

 

Saying Goodbye

As an undergrad music ed student, you have to complete "field experience" before student teaching. Part time, observations, etc., but getting into the schools. My field experience mentor was Megan. Megan is a tell-it-like-it-is Jersey girl who did her first few years teaching in South Central L.A. in the 80s, is like 5'4" and plays upright bass. She's a badass orchestra and mariachi teacher and I loved working with her. 

During that field experience, she said to me "you know who would be PERFECT for you to student teach with is my friend Rich, he's over at Nathan Hale, and he teaches both band AND choir so that would be a great place for you." Even though Rich had promised his students he wouldn't take any more student teachers, the university person in charge of my placements was HIS high school band director. So Rich interviewed me, then let the kids vote on it.

In other words, a lot of things had to go exactly right for me to be in this student teaching placement.

If you've known me for any length of time, you have definitely heard me talk about this guy. Rich was full of one-liners and stories, wicked funny zingers, and he had high musical, personal, and ethical standards. There are many things he taught me in that placement that I still use and now teach my own undergraduate students. My second year at Mason, I even had him speak to my undergrad foundations class via Zoom. 

Rich is also the person who introduced me to my husband. Tyson student taught the school year before me, and the students had made a meme out of him and hung it up in the classroom. "Hey Rich, is that you?" I asked during my interview. "Aw hell no," he said. "That was my LAST student teacher." [belly laugh]. Then one Friday afternoon, Megan and Tyson both showed up to the Fiddler's Inn (a local watering hole where Rich and I were reviewing the week over a pitcher of beer) to hang out and eat nachos. Rich said "hey! You guys should start a 'student teaching with Rich' support group!" 

I don't remember anything else about the conversation at the Fiddlers Inn that day except that I talked to Tyson for almost two hours straight. The rest of that is history, as we're currently in year 22 of marriage.

Rich and his wife Kris gave me a place to live in that transition summer after I graduated. My roommates moved out in June and I couldn't afford the rent alone, so R&K offered to let me rent a room in their house until I saved enough from my first teaching job to get another apartment. The day I moved in, they waited for me hidden behind the giant hedge in their front yard and when I opened the gate they jump scared me. I learned a lot about finding joy in everyday things by living at their house. A really good cup of coffee before going to work. Walking the dogs. But most of all... Kris' overstuffed armchair by the piano. It was the best. nap. chair. ever.

There was also a resident ghost in that house, but that's a story for another time.

Over the years, I would occasionally call Rich just to catch up and chat. The year I taught at Everett High School, I called him up and without even saying hello said "Rich. Who the hell let me teach HIGH SCHOOL when I was TWENTY TWO?!" He did his full belly laugh and said "it's nice to hear your voice. Sometimes you hire whoever you have!" 

When we were in grad school in Chicago, he made a stop to see us while driving from Ontario to a summer theater festival Kris was performing in somewhere nearby. 

After we had kids, I figured out through Facebook that our oldest child Sam was born on Rich's birthday. So it gave me a really easy way to remember to call him every year. Sometimes it was just a text happy birthday/thanks sometimes followed by a phone call.

This last November, I texted Happy Birthday! and he started texting back a lot. Like more than we normally do. Then after several messages back and forth, he informed me that he had retired from education and was currently fighting cancer. He seemed optimistic about how chemo was going, and there was another treatment after that that seemed promising. I said something about rocking a bandana (as he sometimes did anyway to keep his super curly hair under control) and he sent me a selfie...already wearing one. Typical. A couple months later we were texting about the Seahawks going to the Super Bowl. True to his character, if he knew then things were going south, he didn't let on. The next text I got was from Kris that he had passed. 61 years old. Too young. 

I haven't really been able to process that he's gone. Tonight at 7 pm is his memorial service, and I will be teaching secondary instrumental methods--a class I am qualified to teach partially due to his guidance. I think he'd be ok with that. 

 

What makes a good job different from "just a job"? Reflections on teaching K-12 and higher ed

I am a unicorn in higher education. I landed a tenure-track job at an R-1 (research-focused) university straight out of my PhD program. Most people (and I expected to also) have to take visiting, one-year jobs or non tenure track jobs that may or may not be full time. There are a lot of really great things about the job I have, though there's also things that could be better. A friend working at another university tells me that she believes the grass isn't greener at any institution, it's just that the cow pies are in different spots so you have to learn where to dodge.

One of the great things about being at an R-1 though, is the opportunity to work with graduate students. I have one at the moment who taught in K-12 for a long time before starting her PhD, and she's about the same age as me so we have similar observations about changes we've observed in the K-12 profession over the years, and likewise about what we see in higher education both from the student and new faculty perspectives. Some of those conversations have made me wonder what are the criteria that make a job 'good' versus just 'a' job? I know there's all sorts of studies on this, but I mean something more ineffable than that. I've worked in a few places that should have been "good" jobs by all the factors and measures, and they just simply weren't.

Some of the things I really loved about teaching K-12 have carried over to my academic career. I teach pre-service teachers so I get to teach about what I love---but from a completely different angle, analyzing what it was I actually did, why, and how---and then figuring out creative ways to get that information to my students. I do believe wholeheartedly it's made my teaching stronger in some ways. But it's also made me lazy about other things. You see, higher education does not value good teaching. Of course they say they do, it's an educational institution after all. But you can see evidence everywhere that it's not rewarded and incentivized the way other things are. And that, for me with 17 years in K-12, has been a hard and bitter pill to swallow.

 But back to what makes a job a good job?

What was it in K-12 that I loved that I still get to do now and make this current job great?

1. The people 

What things in K-12 made me want to go become a flight attendant and are also true in higher ed?

1. The people

Obviously the groups of people above are not the same people (sometimes). In my doctoral program, I learned that sometimes people you have built relationships with and trust, under the right circumstances, can turn on you and sabotage everything they get their hands on. In my current job, I'm learning the ways in which job perks (like relative autonomy) can be weaponized when someone feels petty or territorial. I'm also learning the loneliness of being siloed from other colleagues or departments.

And this is not to call out either institution, because I am SURE those sorts of problems are not unique to those places. Plus, in both K-12 and higher ed it has almost never been the students that were a problem. At this moment I have taught thousands of students and only one or two really stand out in my memory in a negative way. The adults though? At least one or two everywhere I worked. And whether it was a good job or a bad job depended on who that person was. A terrible parent? Wait it out a few years, they go away. Miserable colleague who works in a different department? Just avoid them. But someone in your department or a feckless admin? Time to find a new job.

