When I think about music education, I envision a field that when taught well clarifies and adds value to all other subjects. I’m not sure that impression goes both ways. Often I suspect that other subjects think of music education as a nice extra, like dessert.
Imagine a student who has some difficulty using their eyes to take in information. Perhaps like many children they simply can’t keep their eyes still long enough to really look at something. Maybe they only look at things that are moving for them on screens, so they don’t have to move their eyes at all.
Or perhaps they can use their eyes with difficulty. Maybe they can scan left to right to read, but they find the act difficult and tiring. Or perhaps it’s interrupted by some kind of tic so they never really get a complete thought from anything they see.
Can you image a student with such rudimentary vision skills being able to succeed in math the way it’s taught? Depending on the method, they may have to follow numbers left-to-right, up to down, along a backwards diagonal, or along some crazy pathway that uses all directions. If they’re going to succeed in math, they’ll need to know when to look where, and they’ll need clever visual skills to do it.
Meanwhile, in music class, some of them are learning to read music. Music is somewhat linear, but not quite, and a musician has to move their eyes all over the page to get relevant information. Musicians have to learn movements with their eyes that other people, even good readers, never do.
This advanced eye-movement enables physical movements (the act of making music) the result of which are often pleasing and usually fun. A profound connection is made between the advanced use of the eyes and gratifying results. They learn to take in visual information and convert it to something that is fun to do and (hopefully) sounds good.
Do you think a student that has improved the use of their eyes in this way may have a better chance of taking in the information on a math white-board? How important do you think that skill becomes to that student? By extension, how important was their music class in relation to their general academic standing?
The use of the eyes is just one of a number of skills and concepts that music breaks down. Often these ways of learning are so fundamental they are missed or discounted by everyone in the building. If I died tomorrow, the one thing I would want people to learn from me is what a favor schools are doing themselves when they protect this time and give their “specials” teachers the resources they need to do their best work.
Imagine a student who has some difficulty using their eyes to take in information. Perhaps like many children they simply can’t keep their eyes still long enough to really look at something. Maybe they only look at things that are moving for them on screens, so they don’t have to move their eyes at all.
Or perhaps they can use their eyes with difficulty. Maybe they can scan left to right to read, but they find the act difficult and tiring. Or perhaps it’s interrupted by some kind of tic so they never really get a complete thought from anything they see.
Can you image a student with such rudimentary vision skills being able to succeed in math the way it’s taught? Depending on the method, they may have to follow numbers left-to-right, up to down, along a backwards diagonal, or along some crazy pathway that uses all directions. If they’re going to succeed in math, they’ll need to know when to look where, and they’ll need clever visual skills to do it.
Meanwhile, in music class, some of them are learning to read music. Music is somewhat linear, but not quite, and a musician has to move their eyes all over the page to get relevant information. Musicians have to learn movements with their eyes that other people, even good readers, never do.
This advanced eye-movement enables physical movements (the act of making music) the result of which are often pleasing and usually fun. A profound connection is made between the advanced use of the eyes and gratifying results. They learn to take in visual information and convert it to something that is fun to do and (hopefully) sounds good.
Do you think a student that has improved the use of their eyes in this way may have a better chance of taking in the information on a math white-board? How important do you think that skill becomes to that student? By extension, how important was their music class in relation to their general academic standing?
The use of the eyes is just one of a number of skills and concepts that music breaks down. Often these ways of learning are so fundamental they are missed or discounted by everyone in the building. If I died tomorrow, the one thing I would want people to learn from me is what a favor schools are doing themselves when they protect this time and give their “specials” teachers the resources they need to do their best work.