Keynote Address
Kansas Music Educators Symposium
June 2001
Timothy Caldwell

Several years ago, I was having dinner with a colleague from the theater department. We were discussing how the teaching in her department and the School of Music were different. She was particularly curious about the way music was taught to one student at a time in, for example, voice lessons. “We do everything in theater with other people, and our training classes reflect that,” she said. “Why do music teachers teach one-to-one?” I thought about her question for a few moments then gave her the first answer that came to mind: tradition!

Our conversation and my outburst in an otherwise quiet restaurant started me thinking about the idea of traditions in teaching music. Imagine a railroad track, two rails running side-by-side, both necessary for the train to run on. Our profession of teaching music is much like the train track with one rail being the music and musical standards, and the other being our pedagogy, the way we teach. Just as in the “real world,” when the trains are running, you can’t inspect the rails: when we are in the midst of our teaching during the school year, there is little time to inspect our metaphorical “rails” without causing a train wreck! That is the one of the benefits of this Symposium because it gives us a time to do a little rail inspection.

I will pay particular attention to the pedagogy rail because there is a new partnership being formed between the arts, cognitive psychology, and neurology. Neurologists in particular are disproving some of our pedagogical traditions and validating others. The early results of this partnership indicate that we (the arts, psychology, and neurology) can learn much from each other, and, that we as musicians and teachers of music, are engaged in work that is basic not only to our partners but to education in general. One of the most exciting results of neurological research validates what educational pioneers have intuited for decades: music and movement actually structure and transform the brain.

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), the founder of the method that bears his name, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, intuited the importance of movement in the late 1800’s, when he declared that good music teaching begins by teaching the original instrument: the body. All music making begins with a movement, whether it is taking a breath to sing or play an instrument, or preparing the hands to clap or play the keyboard, or the conductor’s arm giving the preparatory gesture. The quality of the sound depends on the quality of the gesture, so Dalcroze reasoned that if we really want to teach music or improve musical performance, then we must attend to the body.

Some of the depth of Dalcroze’s genius came from his insight into the nature of rhythm and finding ways to prepare the body to perform rhythmically. He eventually defined rhythm as “the varieties of flow through time and space.” My Dalcroze teacher and mentor, Robert Abramson, extended that definition when he said, “music is the art of moving sound through time and space.” Movement! Even the original meaning of rhythm (from the Greek term rhythmos meaning “river” or “flow) inferred that rhythm is about movement.

What does this mean to our teaching? If we follow Dalcroze’s train of thought (pun intended) then it become evident that music is movement and emotions transformed into sound. Musical notation is the composer’s attempt to visually record his or her thoughts and feelings. Our job, as teachers and performers, is to take the visual record (the printed “music”) and translate it back into patterns and gestures that evoke the thoughts and emotions of the composer. This means that we need to teach music reading not as mathematics, but as movement and gestures. When it comes to teaching reading, I believe the goal is to teach students to feel what they see.

The question arises: how do we teach in that manner. The most direct answer is: first we give the musical experience, then we show the symbol. This idea came from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, the Swiss educator who lived from 1746-1827. He understood that the brain has to have some sort of large outline in which to put smaller pieces of information. Back in the 1960’s, a group of research psychologists borrowed the German term, gestalt (defined as shape or form), and said our brains needed some sort of large outline, or gestalt, in which to put the smaller details. Neurologists have validated that concept over and over but under a different name. They call it neural-networks. In his book, Brain-based Learning, Eric Jensen flatly declares that “if we do not have a neural-network for it, then it does not exist for us.” Fritz Mengert, the noted neurologist, states it a bit differently: all learning is based on prior learning.

Let’s stay with this experience-symbol issue a bit longer because it lies at the heart of our pedagogical systems. What does this mean to our pedagogy? Pestalozzi had it right: first, give the experience and build those networks, then fill in the details. When, then, does the symbol enter the neuro-scene? Almost simultaneously with the experience. Musical symbols are a notation of musical language. The neuro-act of transforming the experience to language needs to occur very closely to the experience, and Dalcroze had it right when he stressed that the experiences should be related through movement. In fact, Dalcroze wrote that every element of music could be taught through movement.