Unfortunately, that's not an easy thing to do in higher ed ---finding a new job usually means relocating somewhere very far away, away from any support system you may have built. And there's no guarantee that the new place will be any better, you just hope the cow pies are in a more manageable spot. So people do what they can to make the job good with what they have. Some sculpt the manure piles or move them. Some people write grants and get money so they can stand outside the pasture. Some people just put on rubber boots and slog through the best they can. Some people create their own piles. And I can live with that. I can put on rubber boots, I can navigate outside the pasture and do my own thing.

What I can't tolerate, and what makes a higher ed job miserable, is when you try to remove a cow pie and someone comes along and says "I WAS SCULPTING THAT" and actively prevents you from fixing it even though you can see it's causing infections in the herd. And because everyone else is just trying to navigate the pasture, they either don't care or don't have the capacity to help you. Someone might even ask why you're trying to destroy the sculpture.

I really wanted to close this blog post with some life advice, a pithy little philosophical bow, but I can't. It's a messy ending to a messy post, because it's about people and people are messy. I guess the answer to the question is that the job is good when the people are good. 

Thoughts on unpaid labor and the teaching profession

This morning, I had someone text me with a "hey have you seen this thing where some student teacher was on TikTok saying they should be paid for their internship?" followed by something to the effect of "kids these days." 

Apparently one of my choral ed colleagues had responded to this undergrad on TikTok (or by posting his own thing?) by saying that student teaching is a class, and he's doing all the work teaching them how to do something they can't already do, so therefore interns should not be paid.

There's a lot to unpack here. I'm going to go in backwards order because I think that will help me explain better.

First, the internship is not a "class." Yes, it's credits they have to register and pay for, and in that respect it's a "class" but it's not a class in the respect that we expect them to go in knowing nothing. In fact, we expect them to go in and actually be able to do the full job (with a metric ton of extra paperwork), but with the support and scaffolding of an experienced mentor teacher. Being a mentor teacher (at least, a good one) IS a lot of work, because of course mistakes will be made, and the extra planning for guidance and correction is work. I have no dispute with that.

So I'm going to start off with my first point that mentor teachers should be paid, and I don't mean a pittance of $250 or credits towards license renewal. They should be paid their market rate hourly wage for the minimum 10-20 extra hours of work per week they put in which is an idea supported by research on the importance of mentor teachers. But this idea that student teachers come in completely unprepared and the mentors have to build ALL the skills from scratch is not accurate, either. Unfortunately, we all know there's no nuance with social media.

To that point, experienced teachers need to hear: Many colleges are limited in the number of credits we are allowed to require for teacher preparation. If you currently have more than 10 years experience, you probably remember taking more than 4 years to complete your music education degree, and probably between 18 and 22 credits every single term. Undergrad programs are not allowed to do that anymore. But let's be honest, even if it was a ten year preparation program, we all know there's no way to teach them everything. But it means programs have started focusing on aspects of teaching that we know are more important in the long term (problem solving, how to look things up, etc) but lacking in the "I know how to analyze figured bass perfectly" aspects. The result is mentor teachers probably are perceiving interns as having "holes" in their knowledge and I'm sure that's where my colleague is coming from. So yes, the mentor is still teaching the intern some things, but that was always the case anyway, and doesn't change that that should be paid labor and the intern is not a blank slate. 

The perception also that this current generation of student teachers (or students in general) are more entitled than previous generations is absolute old people nonsense. I do think there are some major differences in how younger people interact with others because of the prevalence of technology, and that makes them appear self-involved (and more prone to anxiety-related disorders). But the awareness that makes them anxious comes from that same technology---knowledge of the bigger picture, the wider world, and other things that previous generations were protected/kept from---and, point three: that makes them far more intolerant of injustices. So while older people might react with "meh, I survived it, toughen up" the younger people are going Why? WHY should we "toughen up"? Why should we be ok with being underpaid and ignored and underappreciated? Why should we accept a full unpaid work day and then go wait tables for 7 hours? 

I mean, from a teacher educator standpoint, I want my undergrads to have time to fully reflect on their day, time to refine plans, time to research new ideas, time to collect and create templates that will save them time later when they're on their own, ESPECIALLY because of the credit cap! If they're working even a part time job, they can't do ANY of that. They spend their entire internship in survival mode and then we wonder why the attrition rate is 50% in the first 5 years. Imagine if we just gave student teachers a tuition waiver so they didn't have to take out loans the final semester/quarters of their 4th year how much difference would that make? Or they could use their loans to live on so they don't have to work a second job? Why are we ok with indoctrinating undergrads with the idea that to be a teacher it's ok to need a second job? Especially when we know wages have been stagnant and the buying power of a second job isn't as high as it was when WE (the older people) went to school?

I was THRILLED when I saw this story about the Michigan legislature working on a way to pay student teachers. Their reasoning was basically that student teaching is like a medical residency (rotations of age levels, types of classes, guided practice but the expectation of independence) and we should treat it as such, especially if we intend to a) retain ANYONE in the profession and b) expand the current majority demographic of teachers to include more than middle and upper class white folks. Michigan, I hope you get it passed, I hope it works. I hope that becomes the model everywhere. 

Here's the real point of this essay: The current model of education everywhere, not just in the United States, relies 100% on massive amounts of unpaid labor. So is the internship meant to train people how to do the job well? Or is it to train them how to accept the exploitative system as it is? If it's the former, we should be proud that undergrads want to change the system. But if it's the latter, why are we still wondering why attrition and retention is such a problem?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking about C and abortion

 This post is about the evolution of my views on abortion. So here is your content warning.

I grew up in a moderately conservative household. We went to church, and my parents complained about environmentalists, but we recycled and my dad proudly belonged to a union for his work. My parents had pretty moderate, centrist views on things like cannabis, guns, and abortion. I learned what abortion was when I was about 10 years old, watching Dirty Dancing and trying to make sense of the story. I had no idea what being "in trouble" or "knocked up" meant, so I asked my mom. She explained it pretty well I think, considering the age I was. She also told me that she knew a few people who had had them, and while she didn't agree with it because of religious reasons, she was ok with it being legal.

She also remembered her parents telling her about situations like the one depicted in the movie. Desperate women with no other options, entrusting their lives and reproductive health to a sketchy, underground, black market system. Women who lost their lives or their future ability to have children to a botched, unregulated and unsafe procedure. That stuck with me. 

