"EVERY song they brought, most of the class was bored with before it was finished, and there was clamour and uproar for the next one - which was equally derided."
"A Melbourne composer, Graham Leak has just noted in this morning's Age that young people today have 20,000 songs on their iPods, but only listen to about 5 seconds of each song before changing to another track. It was a very unsuccessful lesson for me though, because I was unable to get any kind of discussion going on why they found their own music so worthless. And sad to see as well"
Yes, John. I'm quite familiar with this scenario. I had the duty at my school of providing the music for the school dances. It was one of the most interesting and educational experiences of my professional career. You see, the school dances became the reward for all types of excellent student behavior. It was amazing to hear the kids talk about how they were going to "earn" the next "Fun Night."
In choosing the music for the dance, I was entrusted with finding pop music that the kids liked AND was acceptable in a public school setting with middle school kids. No blatant profanity (cut the list by 50%), no references to drinking, smoking, or drug use (there went another 30%), and I had to watch out for the love songs and the references to sex and violence... whew! Was there anything left? (I remember doing the Macarena for hours.... just kidding...Watermelon Crawl was a big hit.)
The magic part about all of this was that I ended up searching high and low, talking at length to many of the kids, discussing with them at length during lunch, before and after school, and occasionally during class just what music we could play at Fun Night. I called this the gathering of "requests." John, this may have been the discussion you were referring to that was so difficult to initiate in your classes. In my case, the students were highly motivated to make real choices about what they were going to hear.
Of course at the dances themselves, the scenario you mention was played out over and over. I insisted that the entire song be played and that every song had been "requested" by students. The kids of course were ready to play 5 seconds of each one until they got to the song that they had requested. They tested my patience many times.
My larger point concerning "Banal and Beethoven" is that teaching professionals have learned how to "filter" the music using all of the various criteria we learned during our training. Teaching children to filter their own music is one of the most valuable skills we can teach. In order to develop this filter teachers must be willing to meet the students where they are and acknowledge that, in the case of music, they come to us with much of their musical intelligence already highly developed. Each of them are (as is the general population of adults) experts in the music they like. Not just experts but passionate experts. If we don't meet them there, gain their respect and bring them along with us, success is difficult.
I failed with many students. They just plugged in their iPods and walked away. It IS sad. I never gave up on them though and sought them out to ask "Whatcha listening to?" whenever I saw them. They always cheerily told me what was playing along with the caviat, "Can't play this at Fun Night."
I smiled.
No comments:
Post a Comment