I began by talking about the pedagogical traditions that form the metaphorical rail that we are inspecting. Our teaching practices are such a part of us that at times they almost seem genetic. As people, we are very much products of our genes, our environments, and our experiences within our environments. As teachers, our “genetic” heritage is our musical training. We tend to teach as we were taught. Geneticists use the term “expression” when describing the outcome of genetic function. Examples of genetic expression are our height, whether we are left or right handed; our dominant eye or ear. The environment can modify the genetic expression if, for example, we loose our hearing due to excessive noise, or are forced to use our “opposite” hand due to injuring our “normal” hand. We can further modify genetic expression by conscious choices, such as the person who exercises regularly because a non-exercising parent died at an early age. Lets look at our “genetic” heritage as teachers and how our “teaching genes” express themselves.

The philosophy that underlies our present genetic heritage began with the Greeks. They valued the “life of the mind” to the point that the body was viewed as little more than the vessel that carried the mind from place to place. This separation between body and mind is still very evident in educational practice today. For example, when a teacher tells young students to “sit still, be quiet, and pay attention!” the reason the teacher is doing so is perhaps because he or she was taught that in order to concentrate and focus their attention, children must be quiet and sit still. I guess the assumption seems to be that this keeps their minds from being distracted by their bodies.

Of course, there may be another reason for the teacher’s behavior. He or she might be doing something neurologists call “downshifting.” “Downshifting” occurs when the brain perceives a threat and “drops” into a survival mode. If the teacher is downshifting, it could be due to a kind of emotion-based process (almost all of which takes place unconsciously) that runs like this: “if my principle comes by, she could see the students being unruly and think I cannot control my class and she might think I am a poor teacher and I’ll loose my job and if I loose my job I can’t make my house payments and my family will be on the street and I’ll die broke and alone in some alley.”

Victor Johnston, in his book titled Why We Feel: the Science of Human Emotions, writes that our brains “generate long sequences of thoughts that are constantly steered and evaluated by our feelings….we can generate innumerable variations of hypotheses until our emotional value system deems a particular outcome to be favorable. We call such activities thinking or decision making, and it is these cognitive operations that dominate our conscious mind.” In short, our emotions, many of them unconscious, drive our thinking and perceptions. Our downshifting teacher perhaps went through the emotion-generated scenario and arrived at the best solution he could to avoid becoming a street person.

There are many kinds of downshifting. A classroom teacher, sensing that the class is about to go completely bonkers, might decide to call a recess. A typical example of an ensemble director downshifting when he or she is not quite sure how to fix a problem is, “Okay everybody, let’s do that section again.”
Other examples of downshifting are:

• Singer, performing from memory, forgets a word and stops singing

• Instrumentalist/pianist, performing from memory, forgets next note or chord and stops playing

• In a performance, conductor drops the music, stops conducting to retrieve it, ensemble stops performing

What are ways for us to use the phenomenon of downshifting in a positive way in our teaching? Lets examine the phenomenon further. As an example, we can compare the brain to the transmission of a car. A car has levels of gears. With a manual transmission we normally don’t go from fifth gear to first gear when coming to a stop. I suppose you could do that, but I would rather not be riding with you if you did.

What we do when downshifting from fifth to first is pass through the intermediate gears. In the same way, we can build in intermediate stages for our students to downshift to, but we have to do it in the rehearsals. We can teach them by occasionally practicing for imperfection. That is, in Mengert’s words, we can teach them to fail successfully. How do we do that? One of the quickest ways is to teach them to improvise. You will be surprised at what you will discover about their knowledge of musical styles when they are asked to improvise the music in the style of the composer.