A decade later, I was in Chicago trying to get birth control pills while I was in between jobs and had no insurance. My prior experience in Seattle was just to pop in at Planned Parenthood and get 3 months of pills for free. In Chicago, they had a law that limited how many pills you could get, and they cost a lot. A big chunk of my non-existent paycheck (I was subbing, and we ended up selling my truck a few months later to pay our rent). That was the first time I realized that the state you live in makes a difference to your access to these things. Or the consequences of not having insurance in a country with a for-profit system.

About 6 years after that, and after moving back to Washington, I became pregnant with my first child (who is now pushing 13 and in FULL MIDDLE SCHOOL mode). I was also in a summer masters degree program in Chicago, so I spent most of my 2nd trimester on the "L" and in the Deering library. While waiting on the train platform one day after class, I saw one of my former HS students, "C," at that time in her early 20s. We hugged and started catching up, and she noticed my belly. After discussing for a bit, I learned that she too was pregnant, about 12 weeks. I started excitedly chittering away about how great that was and she dropped this on me, "Well, actually, I've decided to get an abortion." 

I regret the next part and I hope wherever she is, C forgave me for it. My response was to say "no, don't do that! If you need help, let me adopt your baby. I'm sure my husband would agree."

She then explained her reasoning. Boyfriend was in jail. Estranged from her parents, no help there. She had pre-eclampsia already (VERY early and life threatening). To carry the pregnancy to term, she would have to quit her job to be on bed rest. Losing her job meant losing insurance. That meant to get health care, she would have to live on food stamps, section 8 or project housing, and Medicaid. Her next words still haunt me: "and I will be damned if I raise a baby in poverty like I was."

And I stopped arguing. 

A few years later, debating this issue with a church friend, I relayed C's story and his response was "well what did she think was going to happen? Don't want the consequences, don't have sex!"

(btw, if you think that, you're a horrible person, full stop. A child is not a punishment. And if you really believe in the sanctity of life and that a child has a soul at conception, it's even an even more horrific viewpoint. Nevermind the fact that you can't legislate sex in a secular, pluralistic society based on the interpretation of one sect of one religion though it's clear they really want to try---ask yourself. Who does that benefit?).

And I asked why he had a problem with it. "It doesn't affect you in any way shape or form, even financially through taxes---since it's illegal for PP or anyone else to use federal funds for abortions. But a forced birth DOES affect you. Your taxes and insurance premiums. Your overcrowded schools and overworked teachers." And I also asked him why he didn't support free and widely available birth control. He didn't have a good answer for any of that, just tried to talk around it but always came back to the child-as-punishment-for-the-woman-for-having-sex. 

(We are no longer friends. I tried to salvage the friendship for a long time but he did the devil's advocate/false equivalency for the Nazis in Charlottesville and that was my line. 20 years of friendship down the drain because a supposed follower of Jesus can't accurately identify evil).

I guess all of this is to say, if you think you are pro-life, examine your feelings about the following things with the understanding that it is not possible to make having sex illegal so just let go of that Puritan sh*t right now:

    1. How do you feel about widely available and required comprehensive sexual education, that teaches people how their bodies and pregnancy actually work? 

    2. How do you feel about widely available and free birth control?

    3. How do you feel about providing free pre-natal care including and up to 50% paid leave for medical distress during pregnancy?

    4. How do you feel about 6-12 months of required paid maternity leave?

    5. How do you feel about free school lunches for every kid?

    6. How do you feel about subsidized housing? For citizens only? For immigrants?

    7. How do you feel about a secular entity taking care of these things for all women in the United States? (since asking churches to do it has clearly not worked in the past, nor do they have the capacity to handle it now--it also lets every atheist off the hook for contributing to a solution).

Because if the answer to any of these questions is "they need to work harder and figure it out" you are not pro-life. If you're actually worried about saving the life of the fetus because you've decided against science (and the Bible) then you would support all of the policies above because they reduce the number of abortions. Those problems are why my student C decided to get an abortion. If she had been forced to carry the fetus to term, it would have killed her. Explain to me how that is "pro-life." Go ahead. I'll wait.

Tired of Platitudes

 "Of course music is important!"

"Every school should have quality music instruction"

"We support music in our schools"

These things get said over and over, yet even pre-COVID, too many music teachers felt unappreciated. Overworked. Tired.

The fact is that no matter what the politicians say, they don't really support music in the schools. Not in any meaningful way, anyhow. They want music in the schools the same way a department store wants the mannequins dressed up in the windows. It's PR and a fancy checklist item to them. It's clear with the lip service they give us by doing things like making music a "core" subject in major education bills, but then not providing any funding or incentives for schools to actually include it.

To borrow a word from my last group of high school students, I've always been a little salty about this. Of course, individuals can feel supported in their state, district, or school, but the national level of response as it is in so many things is just....meh. A perfect example landed in my mailbox today. My most recent copy of Teaching Music arrived and I saw there was an interview with the new Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona.  Now to be perfectly clear before you read any further, I do believe he is a massive improvement over the last person--but it's also clear that a steaming pile of compost would have done better than his predecessor-- the bar was pretty low. Regardless, I was cautiously optimistic when he was nominated and confirmed. 

My optimism was immediately dashed when he immediately pushed for in-person schooling during a pandemic before vaccines were available. As with many other politicians, he cited the nebulous and arbitrary "learning loss" that was made up by the testing companies fearful they'd lose ground with their business model. As teachers and researchers push for more progressive best practices that help students learn more and in different ways, the needs of business still dictate that we manufacture little workers who can fill out test bubbles. But I digress. 

So I started reading the interview hoping that it would show my first impressions to be incorrect. Maybe this is the guy who will finally support music education! He's doing the interview, that must mean something, right? And within the first couple questions, he mentions that his kids are highly involved in their school music and theater program, and that's why they didn't move to D.C. with his new job. He follows this up with a statement about how important music has been to his kids and all kids should have the same opportunities. At this point I'm getting excited (I mean, who gets excited to be wrong?! I know, I'm weird).

Then the next page I hit this: 

        "Imagine if we work together in music and the arts to create a campaign similar to what we've done over the last 16 months to close the digital divide?...I think we can do it better now than ever before because what we've learned through COVID-19 is that you don't need to be physically in front of the instructor to learn. We now know how to give students access to educators who have musical backgrounds and expertise. We can expose these students to a quality music education just as other students enjoy across the country."

