The Soul of Art (8/31)

Limitation is the soul of art. Think haiku, sonnets, 12-bar blues and such. Simple forms that offer the kind of focus the imagination loves. Fewer choices make room for deeper expression of whatever is chosen. 

 

So when I found out that this next 3-day workshop was to be entirely geared toward kindergarten and below teachers, I was at first a bit taken aback. Most of my courses— Level III, the Jazz Course, the xylophone music in Orff Afrique, World Music Courses— tend to focus on more challenging material for upper elementary through Middle School. I always include some activities and material within each of those courses for the little ones, but mostly as a short stepping-stone to enter the more sophisticated room. 

 

But after that momentary surprise, I felt excited by the prospect. It was enticing to dig back into my 45 years of teaching preschool music (alongside elementary and Middle) and put together a little sequence from birth to five-years-old. The wheels started clicking as I jotted down what I remember. It would have been easier to do this at home, with all 45 years of my planning books to refer to. But a good exercise to just see what comes to the surface. 

 

I often say that between birth and 5 are the most important years of education, the foundation for everything that follows. Without a solid structure there, everything else becomes remedial. The neuron connections, the sensual engagement, the muscular intelligences, the emotional landscape of learning— all of it is set in place by those first five years. When a culture— the parents, the extended family, the neighborhood, the preschool— shapes itself around a child’s natural and organic development, neither neglecting key experiences by abandoning them to machines or forcing the child into too-early adult-fantasy-modes of learning, all future learning is impacted. 

 

In this way, the child’s first and most important educator, is the mother. Or rather the grandmother or great-grandmother and so on all the way back, as the mother’s mode of engagement with the child is born from the way she herself was mothered. And though I am a big advocate of the fully engaged father in the child’s life, there simply is no way his influence can match the mother’s, the one who carried the baby in her womb and birthed the child and nursed the child into the life to come. 

 

If the culture includes formal preschool education, usually starting (as it does in my school) at 3-years-old, then the preschool teacher is one of the most important teachers in the child’s life to come. Not that the child will necessarily remember them and give them credit as such. Certainly the culture won’t, as most preschool teachers are seen as glorified baby sitters and as reflected in pay, status and dignity, it is the college professor who is revered, honored and rewarded. But if those educators are successful in shaping the lives of their students and passing on the lore of their subject in ways that their students can wholly receive, understand and appreciate it, they should be bowing down to the mothers and the preschool teachers in thanks. And sharing some of their salary! In this topsy-turvy world, the hierarchy should be wholly reversed to honestly reflect the influence of teachers at all stages of development. Of course, every stage of a child’s education is crucial to their flowering into an educated, knowledgeable, curious life-long learner. So at the very least, all teachers at all levels deserve the same equal pay, status, merit and reverence. 

 

These the key points that will inform every activity I share in my course about developing the musical intelligence of children. Working, incidentally, at a college wholly devoted to preschool education and with teachers who themselves are college professors. Once again, let the wild rumpus start!