Music and Education

I have a three-month-old son, and I work in education. You would think I would accept whatever help I could get to make kids smarter.

Not quite.

Some products claim to make kids smart. One popular product line is Baby Einstein, but there are many others trying to fill the baby education niche market.

Here's the problem - educational videos and software are not designed to effectively improve the intelligence of children; rather, they are designed to look good to adults who purchase them. Parents, especially new ones, are a sucker-rich environment for sellers of educational products. We feel guilty if we aren't giving our kids the extra edge to get ahead in life.

Guess what? Fostering a happy home environment, reading and conversing with our kids, and turning off the TV will benefit them much more than a video designed to cram facts into their little noggins.

Consider Einstein. Yes, he was an excellent thinker. But was he a human calculator? No, he had assistants work many of the calculations for him. This was in the age before computers, so it was a common practice. Einstein didn't grasp everything at once, and he was not forced to learn.

Einstein knew how to connect known facts and concepts in order to extrapolate into the unknown. This is the essence of creativity - walking to the edge of that which is known, and extending it beyond its current ending point by combining truths from various spheres of knowledge. Does your educational software teach kids how to do that? Probably not.

Teach your kids how to learn and how to make connections. Save the twenty bucks on the DVD and take them out for ice cream instead. Time with you is the real magic bullet.

In Kindergarten

[Note: “La Fiesta de la Posada” is a song about the festival celebrating Mary and Joseph looking for a room at the inn.]

Me: We’re singing a song called “La Fiesta de la Posada.” What’s a fiesta?

Kids: A party!
I went to a fiesta once!
And you hit the thing with the candy. . .
etc.

[At this point, every child has something profound to say about the fiesta experience. I refocus the discussion.]

Me: That’s right; a fiesta is a party. What is a posada? Have you ever heard that word? If fiesta means party, then La Fiesta de la Posada would be the party of the. . . ?

[awkward silence]

Kid in Green Shirt: Chainsaw?

Me: Let’s see a straight, quiet line here.

Little Girl (in second grade): I work out every day, and I go to Karate.

I want to say: Are you threatening me?

Or: Big deal! I do Sudoku all the time.

Or: Why don’t you go out to the playground and practice some of those moves on one particular trouble-making classmate?

But I really say: That’s nice! We need a straight, quiet line.

As I was speaking with a fellow musician today (he is the teacher in whose classroom I am student teaching), we got onto the subject of jazz. I mentioned that I can’t stand to listen to a jazz station for long periods. This got us into a good conversation about modern music and what gives good music its “edge.” I have a few philosophical points to share on this:

1. All music comes from somewhere. It may be an outgrowth of the culture from which it springs. It may be a facsimile of what the musicians have heard before. Music has origins, from a child playing chopsticks to the newest punk rock band. If you analyzed every musical influence which has brushed past my ears, you could probably identify where every good musical idea I’ve had was used by somebody before me. Real musicians steal. No, I take that back. Real musicians take existing elements and organize them into a recognizable, effective form. Isn’t that what God did when creating the world?

2. The best music is organic. I don’t mean that it’s free from pesticides and genetic modification. I mean that the best music has a refined human element. Various software tries to emulate human musical performance, and some do a good job. But the best music is felt not only by the audience, but by the performer in the very act. It contains human characteristics (like trademark imperfections) that make it real. The best music is never played the same twice, because the right interpretation for the moment is determined by the venue and the audience and what the musicians had for dinner. Little things that seem inconsequential change the performance immensely for musicians who are willing to follow the natural unfolding of music.

3. Good musicians are becoming fewer in the world. Why? Attention span, for one. How many children have the drive to practice an instrument daily? How many adults? I see a critical difference between this generation and the generation of our parents: mediocre music no longer requires musicians. Before the technology of the 90s and beyond put a studio within the grasp of any bozo with a synthesizer, making music required live musicians. There were, of course, recordings, but they were made with live musicians as well. Now, musicianship has become novel. It is one thing to play Guitar Hero and quite another to be a musician. But disturbingly, many of us under 30 devote significantly more time to video games than to any real skill-building activity.