Wait a sec. Didn't he just say he didn't make his kids move because the music programs in the D.C. area somehow all aren't up to snuff (which I find hard to believe)? Why can't he find "educators who have musical backgrounds and expertise" through the magic of the internet as he's suggesting for other kids? He's talked a great deal in this article and in other interviews about the importance of learning in person. Does this not matter for music? A subject in which live human interaction is a vital part of the entire art form? Or is this just another way of saying that we don't have to have a licensed expert in the room, we just need to get them on a screen so we can say we have music instruction in every school. Check the box. Window dressing. Make the data look good.

So I only have one question for Dr. Cardona: When you say you support quality music education opportunities for every child, why can't schools have the proper resources and funding for every kid to have what YOUR kids have?

But cut it out with the platitudes.

On to the dissertation!! (and job hunt)

March 22, 2021: I received a pass on my qualifying exam papers. It's a big step and I'm really excited, I now get to start working on my dissertation. Once I finish my coursework and dissertation proposal I am considered "ABD" (all but dissertation) status and that means I can start applying for jobs...and I am not all that excited about that. 

The economy still hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic, and it may not for several years, especially since we are looking at a massive fourth wave that may threaten the success of vaccinations. People with far more experience (and tenure) are getting laid off, departments cut...and all of them will be looking for jobs along with all of the grad students like me trying to just get their foot in the door. And the people who aren't laid off get more responsibilities dumped in their duty pile, while receiving no extra incentive, pay, or relief from the workload of committees, service, or research they already do. And then the positions that ARE posted are increasingly adjunct, "one year visiting" positions, or the workload is beyond ridiculous. I sometimes check the posted jobs just to get an idea of what's expected. One job was shared on social media and what this person commented really sums up all the postings I've seen: 

Two things strike me about this: Most academics would look at that 63k and think it's actually a decent level of starting pay, and the unfortunate reality that they're probably right. 

So I began looking at other types of jobs. What would happen if I went back to k-12? Got into politics? Other academic jobs? And I started noticing something. There are a LOT of "school of education" jobs....like exponentially more than music education (or even more general "music" faculty jobs). The competition is fierce for those unicorn tenure-track jobs, especially in places academics generally want to live (I have also noticed a pattern of openings in....ahem....states with certain political leanings.....) but why not in general education? Why are there so many more openings? 

Obviously, one explanation is that a school of education is larger than a school of music in most universities, and certainly bigger than music education faculty allotments; so there are simply more jobs, period. But I also wonder how much the pay discrepancy plays into that. But I can hear my advisors now: How does that apply to MUSIC, Tina? Well, what is always the biggest complaint of music education students? That their School of Ed professors have no idea what they do, nor do most of them care to understand. That certainly was my experience, especially going to a school too small for the music faculty to cover classes like assessment and classroom management.

In my generation, we were told it's good for you to have professors like that, because you will inevitably have administrators who are the same way. Learn how to advocate for yourself early! Learn how to translate music into edu-speak. But what if universities hired arts teachers to fill some of those school of ed positions instead? Translators, of a sort? Arts educators training future principals and counselors so they have a better understanding of those subjects when they run a school or create schedules?

Hope for the Next Two Years

 Reader, I'm not going to lie. I felt an enormous weight lift when President Biden was sworn in last week.

While discussing the events of January, my neighbor spoke for many of us when he said "and now the work REALLY starts" and as a music educator I felt that statement in my bones.

Education at the moment is a mess, not least of all because of the inconsistent hodgepodge systems being used for the pandemic. But public education is also suffering from four years of deliberate sabotage and twenty years of "reform" policies, which all stem from either a misdirected goal of erasing inequality through education or to completely privatize education. 

It's ironic that the reformers all claim to want the same thing---better educational opportunities and outcomes without spending more money!---but have wildly different definitions about what that means, or which children they mean to help. And of course the pandemic has exacerbated all of these conflicts, with one result being the record number of teachers leaving the profession. Because who wants to be blamed when the policies fail, and not even be able to fully support yourself from the salary? Or to receive derision when you finally say "but I'm not willing to die for it"??

And while a poisonous houseplant would have been an improvement over DeVos, I have not set my mental expectations bar at that level. Secretary Cardona certainly has his work cut out for him. I'm optimistic that those of us in education can use this moment of upheaval for eventual good, and it is encouraging to me that Mr. Cardona has actually taught in a classroom, and isn't a businessperson who thinks they know better than the people who actually work with kids.

Here's a bit of what I hope to see:

1. An acknowledgement that if they want schools physically open, that's going to require teachers/staff to be moved up the priority list for vaccines, and funding is going to be needed to reduce class sizes. And action to support that. Preferably action that doesn't hold schools hostage to an unrelated agenda to receive the money.

2. A moratorium on new charter schools, since that interferes with equitable funding , promotes segregation, and do not have better results than traditional public schools (except when they selectively choose their student populations).

3. Accountability for existing charter schools equal to the level required of traditional schools. Mostly to prevent this. And this. And this. You want public money? You get public oversight.

4. A reversal of all the discrimination policies that have been put in place the last four years.

5. A ban on federal money going to k-12 religious schools.

6. Overturning "right to work" laws that hamstring collective bargaining, though I acknowledge this might not be possible at the federal level without some serious arm twisting.

7. A federal educator "minimum wage" of at least $60k. My pie-in-the-sky wish is that they use the military Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) zip code formula to adjust that number to geographic area.

8. And closest to my heart, a renewal of federal support for a holistic curriculum that considers arts, science, foreign language, history and civics equal to language arts and math. 

I don't know how much of my optimism will be borne out. But the time for educators to push for these things is now. Our kids can't wait for us to decide if we want to be reactive or proactive, and we finally have an administration that might be able to make some positive changes. 

Arguing for cultural responsiveness in the classroom

What does it mean to be culturally appropriate? What is the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? What does it mean to be culturally responsive?

Each of these questions could likely be the topic of its own paper, with as many definitions for the terms as people willing to write about it. The easiest one to tackle is the difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation. Appropriation is most commonly defined as the improper use of some part of a culture by someone outside of that culture. Appreciation is when a part of a culture is used in a way that is approved by the members of that culture. An example of cultural appreciation is a 2nd grade class learning how to do a Chinese dragon dance while learning about the Lunar New Year. But where is the line between appreciation and appropriation? Could this example be interpreted as appropriation? Are learning environments automatically exempt from appropriation if the teacher has good intentions? Or must more care be used to avoid misuse of the activity?

