As the new year is once again upon me, I thought I would think about what I have learned the past year. I am sure there is plenty to write about, but what comes to me tonight is my settling into the new job. Though occupation doesn't define us, it does certainly color our lives. For me, teaching has been a calling, and growing into this job has been a real gift.
I try to see the glass as half-full in most areas of my life. Sometimes, I suppose, folks perceive that as naive. I prefer to try to think things through before voicing the negative. Always the best choice when you are without, well, a lot of proof. You know, the whole assumption of innocence thing! For some reason, I really thought that the university glass tower was a place where ideas come to germinate. I have changed my mind and have decided that higher education is really not much different from other walks of life, in that ideas aren't guaranteed fertile soil. It isn't with sadness that I say that - it is simply a more realistic perspective gained over the past 18 months.
The ivory tower, I had always assumed, was such because it was disconnected from the practical, a place where ideas lived as a jungle of overgrowth, heavy with amazing vegetation. The tower for me represented my need to see the world in new ways, to find new paths to share with others, and to have time to think. I still think that is true to some extent. What I have discovered is that there are many wonderful, fertile lands inside the ivory tower...but there are also a few lands which have been exhausted. Now I know I am mixing metaphors, but stay with me! When a crop has been planted too many years in a row, over and over in the same piece of land, the land is stripped of its nutrients. As a result, future crops wither. A field has to have rotated crops, and fallow (rest) to remain fertile. Crop rotation is as ancient as farming is I suppose. So if we think about people and their ideas as crops, then I suppose we need fresh ideas or at least different ones introduced to keep our minds fertile. Staying inside the ivory tower - or anywhere for that matter - without refreshing our perspectives means that our minds begin to atrophy. We become the very thing I believed the ivory tower could resist! Our minds close, we become oblivious to new ideas, and we atrophy to the convention of the ivory tower, or whatever context we are in at the time.
My conclusion is that curiosity about the world is not a simple matter of the individual nor a simple matter of context. It is some combination of both. It is the individual who keeps his mind fertile for new ideas to germinate and something more. The new ideas need fresh air, warm sunshine, cool nights, and plenty of water to really take root and grow. That would be the context. So matching the individual with ideas, to the context, may also be important. For each idea, just like different plant species, that could mean different amounts of air, light, dark, and water, different growing times...and so on. So it is possible that some ideas might take root in some places and not others. And some people may be better suited for certain terrains than others.
So it is possible that ideas aren't more likely to flourish in the ivory tower, even if some are more conducive to their growth. It is the individuals who really make these things happen. I feel so fortunate that I have found a context that is providing what I need personally to thrive and grow. It has been one of the most pleasant places I have ever worked, and I feel very much like I can grow into the job. My discovery is also important, as I hope to remember that I am responsible for rotating the crops - for guarding against stripped soil, and making sure I continue to stretch beyond my comfort zone. As we begin 2013, I look forward to the challenges and the joys of tending to the germinating ideas around me. Happy New Year!
Monday, December 31, 2012
The Power of Aesthetic Education
I remember talking to one of my professors about what I thought the power of aesthetic education and he told me to continue to expand on one particular kernel of my thoughts. Today, as we finish a year another year, I thought I might do just that.
First of all, American education
Bennett Reimer tells us musical experiences in education "are necessary for all people if their essential humanness is to be realized" (p. 29).
David Elliott summarized by James Daughtery "Music is a domain of human activity accessible, achievable and applicable to all. Moreover, the primary values of music as an end in itself, i.e., self-growth, self knowledge, and enjoyment, coincide with and overlap values beneficial to individuals and societies. Teaching music is a means of enculturation."
"Music is strongly associated with the brain's reward system. It's the part of the brain that tells us if things are valuable, or important or relevant to survival, said Robert Zatorre, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Montreal Neurological Institute." http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/26/health/mental-health/music-brain-science/index.html
"Some people have theorized that that was the original function of this behavior in evolution: It was a way of bonding people emotionally together in groups, through shared movement and shared experience," Patel said.
As the interview comes to an end, Dr. Schlaug briefly touches on the importance of music education in the development of a child’s brain. He also mentions his work using song as a means of verbal development within children, as well as rehabilitation of the speech/language functions lost in stroke victims. http://musicbrainerblogger.blogspot.com/2012/09/making-music-changes-brains.html; Schlaug, G. (2010) Making Music Changes Brains, Gottfried Schlaug: Music and the Brain. [podcast] April 29, 2010. Link: http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_schlaug.html
Forward from An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization: Forward: Aesthetic Education for the Ethical Impulse, editors comments (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)
"In a world where there are so many forces conspiring to shatter any person’s sense of having a self, the deconstruction that Spivak once championed is problem, not solution. The solution lies right where great theorists who dominated the field twenty years ago denied it lay, in teaching literature as a means of causing people to realize that they have souls.
First of all, American education
Bennett Reimer tells us musical experiences in education "are necessary for all people if their essential humanness is to be realized" (p. 29).
David Elliott summarized by James Daughtery "Music is a domain of human activity accessible, achievable and applicable to all. Moreover, the primary values of music as an end in itself, i.e., self-growth, self knowledge, and enjoyment, coincide with and overlap values beneficial to individuals and societies. Teaching music is a means of enculturation."
"Music is strongly associated with the brain's reward system. It's the part of the brain that tells us if things are valuable, or important or relevant to survival, said Robert Zatorre, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Montreal Neurological Institute." http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/26/health/mental-health/music-brain-science/index.html
"Some people have theorized that that was the original function of this behavior in evolution: It was a way of bonding people emotionally together in groups, through shared movement and shared experience," Patel said.
As the interview comes to an end, Dr. Schlaug briefly touches on the importance of music education in the development of a child’s brain. He also mentions his work using song as a means of verbal development within children, as well as rehabilitation of the speech/language functions lost in stroke victims. http://musicbrainerblogger.blogspot.com/2012/09/making-music-changes-brains.html; Schlaug, G. (2010) Making Music Changes Brains, Gottfried Schlaug: Music and the Brain. [podcast] April 29, 2010. Link: http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_schlaug.html
Forward from An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization: Forward: Aesthetic Education for the Ethical Impulse, editors comments (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)
"In a world where there are so many forces conspiring to shatter any person’s sense of having a self, the deconstruction that Spivak once championed is problem, not solution. The solution lies right where great theorists who dominated the field twenty years ago denied it lay, in teaching literature as a means of causing people to realize that they have souls.
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