I have been harping on the importance of using movement to teach and learn, and how psychologists and neurologists are validating so much of what educational pioneers intuited. However, as a group (because there are always exceptions), teachers have not made the connection between the research and their teaching. Their “teaching genes” still express themselves in the old manner, so they prize students who sit in nice straight rows, who are quiet, and who do not move.

Before we point our fingers at our non-music-teaching colleagues, let’s look at our own behavior. By the middle 1890’s, Jaques-Dalcroze was saying that all children should have two years of experiences using movement and singing to understand all the elements of music before they even got near an instrument. Link that intuited information up with developmental psychology from the mid-twentieth century, and neurological research, and you would think that by now music teachers of any age-group would begin musical studies with a great deal of movement and singing. Since I don’t know what goes on in Kansas school systems, I’ll assume you use a lot of movement in your classes (including middle school and high school ensembles), so I will tell you about how teachers in other states use movement. They don’t.

Here are some examples. In other states, music teachers in, say, elementary instrumental classes, actually have their students sit down, they give them the instruments, then immediately begin working on the correct embrasure, hand position, fingering, breathing, etc., without first giving the students practice in all these things without the instruments. In classes where singing is the focus, the students are told to sit, or stand, still and that they should be very precise in intonation and diction before they are given the opportunities to just play with sounds, and move, and dance, and draw their vocal lines in the air in order to externalize the music before attempting to internalize it. Do you see what is happening with the teachers? Their “teaching genes” are expressing themselves. They were taught, or thought they were taught, that the way to teach music was to ignore the body, which, as you know, is the real instrument they should be training.

The teachers in those other states are making pedagogical mistakes that can be best described in this analogy. How many of you have been around a young child learning to ride a bicycle? Think about how this is done. The child gets on the bike, arms and legs are flailing around, and often the child falls off. This process continues as the large muscles figure out what to do then the smaller muscles can follow with more refined movements.

Here is a natural learning process in action:

• The child watches other children riding their bikes. This process is called forming a gestalt-gestalt is a German term meaning “form” or “shape”. Our brains naturally look for the gestalt first because then there is a “place” to put all the small details.

• The child is motivated to learn how to ride the bike because it is important to the child. And because it is important, the kid is willing to put up with skinned knees and frustration that goes along with learning a new task.

• By using the big muscles, even when they are “out of control,” the child is building a kinesthetic map in the brain. Every time the child leaves the task for a period of time, the brain is busy building the neural-networks and reviewing the experience. The next time the kid gets on the bike, her body will remember what it has learned and she will be able to build on that learning.

• Eventually her large muscles will refine their movements and communicate with the small muscles, and she will ride the bike with ease.

If she were taught to ride the bike the same way she would be taught music in the typical music lesson…in those other states…here is what probably would happen:

• She would go into a strange environment where she would be shown something called a bicycle. In all likelihood she would never have seen a bicycle before.

• The teacher would tell her all the wonderful things she can do on a bicycle as a way to motivate her interest, but it would not mean a great deal to the child since she has never had those experiences.

• The teacher would help her onto the bike, tell her to sit straight (or she will fall over), put her feet just so on the pedals, show her exactly where to put her hands on the handlebar (the teacher, in frustration, might even take her hands and put them on the handlebar in the right position, wrists relaxed, fingers curved…)
  q Once the child is seated properly, elbows tucked in, knees over feet, sitting up straight, hands holding the handlebar (not gripping the handlebar!), eyes looking straight ahead, just before pushing the bike, the teacher might even tell the child, “Relax and have fun!”

You can imagine the outcome.

I hope this little analogy has made it clear why I am considering writing an article about teaching titled, “Why teaching music is an unnatural act.” Most of us were taught in a way that goes against the natural order of learning, and, because we tend to teach the way we were taught, we continue that topsy-turvy, inverted process with our teaching. That inverted process is brain-incompatible; it is not user friendly.

So how would we structure our teaching to make it brain-compatible? Here are some general ideas that you can use in the classroom or ensemble, regardless of the age-group.