In Bonnie Wade's book Thinking Musically, she divides the chapters into sections such as "Thinking about Pitch" or "Thinking about Time" flipping upside down the ideas that Western classically trained musicians have when conceptualizing music outside that canon. But most importantly, she starts with "Thinking about People" indicating that what makes music universal is the humans at the center of it. As Elliott and Silverman purport in "Music Matters" for musical praxis, people must be at the center. And from this perspective it seems obvious that music education, and inclusion of music outside the agreed tradition is not only acceptable, but necessary. From this side of the issue we could argue that all music learned in school is appreciated through learning, as the 2nd graders learn to appreciate the artistry of experienced dragon dancers.

However, is that all there is to being culturally appropriate in the classroom? What about the high school whose band traditions include the campy "native American war song" (especially in a state where a significant Native American population lives)? How about the suburban almost exclusively white school being taught by a white teacher decides to delve into African American pop music and rap? Does the St. Olaf choir get a pass on singing spirituals with a distinct classical sound because Dr. Anton Armstrong happens to be African American?

To be culturally appropriate in the classroom setting is to be culturally responsive to the realities of the people in the room and outside the room. Educators jobs should not be to avoid the hard realities of these questions but to face them in a thoughtful way that honors all of the people involved. In this way, the teacher must exercise their expert status and have or acquire technical and contextual knowledge of the culture students are learning about, as Estelle Jorgensen says in her chapter about rule and law. But also as Jorgensen says in her chapter about "Seashore and Energy" teachers must also be flexible and open to the reality that there might be other experts including the students who can contribute to a more authentic experience. Being culturally appropriate and responsive avoids appropriation when all the humans (composer, artist, teacher, student, audience) are respected throughout the process.

Music in our Schools Month

The title of this post is "Music in our Schools Month" which feels a little surreal because there's no school happening right now. Not happening in any real way, that is. Everything we do right now, all our little routines, our complex and intricate web of functioning society has just commenced a massive shift to maybe save a large portion of our most vulnerable population.

And because schools have shut down and moved online for now, I've seen many music teachers express frustration about how does one even teach an ensemble class online? Death by worksheet? Creative projects? Theory websites and playing tests? And almost overnight a plethora of ideas came forth. Shared documents, Facebook groups, links to Pinterest boards and dedicated websites. Survival. Give our supervisors and administrators an excuse to keep paying us though they must surely know this is not ideal for any sort of teaching and learning.

Among my professional performer and artist freelance friends, I see two themes: First, they are justifiably worried about how they will pay their bills. They express gratitude for significant others who can float them or gratitude for day jobs that will squeak them through for now. Others who are not so lucky to have that cushion don't know where help will come from but are putting on a brave face and doing the best they can. Second, they are all continuing to make art, even if just for themselves---because it keeps them sane in a world that feels more and more like it's completely upside down.

I'm also taking philosophy of music education this term for my PhD program and we keep coming back to why is music different? Why educate in the arts at all? And I think THIS. THIS SITUATION IS WHY WE DO THIS. Forget about the theory worksheets for now. How are students using music to get them through this terrible time? How are we as music educators encouraging them to use music to get through this? How will they use it to get through hard times in the future? THAT is the purpose of educating in the arts. Not for better math scores. Not because it helps them get into college. Because it's part of their humanity. Because we can rage through it. Because we can weep through it. Because we can laugh through it. Because we can unite through it.

Music in Our Schools Month and every month always.

And to end this post, I'd like to play one of the first songs I ever learned on guitar: A communion song that was written by my high school choir director. I had already decided to be a music teacher before I took his class, but it was largely because of my experience there that I ended up teaching choir (although I did also teach band for a while). I decided not to sing in this video because I can't find the CD and I don't remember all the words, my guitar playing isn't as secure as piano (ha!), and also because I didn't trust myself to not cry. It's been a day.

Summary of Musical Understanding

Elliott and Silverman begin the chapter on musical understanding by defining what it is not: Exclusively "basic musicianship skills" such as dictation, notation, sight-singing, technical facility, or other surface level technical skills whether physical or verbal. Later in the chapter, they include this as a specific kind of musical knowing, but they argue that this is only one aspect, not musical understanding as a whole.

Following the idea that musicing is something people do, they set a litmus test for musical understanding as experiences that are "satisfying, meaningful, enjoyable, transformative, and personal-musical growth experiences" (p 202) and that teaching-learning episodes should "spark, support, enliven, arouse, sustain, and advance positive personal experiences" which seem to support the earlier argument that musicing is human experience that is more than the sum of parts. The ways of knowing and thinking musically according to the authors are split into ten parts.

1. Embodied and Enactive--- The mind and body cannot be separated, so a holistic musical knowing will include aspects of knowing with the body as it is connected to the mind.

2. Musicianship and Listenership--- This is the decision making process, what do we want to teach, learn or communicate and how? 

***3. Procedural--- You can only know by doing. Elliott explains this way of knowing is only possible through direct experience. For example, a military wife may know many aspects of Army culture or things like chain of command, but knowing those things and living them are very different experiences that affect procedural knowledge. Where this seems problematic for music, however, is the idea that people cannot possibly have procedural knowledge about music if they have never done music. The procedural knowledge of the clarinet player surely affects their listening experience to a clarinet performance. However, if this is taken to the author's logical end, conductors could never be proficient at procedural knowledge because there is no way to become that proficient at all of the possible instruments. So while I see his point, I think procedural should be included with experiential (#5) to be clear that any who experience music can have some procedural knowledge.

4. Verbal--- This is the one referred to in the opening statement, most commonly perceived as "musical understanding" as defined in standards, assessments, and written curriculum.

5. Experiential--- The knowledge developed by people as they do music. For example, a person who spent their life playing electric bass for a rock band will have a very different experience than someone who has been trained in a classical style. They may both be considered professionals, and have some shared experiential knowledge (such as negotiating pay for a gig) but their experiential knowledge (how to balance sound in an amplifier vs. balancing acoustic sound with a pipe organ) will be very different. Not better than one another, but different.

6. Situated--- How people use their musical knowledge together as a group, in a relational sense.

7. Intuitive--- Non-verbal, feelings. Elliott and Silverman warn this one can be misleading, as it is grounded in strongly felt sense rather than processes of logic, but can still be a useful tool. I suspect this one is highly valued by the author who comes from a jazz background, and jazz musicians tend to rely on this after many years of verbal and experiential knowledge growth.

