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Archive for the 'groupthink' Category
My philosophy of music is changing, slightly.
I used to give little credibility to musicians who couldn’t read. What would be the use of a great poet, I thought, if she could never write down her words to share, and couldn’t partake in the words of others? The same must be true of music.
Furthermore, when I became a music major, it was somewhat shocking to me that some of my peers didn’t know their key signatures. I took annual theory tests since first grade, and in hindsight had some inner-snobbiness about that. There was even one classmate in college who was learning to read music, and while I heard people praising him, it caused me to struggle inwardly with the legitimacy of my education.
This past Christmastime, a family friend named Marc* asked me to show him some things on the piano. Marc is 17. I used to babysit him. He is a kid you can often see in his family room or on the front porch playing his guitar. Marc has had some guitar lessons and is also self-taught. While I can’t praise his techniques in detail to someone like Corey, I do know that it is pleasing to listen to Marc’s guitar playing. I think he has whatever it is that you sometimes can’t teach.
With this in mind, I looked forward to meeting with him weekly to mess around on the piano.
A few months ago, Marc enlisted in the Marines, and he reports for boot camp in August. (His 19 year-old brother is already in Iraq.) These conditions turned my ideas of education upside-down. At first, I did what I knew how to teach – intervals, basic symbols from the Adult Piano Method, etc. Then one day, he asked, “Will you teach me Claire de Lune?”
I’ve played this Debussy piece on some occasions, but had never taught it – let alone to some who isn’t a proficient reader of music. It contains five flats, complex rhythms, arpeggios that encompass several octaves… and the boy asking me is about to risk his life to protect mine. “Sure,” I said, having no idea what to expect.
And so it was that he began to learn Claire de Lune by rote. I teach him 4-8 measures each week, and he comes back playing them well. He is my hardest-practicing student. I don’t know, maybe he uses it to woo young women. And just maybe it works!
I tease him that he brings the sheet music for my sake, but it’s true, he does. Perhaps he would not survive a piano jury of judges, but it doesn’t sound half bad. If I tell him to linger on this note or create more tension in that measure, he does it. But usually I don’t have to tell him.
This week I sent him home with a Grieg lyric piece. We’ll see what happens.
So what would I say today, to a poet who couldn’t write? Maybe, “Tell me a story.”
*his real name
I have 7 students in my Music and Ethics class this semester. They’re just about cresting the first difficult climb in writing their thesis papers. They’ve done the bulk of the research, and had to turn in a full footnoted outline of their argument. All that’s left for most of them is to spill the actual ink, and turn it into something readable. And then, of course, the editing.
They’ve picked some pretty interesting topics, so I thought I’d throw them out here for you folks to peruse. These are their thesis statements, roughly, along with some background.
- Sacredness is an ascribed quality, not an objective quality, therefore music that is sacred is always sacred to some person, or group of people. It is sacred because it serves the function of producing desired internal states, considered spiritually significant by people who call the music sacred. This means that 1) people outside of that group have no obligation to the “sacredness” of the music, and 2) it is inappropriately limiting to the creative process to force composers to work within a certain genre of music because of its “sacredness”.
- The emphasis on competition within High School music programs is detrimental to the education process. A music educator has an obligation to select repertoire for their ensemble based on artistic merit and educational value, and not competitive value.
- A film composer’s evaluation of a potential project should be based on the over-arching primary theme of the film, rather than content that serves that theme. She may choose to work on a film with a strong positive primary message, even if the film also contains graphic sexuality and violence. If the strength of the primary theme outweighs the presence of objectionable content, the project as a whole can be considered good, and worthwhile.
- There are three categories of repertoire that are frequently controversial in music education: music with sexual themes (sensual and explicit operatic works), music with overt religious themes (everything written between 600 and 1600 C.E. in Western Music), and music by controversial composers (Wagner’s pro-genocide stance, for example). A music educator has an obligation to perform these works, in spite of the controversy. To avoid them both limits that artistic experience of the students, and presents a skewed perspective on the scope and history of musical literature.
- A composer’s original intent is the fundamental guiding principle for the interpretation of a work. Contemporary performers and conductors have an obligation not to deviate from the best understanding of the composer’s intent in their interpretation and execution of a work.
- A musician has an obligation to only create works that best express their aesthetic judgment. It is a violation of the purpose of music, and the nature of the musician, to make choices based on values of broad appeal or commercial viability. There are strong parallels between a musician using their craft for less-than-art purposes, and prostitution, in that both treat the person as a means to an end, in violation of the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative. (This is going to be a helluva paper - this student is incredibly bright, and is making some very, very strong arguments in support of this thesis. Once he’s finished, I’ll give more of my thoughts on this topic).
- The lyrical content of music is capable of making moral claims, even in poetic and non-propositional formats. Songwriters have an obligation to produce works whose moral claims contribute to social unity. Songwriters may not plead ignorance in their understanding of these moral claims, and must take responsibility for their social impact as contributing factors to social change. To claim that songs are not sufficient causes for any particular social change is not an argument against their contributory power to those changes. The two primary case studies will be the identification by Klebold and Harris with the music of Marilyn Manson prior to the Columbine High School shootings, and the release of the song F*ck Tha Police by NWA prior to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. (I think this student is going to argue that the moral claims of F*ck Tha Police actually fulfill the obligation toward social unity, by exposing an underlying reality that then prompted broader attention and calls for change.)
It’s fun to sit in conferences with these students and read through their arguments, to see the evidence of their critical thinking. I love the fact that I don’t have to prod any of them to find the value in this process - they all seem to understand that spending time thinking deeply about these themes will be beneficial to their development as musicians, and as people.
