Observatory Learning

I was thinking today about how people learn new things. So much of what we learn, we learn by observing or learning with others. This is how we learn how to function in our culture. This is also how we learn so many of the skills that we need in life - everything from talking to cooking to laundry to driving a car. Can you imagine trying to drive a car, having never seen anyone else drive, by reading a book? Possible maybe, but much harder.

This is why I am trying to do away with private piano lessons. We learn better in groups. We have more fun in groups. We get more ideas in groups. And in groups we get to watch other people learn, and teach others. Not long ago I heard someone say, "if you want to learn it - teach it!" Helping or explaining to others what we have just learned helps deepen our understanding and solidify the learning process.

Learning Music at Home

I am a part of the homeshooling movement. What we, as a group, have done is to reject the idea that our children need a professionally-trained teacher in order to learn. And if you think much about it, all children learn from their parents without needing a "professional" to teach them.

Who taught your child to speak? I can almost guarantee that it was you. And I'll bet that you have taught your child dozens and dozens of other things - how to hold a fork, how to wash his hands, how to use the bathroom, and on and on.

So in homeschool, we just expand that. Now along with teaching my child how to use the potty, I also teach her how to hold her pencil and to read and how to use the scientific method. Now, there are things that I don't have the knowledge to teach them, and in those cases I will either educate myself or find someone else or a resource to help me.

What about teaching music at home? The problem with that these days is that so few of us actually learned music in a way that we could still retain as adults. What if our culture shifted to where the majority of the population became able to express themselves musically and to pass that on to their children? I'm not talking about a generation of concert pianists. I am talking about the average adult being able to sit down at a piano, or other instrument and just play for fun.

What a joyful thing that would be in American homes. Can you imagine the implications? How do we benefit from being able to express ourselves musically in a way that we feel good about? Emotional release? Stress-reduction? Increased intellectual abilities? What about the social implications? I know that I used to dream of the family standing around the piano singing Christmas carols. If we had a culture where most adults could express themselves musically this could happen.

I know, I'm preaching. And if this happens I will teach myself right out of a job. But I think our world would be a better place if the expectation were for each of us to be able to express ourselves musically, even in some small way.

The Failure of Traditional Music Education

I received a traditional music education. It worked for me. But I am an exeption. And when I say it worked for me, I mean that if I have a piece of music in front of me and the appropriate instrument in my hands I can play. But, up until recently I was terrified to express myself away from the page.

In traditional music lessons the students are taught how to read music as a means of learning how to play music. And technique is stressed from the very beginning. What this often produces is frustrated students who really just want to play music.

I say, let them play. I think we should be following a model similar to that which is demonstrated when children learn to speak. A child hears speach, learns to babble, starts to form words, then sentences, and finally, speaks fully by the age of 3 or 4. Only after that are they taught to read and spell. This educational model has produced overwhelming success. The vast majority of children learn to speak effectively.

Let's compare that to the traditional music education model. Children begin music education, often piano, at an early age. They are forced into multi-level thinking from the very beginning. They must understand and interpret the written symbols indicating pitch and rhythm from the very beginning. This requires a very complicated thought process. There are consequences to this. Most children hate piano lessons and quit playing forevermore from the day their parents stop forcing them to attend. The failure rate of traditional music education is astounding, possibly more than in any other academic arena. How many adults do you know who still play piano after having lessons as a child? I'll bet its not many. As of 1994, there were 11 million unused pianos in the United States.

So, again I say, let them play. Let's teach music the same way we teach speech. Let's demonstrate music-making and then help our students take baby steps in the direction of musical expression without criticizing the results. We can encourage progress, and then when the student has a good musical vocabulary on their instrument, let's introduce reading. I'll bet that if we were to do this with our students, we would end up with a population of people who were able to and interested in expressing themselves musically, even years later.

A Change in Music Education

We have been teaching music the same way for centuries. It's what I call a "reading-based" approach. A student must learn to read music in order to play music. Unfortunately, this method of music education has a very high failure rate. Students end up frustrated when all they really want to do is learn to express themselves musically. But with all of the effort of trying to figure out the musical symbols and the counting, the chance for musical expression is often lost.

Many, maybe even most, piano students who learn the traditional "reading-based" way stop playing piano forever the day their parents stop forcing them to take lessons. There is just something wrong here.

What would happen if we were to teach music the same way we teach speech? An infant learns to talk by listening to talking and then trying it out for themselves. They learn to babble, then form words, then sentences. And by the time they are 3 or 4 years old they are speaking fully, without ever having learned how to read or spell anything.

Why not teach music the same way? Why not teach music students how to express themselves musically by relating directly to an instrument, without bogging them down with the burden of reading at the same time. Once they can play, then let's teach them to read.

I believe that this is a much more natural way to learn. And I think that we would see much more success in music education, not to mention much happier music students.

Boom De Yada

Below is a link to my favorite commercial of all-time. It's for the Discovery Channel; you may have seen it. First of all, it is just a well-made commercial. It is 60 seconds of reminders about how great our planet is, put to fun music, of course. For me it serves as a reminder of the amazing and wonderful world that God created for us to live in. It's so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of life and miss the amazing world around us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20)

Parental Rights

Who gets to decide how children are raised? Is it their parents alone? How much should be regulated by the government? Where does protecting children cross over the line of interfering with a parent's right to choose how their kids are raised?

These are tough questions that I have been thinking about lately. Back in February there was a court ruling here in California that threatened my right to homeschool. Now I have been reading murmurings online about the American Medical Association voting on a resolution (Resolution 205 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/18587.html) pointing towards outlawing homebirth, even with a licensed midwife. And yesterday I read an article that stated that the American Academy of Pediatrics is formulating a campaign to persecute parents who do not wish to follow the mandated vaccination schedule for their children.

These things bother me. I understand that there are parents out there who abuse their kids. And there are parents out there who neglect their kids. It makes my heart sick to think about it. But, I don't want my right to make parenting choices diminished because of these unfortunate circumstances. Can we protect the little ones who are being hurt without hurting the parents who are being protective?

There is actually a movement to add a parental rights amendment to the US Constitution. If you are interested, click here: http://parentalrights.org/