8. Appreciative--- Recognizing a creative opportunity as a possibility rather than an obstacle. When a teacher utilizes an organic "learning moment" to expand the musical knowledge of the students, rather than rigidly sticking to a lesson plan, they are demonstrating this aspect of musical knowing.

9. Ethical--- The knowledge we use to make ethical decisions about what pieces we choose to teach or perform, and the context that has to be involved in that decision making process. This could probably be included in the musicianship and listenership, or the verbal ways of knowing since it is a more cognitive way of processing musical knowledge. It doesn't seem very useful to separate it out.

10. Supervisory--- This way of knowing is specifically the musicianship-listenership-verbal from the teacher/conductor point of view. This is holistic knowing, and planning with intent what experiential and situated knowledge a leader wants their ensemble or class to know.

Picking on Elliott

This week's assignment was to "play the naysayer" to one of Elliott's main themes in chapters 2-3. As I started reading I remembered what Dr. Abril said about how we can read all sorts of contradictory philosophical works and agree with all of them because of how well the argument is presented. I started out this week's reading wondering what I could choose to "pick the naysayer" to because I didn't immediately see anything with which I had a gut-reaction disagreement.

However, in Chapter 2, as he discusses the definition of "praxis" he lists out the parts, and sums it up as basically that music is more than the sum of the parts. He demonstrates this by saying music cannot be separated out from the "social, cultural, ethical, economic"--or more commonly understood extra-musical values that are integrated into thoughtful musical education praxis.

While I agree that those extra-musical values are interwoven into a quality music education experience, he quotes Bowman on page 51 as saying "music as a social act and a social fact, instead of music as an entity [a thing] to which my relationship is aesthetic, receptive, and somehow individual in nature." He says this as if the aesthetics of musical experience is not also integrated into praxis. Aesthetics is a value or value judgment on arts, and from my own experience it is clear to me that the aesthetic value a student places on a piece of music is directly related to their motivation to learn it, or work together with others to improve it. If we do not critically educate students about how to make aesthetic judgments, they will gravitate towards that which is already familiar. And if students are not learning new things in a music classroom, only rehashing what is comfortable, why would we even need music educators to do anything beyond the techne? I would argue that the aesthetic is the value that equals more than the sum of the parts.

When everything is highlighted, nothing is.

The title of this post refers to a line from Pixar's The Incredibles where the villain Syndrome says "because when everyone is a superhero, no one will be." I'll come back to that.

Fifteen years ago, my husband and I started the summer master's program at Northwestern. In two of those classes we covered some or all of the Reimer 3rd edition of Philosophy of Music Education. Basically, our copy of the book is well worn, and full of highlighting and notes penciled in the margin. (I also discovered some old photocopies of a Power Point presentation where my friend Wayne and I were passing notes to each other in class).

But as I started reading, I wondered if my highlighted sections or my notes (or Tyson's notes) would still resonate with me. Will I still regard the text the same way with twelve more years of teaching under my belt? Or has nothing changed and I'll just read and renew my same positions? So in re-reading, I used a different color to highlight, but wondered if very much changed will everything be highlighted?

The first thing that I notice is the sentence "Our profession needs such guidance at both the collective and the individual levels" (p 2). Because I was only 4 years into my career when I first read parts of this book, I read it on the individual level, how does this affect me and my students? Now I read it with the hopes of eventually teaching those who want to be teachers which means I must read it with the bigger picture in mind. Younger me completely missed the "philosophy is not advocacy" and that approaching it that way can be a weakness since the arguments would be easily overcome.

For example, "if, on the other hand, we have the feeling that our work is of doubtful value,...we can only feel that much of our life is of equally dubious value (p 3). This makes me think of the various people I have met in urban music programs who came to the profession through some other means such as a freelance performer with alternative or emergency certification and "teaching artists." How can we ever hope to present a united front philosophically if we aren't all even coming to the table with similar pedagogical training? Maybe dividing us that way isn't a bug, maybe it's a feature.

As I remembered from before (and from later chapters) "aesthetic education" refers to different levels of musical engagement, or Small's term musicking. The artist/professional has an aesthetic education that is broader or more nuanced than the amateur/aficionado, but Reimer's basic point is that aesthetic education should be for all students, not just the artist/professional. This concept calls into question everything about how secondary music education is currently set up. Our festival and contest systems, scholarship auditions, college entrances, even how we acknowledge or recognize the achievements of music teachers.

I think my transformation can be summed up by the difference in how I structured my syllabus as a first year teacher. In my first few years, I explained the concert/performance requirement in this way "music is a performance art, therefore the biggest part of your grade is the performance" (because otherwise what's the point?). Over time this changed to explaining it as "experiencing" music. Especially as I taught more and more students who could not take a performance class for one reason or another. The performance is not the point, it's a vehicle for the experience of communicating something aesthetic to an audience. Redefining it this way also gives the audience as much value as the artist since without them no musical dialogue can take place.

Can't we all just get along?

Reading the Pedagogy of the Oppressed is as aggravating as it is enlightening. My years teaching children in poverty, immigrant children, minority children makes this text very real and in living color.

In the third chapter, after discussing the role of the teacher as part of the oppressor, Freire discusses the frameworks that teachers work within. To work within a system of oppression as a revolutionary requires critical thought, honest dialogue, and openness to building relationships. It also requires recognition and acknowledgement of the "limit-situations" we find ourselves in. I often tell people that when I worked at Burr Oak and Mather that those kids taught me more than I ever taught them (and I still believe that), and throughout my career there have been moments of profound clarity where the education was more than surface level. But even though those learning experiences happened, it was always accompanied by frustration of limits imposed by people who benefit from the "banking" system. Students pulled from music classes to take "real" subjects, test scores, school accountability, data-driven curriculum. As Freire puts it, "the word is changed into idle chatter" activism without thought (bumper-sticker advocacy), the noise of how we communicate in the modern world.

When I began reading, I related it to my race relations class in the sociology department. I recognized myself as being one of the oppressors--as I benefit from systemic racism and the privilege that accompanies it. As I continued to read, I realized it wasn't as simple as that. The oppressed and oppressors have a relationship dynamic that is maintained by structures, and only with recognition of those structures can the oppressed dismantle them and liberate us all. Therefore I see my role as an educator to provide students with the opportunities to discover this and then assist them  when called upon to do so. Education is not the oppression, it is a framework that can be used for oppression OR liberation.

