Back in the Coal Mine

One of my January posts was entitled “Canary in the Coal Mine” and I wrote this: 

 

Kids are the canaries in the coal mine, warning us of the dangers of imminent cultural collapse. That expression comes from coal miners using caged birds to detect toxic gases like carbon monoxide in mines. Due to their high sensitivity to fumes, the birds would stop singing and die, a signal for the miners to evacuate. Immersed in the toxic fumes of our poisonous cultural practices and the narratives that sustain them, the children have stopped singing the delights of childhood. Instead, they shout or scream or hit or remain mute and we guardians have run out the door and left them alone. 

 

Today I read this on a Facebook post: 

 

Hi everyone. Is anyone at their wits end with behaviors? I feel very defeated at my school. For context:

 

I have been at my school for 5 years. I have what I believe to be good classroom management skills and have built great relationships with the kids, teachers, and administrators. I teach in a high-needs title 1 school with mostly Latino students and I am very attuned to their needs right now because many are getting their parents taken away from them without notice due to the kidnappings that are happening (not going to argue with anyone on that).

I have taken level 1 Orff training and feel confident in my lesson plans, but I feel so defeated right now because the behaviors are what I describe as "death by a thousand paper cuts". The disrespect is at an all-time high, the kids are talking back, disengaged, disruptive, and i am not feeling the joy in teaching anymore. I went from being teacher of the year last year to feeling like scrolling through ziprecruiter to look for a new job.

 

Yesterday I was trying to teach a piece and I had kids throwing mallets and hitting the  xylophones aggressively. At one point I just had them return everything and line up early. 

 

I've contacted parents and have told admin and nothing changes. I have to stay at a title 1 school for 5 more years for my loan forgiveness, but I am at my wits end. I literally had a second grader tell another kid to suck his ba***. I've had kids steal from my desk and have had to put stop signs around my area because they don’t respect my space. 

 

I don’t feel supported by admin because they don’t want to be called for every little thing (and I don’t call for help most of the time) but it’s chipping away at my mental health. I also can’t take a mental health day because I was on maternity leave last year and have to save up my hours for maternity leave again for next year. 

 

Do I just give them worksheets or give half the kids worksheets and let the other kids play the instruments? I feel like I’ll just be managing the worksheet kids and won’t be able to fully engage in the few kids who do respect and are able to have some self-control. I feel so stuck between showing empathy for their trauma (I’ve lived through losing family friends due to deportations) or do I bring down the hammer and be a robot music teacher who lets the screen teach for me?

If any of y’all have any advice or are in the trenches like me, please let me know. 

 

And so I wrote back:

 

These are deep issues that can use live discussion, so feel free to call me if you like. Meanwhile, a few thoughts:

 

1) "Behavior is the language of children." What are they trying to tell adults that they don't have the language for? Seems clear that they are the canaries in the coal mine showing us what a threatening environment we adults have created for them. So this is not business as usual and not to be fixed by classroom management techniques. 

 

2) Given that, perhaps take one class where all write on a piece of paper (or if they can't write, find a time for them to dictate to you in private)what is hardest in their life right now and how someone can help them. Put all the answers in a bowl and mix them up and have each kid pick one out at random and read out loud, without any comments. if the truth comes out and the kids realize they're not alone in their suffering, then ask the group, "What can we do to help each other feel and be better?" 

 

3) Follow the example of the brilliant Orff teacher Tom Pierre, who stopped his class in the middle and called up one of the kids' parents. When the father answered and Tom introduced himself as his daughter's teacher, the father sighed and said, "What has she done now?" Tom's answer? "She just sang one of the most beautiful solos I've heard in a long time and we all got goosebumps. Just want to make sure you know what an amazing daughter you've raised!" Can you feel how that changed everything? So next time a kid does something lovely in your class, try it. Call up their parents in front of the other kids and praise them. I think it can help turn the energy around when kids realize it's better to do things well than the opposite. 

 

4) Do the number 2 exercise with the staff and admin with the prompt, "What's the hardest thing about teaching for you right now? How can we help?" Read them out loud and again, when people realize they're all in it together, use your human intelligence and compassion to figure out together how to turn this around. Hint: None of the above is business as usual. The entire country is in a war zone and we need a radical revisioning of how to be with each other in all our communities. School is an important place to start. 

 

And whatever you do, do not capitulate to robot teaching and stick kids in front of screens!!!! 

 

As this entire Blog testifies, my experience with kids has been, and continues to be, overwhelmingly positive. But I believe that the above stories are true and are asking us to radically re-envision the entire enterprise of schooling. That’s the opportunity that the classroom challenges are offering to us. Not only in our schools, but in the greater civic and political sphere. The consequences of encroaching fascism reach everywhere, releasing their toxic fumes into every nook and cranny of the coal mine. The work ahead is in every sphere of our life and in every hour of every day. And again I can testify that in the midst of battering storms, the rainbow can appear and the canaries sing. 

