Music ought to
support enjoyment
'Give us, O give us the man who sings at
his work! He will do more in the same time - he will do it better - he
will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst
he marches to music.' Carlyle.
Music education has much in its favour. It may well be the
subject in the curriculum most tied to the notion of 'enjoyment', and
thus of what we might call opportunities for
'education-without-pain'. New research indicates that
participation in music making may activate the physiological release,
communication and reception of pheromones that evoke 'happy' responses
in participants.
No matter what formal
learning assertions we might want to make for music in support of
literacy and numeracy the fact that there should be pleasure and
excitement in making it has to remain at the top of the list of reasons
why music has powerful potential. In fact sometimes this need be
the only outcome! After all there is that critical issue that before we
can begin educating children we must first get them to go happily by
their own choice, to school. If school is an enjoyable place
where 'happy' events play a significant role in the education process
then the probability is that children will want to take part in the
education process. Increased regular attendance would indicate
this. In one remote community education centre I held regular
music-making sessions on Tuesday afternoons. This was one
afternoon in the week when an almost full complement of students could
be guaranteed in the school.
Language and maths
learning and teaching might exploit this to add enjoyment to schooling
across the curriculum. ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) approaches recognise that language
learning depends for support on many if not all other areas of
learning. The ways in which I suggest the teaching and learning of
music in Indigenous Australian schools supports language acquisition
presented in this discussion paper are developed to match the thinking
of Cummins, expanded by Mora, that
…language
proficiency consists of at least two dimensions, Basic Interpersonal
Communication Skills and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (Mora,
1998)
Current educational thinking acknowledges that numeracy must also be a
critical part of this integrated learning equation, particularly given
the increasingly technological and economic bias of West-centric
societies. Additionally then, this section surveys ways in which music,
a strand of the arts learning area, can be used as a powerful vehicle
for literacy and numeracy support across the curriculum.
Music - a multiple
intelligence
Howard Gardner (1983)
argued that 'reason, intelligence, logic, knowledge are not
synonymous', that the concept of intelligence ought also to include
such areas as music, spatial relations, and interpersonal knowledge in
addition to mathematical and linguistic ability. Originally Gardner
proposed seven intelligences but the number he identified continues to
grow. These intelligences are capacities 'to solve problems or to
fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting'
(Gardner & Hatch, 1989). This notion challenges the traditional
view of two intelligences, verbal and computational. Gardner's
intelligences include Logical-Mathematical Intelligence, Linguistic
Intelligence, Spatial Intelligence, Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence,
The Personal Intelligences, interpersonal and intrapersonal
intelligence and Musical Intelligence.
My interest here is
in the seventh. Musical Intelligence
embraces a person's capacity to recognise and compose musical pitches,
tones, and rhythms. While auditory functions are required for a person
to develop this intelligence in relation to pitch and tone, it is not
needed for the knowledge of rhythm.
Of course music-making does not preclude the application of the other
'intelligences'. Although they are anatomically separated from each
other, Gardner claims that the seven intelligences very rarely operate
independently. Rather, the intelligences are used concurrently and
typically complement each other as individuals develop skills or solve
problems. In her definitive volume 'Aboriginal Music, Education for
Living; Cross cultural experiences from South Australia', Cath Ellis
(1985) says
In the process of the education of the total person which occurs
through the use of music, the student may learn relatively little about
music (although this is not necessarily so). But he inevitably
gains a great deal of experience in reconciling and rising above
contradictions both within himself and in his relations to others.
Both nature and nurture contribute to the development of the
intelligences. All societies value different types of intelligences.
The cultural value placed upon the ability to perform certain tasks
provides the motivation to become skilled in those areas. Thus, while
particular intelligences might be highly evolved in many people of one
culture, those same intelligences might not be as developed in the
individuals of another.
Communication -
Concrete and Abstract
'Ye
who will, make laws for the people; let me write their songs', Beranger.
A significant part of the communication of
literacy and numeracy is 'messages' that conveys concrete notions and
ideas. Music also provides communication between humans but its
'messages' express symbolic codes rather than transmit the concrete
literary sense of language or the numeric sense of maths. Many music
authorities, such as Pinker (1997), who avers that people most enjoy
the musical styles of the culture and idioms they grew up with, refute
metaphors that represent music as a 'universal 'language. He suggests
that the 'mental software for language', in which these conform to an
abstract Universal Grammar, may apply to an abstract Universal Musical
Grammar.
While the music component of a musical presentation itself may be
conveyed to its audience in abstract form it often supports the
communication of related constituents. The most obvious examples
are in the language of lyrics, the rhythm of dance and the enhanced
dramatic impact of drama. Across historical and cultural settings
the widespread use of music in intensifying and enhancing the
spirituality of mystic, religious, ritual and ceremonial settings, has
been significant. In fact music may be perceived (sometimes
realistically) as supporting opinions or philosophies so opposed to
accepted norms in these settings that its application may be banned or
forbidden or restrictions placed on the ways it is presented.
Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul,
thought Socrates. St Augustine agreed, adding that it was a grievous
sin to find the singing in church more moving than the truth it
conveyed (Ridley,1996).
For indigenous Australians in traditional settings music may be
perceived as critical to high level emotional-spiritual communication
(Ellis 1986).
At a national level in Australia music may be an imperative in
realising national commitment and loyalty through the likes of
compositions such as our national anthem or Waltzing Matilda. Yothu
Yindi recognises this in a song like 'Treaty' and the Warrumpi Band in
its 'Blackfella, Whitefella'.
A document which details the most up-to-date rigorous research into the
impact of arts across education is the 1999 USA Federal Government
Report, 'Champions for Change' (which can be downloaded from the
Kennedy Arts-Edge site in Washington DC). In terms of their
support for the power of the arts in general across the curriculum,
some quotations from that document are worthy of inclusion here.
- 'As we compared the experiences of the
children in the respective groups we saw immediately that the high-arts
group consistently outscored the low-arts group on measures of creative
thinking and teachers' perceptions of artistic capacities.'
- 'More detailed analysis showed that
youngsters included in the high-arts (involvement) groups scored well
on measures of creativity, fluency, originality, elaboration and
resistance to closure…. Critical to arts learning as well as to
other
subject disciplines.
- 'High-arts youngsters were far more
likely than their low-arts counterparts to think of themselves as
competent in academics. They were also far more likely to believe
that they did well in school in general, particularly in language and
mathematics.'
- '…the kind of persistence that it
takes
to be successful in the arts, particularly in the processes and
organisation required to represent thoughts and ideas, would have
general cross-curriculum relevance.'
- 'When well grounded in the kind of
learning we observed, the arts develop children’s minds in
powerful
ways. In arts learning young people become adept at dealing with high
levels of ambivalence and uncertainty, and they become accustomed to
discovering internal coherence among conflicting experiences. Since
young people live in worlds that present them with different beliefs,
moralities, and cultures, schools should be the place where learning
fosters the reconciliation of apparent differences'.
The examples that follow suggest ways in which
music making might support literacy and numeracy. Anyone familiar
with 'Walking, Talking Texts' will recognise the ease with which many
can be matched to activities in that literacy learning model.
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency -
Alphabetising
One piece of music may have the capacity to
support acquisition of a number of skills and conceptual
understandings. An example is the 'ABC Song' that uses as its
metric vehicle the 'triplet' rhythm that underlies spoken
English. This becomes immediately evident when we sing nursery
rhymes. Almost without exception they are set in compound duple
(6/8 metre). Interestingly I have found only one nursery rhyme,
'Old King Cole', that does not fit the metre. In one fell swoop the ABC
song introduces and provides a significant vehicle for learning the
alphabet, reviews nursery rhymes, and supports the practice of an
aspect of register in spoken English.
Word lyrics, oral/aural and written language.
The lyrics of songs are, of course, mostly a
type of poetry set to music. As a general rule most have a metre
and end each line with rhyming words. When I work with classroom
teachers I explain that when words are set to music their passage
through the brain becomes almost radically different to that of spoken
language. The detail is probably not essential to
understanding. It is as though a different computer program has
picked up and translated a file. An advantage of singing words is
that they can be aurally relocated in an area of long term memory with
greater ease than spoken text. As a musician I can recall
immediately in song thousands of sets of lyrics orally. If on the
other hand I attempt to speak rather than sing or chant these I rarely
get past the second or third line of the first verse.
Most of us have used this facility at some point in our lives, for
example to memorise numbers of days in the months of the year ('Thirty
days hath September..'), or to recall rote learning for exams. If
read and spoken language is channelled through a different mental path
to that of sung lyrics the practice of first introducing the words of a
song on a written chart does not necessarily make sense. I
frequently advise teachers to introduce song lyrics orally, only
displaying the written words after memorised acquisition is secure.
Cloze
Classroom music making provides many
opportunities for Cloze exercises. The most obvious are those
where children are encouraged to sing a song and omit words in
successive verses. The early childhood song 'Heads, shoulders,
knees and toes' is an obvious example. So are arrangements of the
'Hokey Tokey'. Of course this exercise has outcomes in terms of music
learning too. When children leave out words or whole phrases as
they sing they are encouraged to maintain a rhythm, where musical
silence is termed 'rest'.