I appreciate the distinction between revolution and coup since so many people conflate the two.  Revolution requires dialogue, not brute force. And not recognizing the difference is how so many people who intend to be revolutionary (or "woke" in modern parlance) end up becoming oppressors themselves. I think of Obama's first election, and the hope that people had that he would change things for the better but for many reasons I don't have room to discuss here, he was unable to do those things, and what he was able to accomplish ended up reinforcing oppression (school accountability, health care, and military force). I don't think it was for lack of trying, but because the people he needed to work with were not interested in having the honest dialogue that Friere says is necessary for true liberation.

The pendulum swing

In the first Noddings chapter, she first examines historical education philosophers and how their ideas have permeated through time. As she gets to Rosseau, she asks the question "Must they occur in cycles?" referring to the ideological swings in educational philosophy? This made me wonder how the cycles occur. In my own lifetime, the pendulum started swinging hard towards "accountability" first with Reagan in A Nation at Risk, then Clinton with the push for "certificate of mastery" instead of diplomas and the rise of magnet schools and arguments for vouchers starting to take hold. Then as I started my teaching career, No Child Left Behind was passed and all of the previous ideas solidified and embedded themselves in an insidious way. Only now, almost twenty years later from that point have we even begun to question the path that A Nation at Risk set us on. And it has felt like a behemoth task to even question it when very powerful people hold the reins. Especially our current Secretary of Education* who makes decisions that affect us all, I am sure has never examined any educational philosophy, as she has made it clear she does not believe in public education at all, and has no justification other than public education is "failing" (which means she also cannot read basic empirical research or refuses to do so). In that light, it feels like an exercise in futility to debate philosophical approaches when the people that control education in this country are not being equally thoughtful.

Regarding Noddings' first example about school vouchers, I found this article just this morning and basically sums up how I feel. It's not an attack on the parents themselves, but on their reasoning for acting as they do, but fits into what sociologists refer to as the theory of "laissez-faire racism." An attack on the argument and the inherent structures that cause parents to make the decisions they do. And it connects to my statements above---how can we (educators) have a debate among ourselves about how to educate students when the people controlling the system (legislators and bureaucrats) are still fighting us on the who by actively manipulating parents through fear?

Nevertheless, as the saying goes, she persisted. So I read and think on.

In this same way, on the Dewey chapter, Noddings talks about how Dewey's ultimate aim for education was growth for its own sake. And he received pushback, I believe, because the word "education" then (as now) implies a structure, with assumptions about specific outcomes that direct policy and decision making at every level. Had he used the word "learning" instead, maybe he would not have received so much pushback, and that particular theory would have been more universally accepted. Or, by using the word "learning" he could have pushed the definition of "education."

For example, when we speak of meeting students where they are in music (the modern translation of Dewey's experiential model), we talk about starting with music they listen to, such as hip-hop or rock, and then building from that point to the concepts we think they should know (usually musical literacy and classical Western music repertoire). The problem with that, though is, as Noddings says "teachers must ask where a given experience may lead." Without this mindfulness of the process and the end goal, you may end up with a class doing THIS. Therefore, using Dewey's dialectical method, can we resolve the seemingly opposite ends of music education by approaching students where they are with thoughtfulness so that we can accomplish two things: One, students have a voice in their own learning and two, check ourselves with our tendency to impose knowledge on students that may or may not be useful to them?

Lazy brain part deux

In my first blog post, I wrote about how human brains are lazy. This week's readings forced me to confront my own lazy brain. I like checklists, and I like order. So I read the readings in the order they were presented in the reader on Blackboard. Had I even glanced at the content I would have realized I should have started with Nettl and moved backwards to Kant. But I didn't, so I spent two hours struggling with the first ten or so pages of Kant while my brain is screaming "I hate reading translations. I hate 19th century flowery writing!" Or early 20th century. Whatever.

In any case, all of the readings kept bringing up memories of a class I taught at a community college a couple of years ago. The title was "World Beat" and it was meant to be an introductory survey class of ethnomusicology. It was a very popular class because it was a dual credit fulfillment of both Fine Arts and Social Sciences. And since I was given free reign to create whatever lessons I wanted, I structured it this way:
Week-----> Region or Area of the world ---------> Musical concept------->Social Studies concept

So in Week 1, we studied West Africa, rhythms, and the African diaspora/slave trade and how that affected music development.  In Week 2, it was the Middle East, and we talked about pitch and modes and scales and the explosion of music produced during the Arab Spring was used for protest and how protest music can be a powerful tool. Another week we discussed Native Americans (specifically Salish Coast), how music and visual art are connected, and the function of music as a storytelling device that can capture the oral history of a people. It was the most fun I've ever had teaching music and I hope someday I get to do it again because of course there are a thousand little things I'd adjust and change and refine.

The readings brought me back to this class because one of the first topics we discussed in class is "what is music?" because listening to unfamiliar sounds without any warning or prior experience with music education can result in a student reacting negatively and closing off without further examination of what they're actually hearing.  Both quarters that I taught this class they came up with a working definition of "organized noise and silences for the purpose of communication." But communicating what? And to whom? Is it a noun or a verb? Small gives us some answers in Musicking. He argues that music is a verb, something we do, and that any participation in any capacity means you are musicking. Of course with any verb there are passive and active ways of doing. He also says "not so much about music as it is about people" and the ways they use music to interact with one another. I realize now THAT is the real lesson I was teaching my World Beat class.

However, this goes back to Kant, in that if music is about people, then when we make judgments about art, we are also making judgments on people, and preconceived notions and biases about the people and their intentions may color our view of the art (some of my readings from Sociology of Race might also be sneaking into my head here). So what we perceive to be beautiful will always be affected by our own experiences and knowledge, which Small and Nettl both say is problematic because we, as experts in Western Classical Art Music will always have a tendency to use that as the default to compare everything else, even when being mindful of that bias.

We must also then, be mindful of how we present "other" musics to our students. For instance, to explain didgeridoo as it relates to European brass instruments. Or comparing banda to polka. Again, this brings me back to my World Beat students, because many of them were immigrants with no American school music experience, and Western Art Music was just as foreign to them as everything else. It forced me to be more objective in my presentation, pointing out similarities to other things we had listened to but analogies to my "standard" were useless.

However, I think the most salient point is made by Small when he says "the fundamental nature and meaning of music lie not in objects, not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do." And this is fundamental to music education because we do this thing as a group, interactively. Even in a lecture style college class, the interaction IS the thing. The connection IS the thing.