 

Hired Hands

While a big fan of interdependence—indeed, we would not have come close to surviving our snow trip without the shovelers and snow-plowers and chain- sawers of trees across the road, etc.— my life is also built around being the main guy in charge of way too many things! I’m the CEO of my Pentatonic Press, handling order fulfillment, invoices, accounting, storage, printing, advertising, and more. I’m the travel agent arranging all the flights for workshops. I’m the artistic agent handling all the details of arranging workshops— schedules, accommodations, merch for sale, finances. I’m the President of two music ed boards —and while writing that, realized both are overdue for a meeting! I’m the director of the summer Orff Level training course and my own Jazz Course in New Orleans. Blah-blah-blah. There’s more and none of this is boasting. It’s more a cry for help!

 

Suddenly on my weird farm, everything is coming due at once. The cows need to be milked, the chickens fed, the hay stacked, the fields plowed, the garden weeded, the fruit picked, the tractor repaired, the barn re-built, the fences fixed, the compost turned, the meals cooked and the kids tucked in at night. I need some hired hands here, people! And that becomes yet one more thing to put on my list. 

 

Nothing is more boring than hearing about someone else’s busyness/ business but since I’m the CEO of my Blog, I feel compelled to write something. But now I feel guilty for wasting your time. So speaking of hands, a Facebook memory popped up of me jamming on a jazz tune called “Cute” with someone  (Kenneth Ngo) at my workshop in Singapore 7 years ago. It’s not bad! At least more entertaining than my whining above Check it out:

 

https://youtu.be/6tOtb6dcVss 

Candy from Strangers

The snake-oil-salesman, the scammer, the con artist, the used-car dealer, the door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses, the hustler. These people have always been with us. They make for interesting characters in films—The Music Man, Paper Moon, The Sting, Tin Men, Catch Me If You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street and more and we even find ourselves rooting for them. Until they show up at our door. 

 

And now they’ve arrived in droves, armed with the nuclear arsenal of e-mails, texts, AI generated letters and images and yet more. Every day our inbox is swamped with baited hooks awaiting our bite and the sophistication needed to detect them is every day more difficult to understand. Just last week, I went to renew my passport with the first thing that showed up online and almost-too-late realized it was a mild scam ready to double the price of what it costs when I actually do it with the government office. The fine print is smaller and smaller and this is nothing compared to the story I heard yesterday of someone’s friend scammed out of $500,000 because she was a widowed woman seduce online by such a caring man who kept promising to meet her soon, but meanwhile…

 

My first thought is, “What the hell is wrong with you people?!!!! How can you sleep at night knowing your job entails preying on vulnerable, lonely people? Or capitalizing on people’s fantasies for getting rich quick? Are you proud of yourselves? What would your mother say? Or your first-grade teacher?”

 

Of course, this has been going on forever and far beyond simply selling defective goods or tricking people into signing up for something against their own best interest. Witness religious missionaries, TV evangelists, even New Age spiritual leaders or motivational speakers like Deeprak Chopra now revealed as complicit with Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, the biggest scam artist of all time, our current not-to-be-named President. The sheer volume of con artists, the increased vulnerability of gullible people looking for quick ways to earn money, protect their privilege, shape an identity based on the illusion that they’re in the club, alongside the tsunami of electronic bombardment, is so much harder to deal with then politely telling the vacuum salesman at your door that you’re not interested, thank you very much.

 

One of the most maddening things about the phenomena is the cynical (but increasingly real) message that you shouldn’t assume goodwill in the people you meet and treat everyone as if they’re out to get you. Which self-fulfills its own prophecy and drags us down into the worst versions of ourselves. Is there another possibility?

 

Every workshop I give, there’s a moment in my opening shtick in which we are all connected in a circle, arms grasped behind our back and leaning back and held together by this human chain. It’s a typical exercise physically showing the need for trust. Hard to describe, but the next step in my shtick involves slapping my neighbors’ hand, who quickly realizes that they have to pull their hand away when they see it coming. So now the message is, “Trust…but not too much. Be alert and know when to pull your hand away.” 

 

Alongside creating a culture of kindness and character, we need to train the children and ourselves to cultivate a kind of radar, a crap detector that can sniff out the real from the fake. To begin in good faith in every encounter, but keep that radar turned on and notice the signs. This is increasingly difficult as the electronic disguises get more sophisticated, but after you get fooled a few times (hopefully not with the Nigerian princes or friends robbed on vacation in the Philippines who need you to send money), it’s worth learning how to spot these things. Certain signs in e-mail addresses, being asked to share dubious information, a reliable tech person who you can ask to help you spot what’s real or fake. The simple truth of warning children to “not take candy from strangers” now has a thousand new faces, but at root is the same. 

 

Meanwhile, two unprintable words to all you scammers and con artists who have refused kindness, character and an authentic life. One syllable each and the second one is “you.” If you can’t guess it and want to know, send me $500,000 in bitcoin and the secret is yours.