Categories, Lists, Hyponymic Hierarchies
and so on…
There are many music activities that encourage
students to present long lists and to categorise things. The
simplest examples are in songs like 'Old McDonald Had a Farm', where
children are encouraged to recall not only the animal sounds, but also
their names, and to add each new name and sound to the existing list.
Many exciting pieces of music fit this. Among other cumulative
songs there are 'I know an old woman who swallowed a fly', and 'Oh Row
the rattling bog'. Again this exercise may be utilised to have a number
of outcomes including recognising nouns and other parts of speech.
More complex examples of lists and classes might be encountered with
older students in such as Western classification of instruments into
Strings, Woodwind, Brass and Percussion, contrasted with
ethnomusicological classification into chordophones, membranophones,
idiophones, aerophones, electrophones and so on. The second
hyponymic hierarchy is more appropriate when we start discussing
instruments like clapsticks or yidaki. Benjamin Britten's 'The
Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra' demonstrates the former.
Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills -
Modelling the Sounds of English in Action
Echo Songs make up a significant component of
songs in Early Childhood in west-centric schools because they often
model effective English pronunciation to small children. This
makes them an obvious and powerful tool for introducing foreign or
second language English learning children to new words and unfamiliar
language sequences. This might take place; for example, through the
role modelling provided by an English first language teacher presenting
the 'call' to which students then echo their 'responses'.
If learning the lyrics of songs orally is followed by written
presentation of those lyrics and related comprehension exercises
students often add considerably to existing vocabulary.
Backward Chaining, alias 'Retrogressive
Concatenation'
It is only when we have achieved some
sophistication in our language use that we can enjoy a joke of the
nature of the 'ridiculous' title of 'Retrogressive Concatenation' given
to 'backward chaining'. Of course, for Second and Foreign
Language speakers this is the very excluding language seen as
supporting the 'secret business' of Balanda (Arnhem Land word for
European Australians). Nevertheless 'backward chaining' has
considerable significance to musicians and there may be rewards in its
use in literacy programs. Put in the simplest terms it describes
the seemingly bizarre and yet totally reasonable practice of
introducing and rehearsing new musical works phrase by phrase from the
end of the music back to the beginning.
Profit lies in the fact that the most
rehearsed parts of the piece move sequentially from the finish so that
the last sonorities the audience hears are the best rehearsed!
Irascible English conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, is reported as telling
his orchestra that it was important to begin and to end well and that
whatever happens in the middle matters not at all because the opening
and conclusion of a piece of music is all that an audience remembers!
In terms of retention for the performers backward chaining is a proven
effective strategy. Every time a new section is introduced the
musicians then proceed to a section they already know. I have
found that introducing the lyrics of songs in this way works well and
poetry taught from the last line backwards is equally well retained.
Genres
Genres are described as social processes that
describe, explain, instruct, argue and narrate. There are songs to
match most if not all of the processes described above and the genres
which each generates. For procedural text, one appropriate musical
examples is in explaining the 'form' of the Maori Stick Game, 'Titi
Toria'.(Check the ABC Song website
for this song and instructions) Here six sequences of eight-bar
patterns direct the way students' paired sticks are employed. Because I
often accompany the 'stick game' with Maori lyrics children can run
into difficulties remembering the order of activities. Consequently I
use the format of procedural text to outline progress through the
verses:
- 1. 'floor, together, right (hand toss)
- 2. 'floor, together, together'
- 3. 'floor, together, left (hand toss)
- 4. 'floor, together, together'
- 5. 'floor, together, both (hands toss)ba
- 6. 'floor, together, together'
In this way too students are enabled to identify the 'form' or unified
structure of the piece as they recognise that all of the even sequences
(2, 4, & 6) are identical while the other three follow a pattern
where the third beat only changes. (A description of this activity can
be found elsewhere in the text).
Music activities also lend themselves to the development of story
writing skills. Traditional nursery rhymes can be taken apart
line by line and reconstructed as expanded prose stories. Popular
chant 'Goldilocks' which begins, 'Once upon a time, in a nursery
rhyme…' is in effect a traditional children's story that has
been
turned about to make its prose lyric verse. When children
reconstruct it as a story they may want to fill in its missing parts
because poetic licence has allowed the writer to leave out significants
parts of the original plot.
There is a large resource of narrative songs in the repertoire of music
for schools. These include 'The Gipsy Rover', Don McLean's 'American
Pie', old camp song favourite the lengthy 'Abdul Abhulbhul Amir' which
also provides opportunities for children to examine dialogue in its
lyrics. Dialogue between 'George and Lisa' is also the literary
focus of the folk song 'There's a hole in my bucket'. I often
recommend teachers go first to the thirty odd years of Australian
Broadcasting Corporation's songbooks which, in recent years, have been
indexed according to categories and themes.
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