Philosophy #2 Human Brains are Lazy

In what ways do these readings challenge you to think differently or offer you new insights about art?

Source readings for reference: Elliot & Silverman, Music Matters pp. 24-43; Dewey, How we Think pp. 1-8; Freeland, But is it art?

How we think

I began with Dewey's How we think because it appeared to set the stage for the other two. How can we begin to understand art and what it means without first understanding how our brains process information?

Dewey's definition of different kinds of thoughts are 1) Passing fancies ("My daughter really likes that unicorn stuffy") 2) Non-sensory, storytelling, imagination ("Hey Mommy, what if the unicorn was best friends with the kitty?") 3) Beliefs or assumptions that are unquestioned ("all little girls like unicorns, so that's what I'll get Noelle for her birthday") and 4) Reflection with intention and purpose ("I know Noelle likes unicorns because she told me so, therefore I have evidence that purchasing a stuffed unicorn wouldn't be a waste of money).

As I read several things struck me: His definitions, written in 1910, are still very much relevant. He warns that #2 imaginative storytelling can mimic #4, especially if there is logical flow to it. The way to discern between the two is the intention of pursuing knowledge, belief about facts or truth. I think society's general frustration with modern media stems from this. The reporting we typically see in cable news is not about following facts to a logical conclusion, but rather using facts to create a narrative that serves some purpose or another. How this relates to arts is that we have seen an explosion of artistic satire that pokes fun at the storytelling while also presenting available facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions---promoting reflective thought. Elliot and Silverman reference Stephen Colbert's coinage of the term "truthiness" to make this same point.

This led me to think of two other things: MANY years ago I read both of Rush Limbaugh's first two books. Something that he talked about a lot in the books and on his radio show at that time was how "most people don't actually think, because it's hard work" (And I would say his conclusion is correct as he's built a pretty successful career on that premise).

I also thought of Amanda Ripley, the author of a book called "The Unthinkable" which discusses human behavior in the face of large disasters. In popular media the scripted reaction to a disaster is to panic, run around, scream, etc. What Ms. Ripley documents in her book is that the human brain actually freezes up when presented with new information, because as with all of our muscles, our brains are happiest when being lazy and habitual. When the brain freezes, we call this "cognitive dissonance" and it causes a negative emotional reaction. In a non-emergency situation, the typical reaction is to defend from the negative emotion (thus causing the doubling-down on positions that can't otherwise be defended, the more commonly called "mental gymnastics"). In an emergency situation, the brain has to process the atypical situation and come up with a fact-based logical conclusion about what to do next. THIS is the actual thinking that Dewey refers to in #4. Perplexity, hesitation, searching, inquiry, conclusion. And it takes time for the brain to do this, thus causing the non-Hollywood reaction of "freezing up"

(There's a lot more I could say about this book, it's amazing and fascinating and everyone should read it, along with "What's the Worst That Could Happen" by Greg Craven that discusses cognitive dissonance in way more detail).

The function of philosophy

I think part of the brilliance of the way my master's program was set up was that we weren't stuffed full of facts and knowledge and then sent on our way with a certificate. For six weeks at a time, everything we thought we knew was pulled apart and questioned, examined, and then put back together with new information that we could choose to incorporate or not. Then we were sent back to our classrooms to put into practice what we learned.  Rinse and repeat for four years. This constant evolution of our collective classrooms was a result of philosophy being incorporated into every class, though ranging from subtle to overt. We were constantly challenged to examine our practice and then apply what we learned. It's no wonder that so many of us chose to continue to challenge ourselves in various ways.

As Elliott and Silverman say, mindless teaching is dangerous, because if you don't know why you do something a certain way, you can actually damage a student.  For instance, why do we use letter grades? What useful information does it actually give us? Empirical research says it affects student opinions of themselves, and their motivation. Letter grades also are known in empirical research to only represent how well a student can adapt to their environment, not how much of a subject they've actually mastered. Why do we use them, then?

But is it art?

My daughter suckered me into watching "America's Got Talent" last night and there was a group of young people from Myanmar who did a performance piece with light and shadows to tell a story of two children who grew up without parents due to war. Set to Billie Eilish and Khalid's "Lovely," not a single face was dry at the end, including the performers. I was introduced to that song by my last 5th grade group when we did our soundtrack project. Seeing that song used in that way made me think about how many of those 5th graders were immigrants and refugees from places like the performers were describing in their story. Hell, I can't even type this paragraph without crying.

So when Freeland asks "but is it art?" I think of my undergrad professors who talked about how neat it is when a child can perform some virtuosic piece of music but it never moved him to emotion other than "wow that's a neat trick" because the student is not putting their own emotion into the process and therefore not really communicating with the audience. Humans long for connection, and art is a way of connecting with others. Anything that promotes a dialogue (through reflective thought, not just speaking or writing) could therefore be considered art of some form.

As arts educators, maybe this means we should be asking not only the "why" questions but also the "why not?"

Philosophy #1 BIG QUESTIONS!!

For my philosophy of music education class, we have to create blog entries.  For the sake of continuity, I'm going to continue using this format because then I'll be able to compare the changes in my thinking to prior blog entries. 😀

Ten BIG questions I have about music education (that I am somewhat sure cannot be answered empirically):

1. Should music be part of the regular school day?

2. Could music be offered in secondary schools in a similar format as P.E.?

3. Why do we think of instruments as being gendered?

4. How do we decide who the "experts" are in our field?

5. Is it useful to measure music for school accountability?

6. Is piano proficiency really necessary for college music majors?

7. Is it more important to build knowledge or creativity in a music classroom?

8. Why is band the "public face" of a music program?

9. Is music education valuable for its own sake or only to supplement other things?

10. Does it matter if music teachers have pedagogical training?

Ode to my administrators

To Steve, who called me "kiddo" when I asked for help renting a van for a field trip (I was 22).

To Martin, who straight up bribed kids to recruit for my class.

To John and John who taught me that things will be handled differently than you expect based on context.

To Lori, who showed me what strong, smart women are capable of.

To Phil, who showed me mercy and support as only a dad could.

To Don, who challenged my philosophy but believed in me.

To Mitch, who supported me in what I thought was the toughest year of my career.

To Stefani and Shannon, who taught me how to be the bigger person in a terrible situation.

To Laura, who restored my faith in administrators.

To Erica and Christy, who reminded me that we are all in this struggle together for the right reasons.