• Establish a gestalt
  As Mengert said, all learning is based on prior learning. With younger children, this means giving them many, many experiences of listening and moving to good music. There is an excellent new series out titled Music Smart: Ready-to-Use Listening Tapes and Activities for Teaching Music Appreciation, by Gwen Hotchkiss, who, by the way, was a music teacher and music supervisor in Kansas a few years ago. One reviewer on the Amazon.com site said that she used the material with a college music appreciation class and a kindergarten class, so the material is worthwhile for any age. For ensemble directors and studio teachers, this means playing a recording of the piece (if you can find one) or somehow finding a way to have the ensemble sing, blow, or saw their way through the entire composition in order to get a general feeling for the piece.

  I have yet another metaphor for you. By the way, Fritz Mengert also says that the brain stores information metaphorically, so the use of metaphors and allegories is a recommended way of teaching. How many of you work jigsaw puzzles? Note: notice that I am trying to make sure most of you have had experiences with jigsaw puzzles and have the neuro-networks laid down. Anyway, people who enjoy jigsaw puzzles will almost always pick out the pieces that form the outline of the puzzle. They do that first because they need to know the general shape, the gestalt, of the puzzle. I don’t enjoy jigsaw puzzles because even though I know it is better to pick through and make the outline, I start with one piece and try to match it to another piece. Very frustrating. Successful puzzle-solvers match their behavior to how their brains work; unsuccessful puzzle-solvers, like me, try to do it in a way that my brain does not work. In music classes, we would do well to consider how to help our students become successful puzzle-solvers.

• Make the work worthwhile
  We learn and remember what is important to us. James Mursell, an educational psychologist, was writing and speaking in the 1920’s about this, and neurological research is validating his claim. As an educator, he stated that when students perceive something as being worthwhile, they will do what is needed to learn about it.

  For us, this means we must use good music that challenges the students emotionally, technically, and intellectually. English teachers have discovered that when students study good literature, they learn more and retain more because they perceive it as being worthwhile. Ensemble directors who use good music have discovered that their students will rise to the challenge. It has been my experience as a conductor that a majority of the students who protest during the rehearsal period (”man, this is hard!”) are the ones who later say they love the work. Students want to grow up, to do “adult” things, and we owe them the opportunity to do so.

• Use movement
  Jaques-Dalcroze said that intuitive teachers and performers intuitively did what he taught, it was just that they did not necessarily know why they did what they did. There is a maxim among Eurhythmics teachers that states: for every sound, there is a gesture; for every gesture, there is a sound. As I stated earlier, every element of music can be taught with movement.

  I will being this short pedagogy rail inspection to a close for now. I will conclude by saying that we are living in exciting times because there is an unprecedented partnership being formed between music educators, psychologists, and neurologists that could transform education as we know it. At a time when our society has lost sight of the necessity of music and art to our well being, when education has been politicized as never before and the social fabric of our nation is being stretched and tested in ways unforeseen by our forefathers, we are being presented with new insights into the nature of learning.

One of the most exciting remarks I have heard recently came from Fritz Mengert when he said that new, unpublished research coming out of Princeton University is indicating that aesthetic education should be at the heart of the curriculum. Because music and movement structure the brain and lay down the networks for the learning that follows, we could play a leading role in this revolution. As I look around the room, I would guess that we have several centuries of teaching experience represented here today. That is an immense pool of talent and experience from which we all can draw and share with each other. As the song says, “the times, they are a changin’.” We and our colleagues across the country can the leaders of the change. To do this, we will have to first scrutinize our teaching to make sure that our processes address our student’s emotions, minds, and bodies, in other words, to make our teaching brain-compatible. Educators of all disciplines, and forward-looking school administrators, are becoming aware of the neurological research and implications for what they do. Music Educators, all of you in this room, have at your fingertips the keys that bridge all the disciplines and that can transform education in this country. Those keys are music and movement. Use them well.

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