Friday, October 11, 2013

On Music and Teaching

Well, it’s clearly a day not to read the newspaper, since is it really sensible to be taking antidepressants one minute and reading The New York Times ten minutes later? Nah…
So I bring the story of Thomas Sudhof, who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology this year. And who was his greatest teacher? His bassoon teacher who, in Sudhof’s words, “taught me that the only way to do something right is to practice and listen and practice and listen, hours, and hours, and hours.”
You know, it may be true. Anyone playing a double reed instrument like the bassoon or the oboe is openly flirting with madness; at one moment you’re playing music, the next moment you’re squawking. Oh, and you neither have any control nor any warning….
And I’m thinking about teaching, lately, because I did it for a large part of my life. In fact, I still do it, and like it. My problem, however, is that I had and have absolutely no idea of what I’m doing—I am perpetually improvising.
Other teachers know what they’re doing, as I saw yesterday when I was reading a New York Times article on schools which are “flipping.” And that is? Well, here’s the Times:
Students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in class. Teachers record video lessons, which students watch on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates.
Oh, and guess what? Everybody, for once, is completely on board with this idea! From the same article:
The flipped classroom is a strategy that nearly everyone agrees on. “It’s the only thing I write about as having broad positive agreement,” said Justin Reich, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard who studies technology and education.
Well, it’s familiar territory: there’s Marc and there’s the rest of the world. Because when I saw the video that a flipped teacher had prepared, I was less than impressed. In fact, I was half appalled. Check it out:




Full disclosure—I am perhaps one of the few people who really enjoys a vigorous discussion of subject / verb agreement. And in fact, the topic drops by for dinner occasionally, usually in the form of Mr. Fernández sputtering about the capricious way that English handles collective nouns. Spanish, of course, is completely logical—all collective nouns in Spanish are singular. But what fun is that?
All right—about the video. First, the teacher states that singular verbs have an added “s.”
Little Marc (seated in second desk, third row—and very cute): I works? You works?
Teacher (exasperated): No, Marc….
Marc: But aren’t “I” and “you” singular?
Teacher: Yes, Marc, but we’re talking about “he /she / it.”
Marc: Oh, the third person singular in the present simple indicative?
Teacher: Ummm? 
Next, the teacher discloses a trick—something he calls the “it / they” rule. Big question: “Tony works” or “Tony work?” Well, we can replace—so sez Teach—“Tony” with “it.”
Yeah?
Marc: But isn’t Tony a “he?”
Teacher: Well, yes, but to make it simpler we’re using just “it.”
Marc: How does that make it simpler?
Next, the teacher suggests that we simply count the nouns, using the example “Marc and Mary”—that’s two, see? Plural.
Marc: What about the sentence “Neither Marc nor Mary?
Teacher (nervous—he sees what’s coming): What about it?
Marc: Well, there are two subjects, but should the verb be singular? You wouldn’t say “Neither Marc nor Mary work in the mill,” would you?
Then there’s the problem—the teacher gives it away when he says “that doesn’t sound right,” in discussing the “it / they” rule.
Marc: But what if someone doesn’t know what “sounds right?” Maybe he’s never heard it right, and so he can’t tell what sounds right? Or what if he’s learning English as a new language?
Teacher: Well, I think we can assume….
I hate to say this—no wait, let’s be honest, this causes me no pain whatsoever to declare—but the teacher in this video doesn’t seem to be too bright. How would he handle the question that I, even as a child, would have asked?
Marc: What is a subject, anyway?
Teacher: Well, the subject performs the action of the verb.
Marc: What about the passive voice? What about, “the patient is examined by the medical team?” Is “medical team” the subject?
Teacher: No, the subject is “the patient.”
Marc: But is the patient examining?
That would have lead to the old and mostly true “the subject is the noun before the verb.” A possibly useful rule of thumb, yes—but it does beg the question.
Maybe it’s time to do two things. First, I seriously think that we need to reinstitute Greek and Latin into our schools, and yes, in grade school, when those young minds can soak up the rigor and the discipline of the languages. Because then kids will be able to decline nouns and conjugate verbs, which means that he or she will be able to give an example of the third person positive singular present perfect active indicative using the verb “to see.”
(“he has seen” is the answer, by the way….)
Second, why can’t all kids learn a musical instrument? You know, I’m back to playing the cello now, and looking at YouTube clips of musicians speaking and coaching. And guess what? We’re a bright, talented, funny and quick group. And it occurs to me—have I ever met a stupid musician? If I have, I’ve forgotten him or her.
The video of the subject / verb agreement has gotten 57,000 hits, and the comments are almost all positive. Some people say that he’s really helped them. But check out the video below, of the legendary Dorothy DeLay. Then tell me…
…who’s the better teacher?

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