Nicholas Wolterstorff is coming to APU. He’s a very distinguished Professor of Philosophy, most recently teaching at Yale. He’s written extensively on religion and reason, on the rationality of Christian faith, and on the possibility of aesthetics in art. He’ll be giving two lectures, tonight and tomorrow night, both in Munson Chapel, starting at 7PM. Tonight’s lecture is titled “Speaking up for the Wronged”, and tomorrow night is “Love and Justice.” Come if you’re interested.
But the thing I’m really excited about is happening tomorrow at noon. I’m having lunch with Wolterstorff. Well, me and the rest of the music faculty, but I’m still gonna pretend that the two of us are on a date. He’ll see by my eager smile and witty repartee that the rest of these people are mere distractions, and the two of us will escape away together to a pine-covered hillside, where we’ll talk for hours about realism in art, epistemology and religious experience, universals and their implications for ethical norms, just the two of us …
… did it just get awkward? Why the uncomfortable silence, everyone?
Anyway, I’m throwing this out to our wide reading audience, those of you who troll by the RSS feed and keep tabs on us from afar. I know many of you have read Wolterstorff’s writing. In fact, it was a reader here who first introduced me to his writing. If you were sitting down to lunch with him, what would you ask? Any burning questions about ethics, art, religious knowledge, any of those kinds of things?
I promise to dutifully report back to you every sparkling gem of wisdom that falls from his hand. And to leave out the awkward intellectual man-crush stuff.
I teach a course at Azusa Pacific University called Introduction to Music Technology. It’s a required course for all music majors; at some point, all of our students have to come sit in front of me for 15 weeks and struggle with the content of the course.
Some struggle more than others. With any subject matter, there are some students who, by virtue of intelligence, experience, or motivation, are better able to navigate the ideas and make them a useful part of their body of knowledge. There are others who struggle through the same content, and frequently either abandon the field of study, or scrape together just enough competence to pass, and then never use that knowledge again.
Reticent Technology Learners
With technology, there is a particular kind of student who struggles. I’ll call them “Reticent Technology Learners”. They might excel in other areas, be intelligent and curious students, but when it comes to the field of technology, they have real and persistent barriers to learning that prevent them from mastering the tools.
I’ve noticed some common characteristics that these students share. I’m listing them here for comment, for you to consider and refine. Reticent learners aren’t just in school, they’re all over the place - some of you probably work with them, or live with them, or you might be one (hey Bobby!). I’d love your feedback on this list, and your help in expanding it where appropriate.
Here are some common characteristics of Reticent Technology Learners (RTLs):
1. A belief that technology behaves differently based on the user.
“I already tried that! It works for you, it just won’t work for me.”
The RTL believes that the same steps will produce different results based on the person doing them. If they encounter a problem, and someone else is able to fix it, they identify the solution with the person, and not the steps taken. This might manifest in phrases like “I’m just not a computer person”, or “Technology doesn’t like me.”
2. Low tolerance for risk and experimentation
“I didn’t try it, because I didn’t know if it was ‘right’ or not.”
Suppose you are using a slide presentation program (like powerpoint, or keynote), and you want to insert a new slide. In the menu bar, you see an icon with an image of a slide and a large plus sign. Most users would try clicking the icon, on the assumption that it is probably going to do what they intend for it to do, add a slide. The RTL will not take that risk - if they aren’t sure that something is “right”, they will not experiment with it. This low tolerance for risk and experimentation means that all new learning for an RTL must be the direct result of specific training.
3. Task/Step organization of ideas
“To attach a file to an email, I do these 6 steps.”
An RTL approaches technology as a set of tasks, and each task consists of a set of steps which must be perfectly executed in order. The result is a lack of conceptual learning. They may learn to follow 6 specific steps for attaching a file to an email, but this doesn’t translate into understanding the concepts of file location or reference.
The obvious problem, then, is that each new task requires a total relearning of all the steps. The concept of file location and reference doesn’t carry over into the new task of adding a photo to a flickr uploading program, they have to relearn it as 4 new steps that are unrelated to the steps in the task of “attaching a file to an email.”
4. An exaggerated presumption of malicious or faulty technology
“Well, my computer must have a virus.”
The paucity of conceptual understanding for the RTL means that most of technology is a mystery to them. They have an exaggerated tendency to fill this gap in with malicious or faulty technology. They tend to see viruses, online security fraud, and malicious code everywhere. Any recurring problem with their computer is a “virus” or a “bug in the software.”
Any encounter with actual malicious or faulty code reinforces this perception, while any solution to a problem that does not rely on fixing bugs or removing malicious code is seen as the exception.
5. A perceived fragility to technology
“I didn’t install the updates because I didn’t want to crash my computer.”
Many RTLs have reached a kind of antagonistic truce with the technology they’re forced to work with - they reach a point where they can be minimally functional with it, and they perceive this state of functionality as tenuous and fragile. They are unwilling to risk upsetting this delicate balance by installing security updates, upgrading software, or removing unneeded accessories.
6. A generally pessimistic expectation toward technology
This is no surprise, given the other 5 characteristics, but many RTLs have developed a pessimistic expectation toward technology; they don’t expect it to work, and when it does work they don’t expect it to be useful. As a result, they will usually choose the non-technical solution to a problem, even in situations where there is a clear advantage to the technical solution.
In Conclusion
In developing this list, with some input from Gretchen, Stick, and June, some additional questions kept popping up.
Do RTLs have these same characteristics in other learning environments (learning to drive, learning a new language, etc.)?
There is a perception that age might be an indicator of RTL tendencies, but I’m wondering if it’s really age, or if it’s better to think of it in terms of familiarity with technology?
And finally, and I think most importantly, are there concrete training tools that can transform an RTL into an avid learner, willing to take risks and able to learn conceptually about technology? I think there are, and if that’s true, it has significance for how I structure my class.
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