Echoes of Eco

In my most recent podcast, “T Is for Truth,” I spoke about the erosion of truth in public discourse, news, politics, advertising and more. The day after posting, I saw this piece about author Umberto Eco’s warnings about the same issues, all echoing my own concerns. I’ve put some particularly eloquent and spot-on comments in bold. As follows:

 

In 2015, Umberto Eco, an eighty-three-year old Italian philosopher described, with unsettling accuracy, what would unravel rational conversation. We now live inside the world he warned about. As a medieval scholar, a semiotician who studied signs and symbols, and the author of The Name of the Rose, an intellectual mystery that reached readers around the world, he understood how ideas spread, how language shapes what we accept as real, and how societies decide what counts as truth. So when social media began to dominate public life, Eco watched with increasing concern.

 

In June 2015, during an interview in Italy, he was asked about the internet’s effect on society. His answer was direct and provocative. Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Back then, they were quickly ignored. Now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. He called it the invasion of the idiots.

 

The reaction was immediate. Critics accused him of arrogance, of wanting to silence ordinary people, of being an out-of-touch intellectual who misunderstood democracy. That missed his point.

 

Eco was not arguing against free speech. He was warning about what happens when expertise is stripped of value, when years of study and evidence are treated as equal to a stranger’s instinct or opinion.

 

For centuries, public discourse had filters. Newspapers had editors. Publishers relied on fact checking. Universities used peer review. These systems were imperfect and often excluded voices that deserved to be heard, while protecting entrenched power.

 

But they also enforced responsibility. If you wanted to publish a medical claim, you needed proof. If you wanted to shape public opinion, you needed credibility. If you spread falsehoods, there were consequences. The internet erased those barriers.

 

Suddenly, anyone could reach millions. A teenager posting from a bedroom had the same platform as a seasoned academic. A conspiracy theorist could attract as much attention as a journalist who had spent months verifying facts. And the most extreme voices traveled fastest.

 

Social media platforms do not reward accuracy. They reward engagement. Anger, fear, and absolute certainty spread better than nuance. A careful post explaining that an issue is complex and deserves thoughtful consideration rarely goes far. A post shouting that everyone is being lied to explodes across feeds.

 

Eco watched this unfold as flat earth believers found each other and organized. As anti-vaccine myths moved faster than public health guidance. As political falsehoods that could be disproven almost instantly became widely accepted alternative narratives. He watched respect for expertise erode.

 

Climate scientists with decades of research were challenged by bloggers with no training. Doctors were dismissed in favor of influencers selling wellness products. Historians were drowned out by people who claimed to have done their own research. That phrase became shorthand for rejecting knowledge in favor of whatever confirmed existing beliefs.

 

Eco understood a critical distinction. Giving everyone a voice is a beautiful ideal. Treating every voice as equally authoritative is dangerous. A relative’s social media post about vaccines is not equivalent to a peer reviewed medical study. A viral claim of election fraud is not the same as official voting data. An influencer’s opinion on climate change does not carry the same weight as scientific consensus from NASA.

 

Yet online, they appear identical. They sit side by side in feeds with the same design, the same emphasis, the same algorithmic push. Platforms do not tell users which information comes from experts and which comes from people with no relevant knowledge. They simply present everything and leave the audience to sort it out.

 

This is what Eco meant by the invasion of the idiots. Not that ordinary people lack intelligence, but that systems amplify the loudest and most confident voices regardless of whether they know what they are talking about. Confidence spreads more easily than accuracy.

 

Nine months after that interview, in February 2016, Umberto Eco died at eighty four. He did not live to see how completely his warning would be confirmed. He did not witness a global pandemic where misinformation traveled faster than the disease, leading people to trust social media posts over doctors, with deadly consequences. He did not see millions convinced that elections were stolen based on viral claims disproven again and again. He did not see artificial intelligence making realistic fake videos possible, or automated accounts flooding platforms with propaganda.

 

But he identified the central danger. When every opinion is treated as equally valid, truth becomes just another opinion. Eco was not calling for censorship. He was calling for a renewed respect for expertise, for evidence, for the labor required to actually understand complex realities. He was reminding us that while everyone has the right to speak, not every claim deserves belief. That a doctorate in epidemiology matters. That peer reviewed research matters. That journalistic standards matter. And that seeing something on social media should never be the endpoint of critical thinking.

We are living in the world he feared. The problem was never that foolish voices appeared. They were always present. The problem is that they are now amplified while expertise is dismissed. Eco left us with a simple question.

 

What are we going to do about it?

 

My response? Train the children to distinguish between crap and the real deal. That’s the theme of my “T Is for Truth: Part II,” some of which I’ll share in the next blogpost. Stay tuned.  

Wearing the World

“There is no bad weather, only bad clothes” say the Swedes and ain’t that the truth. Went off snowshoeing in this Winter Wonderland just outside of Yosemite and I was well-prepared. Sturdy boots, rain pants, thick wool sweater, home-knitted hat, thick gloves and after a mile of hiking, I was hot! 

 

Returning to the cabin, I began to peel the layers away and paused at each one. The sweater was gifted to me in Iceland in 1995 and as noted in the last post, I rarely have the occasion the wear it in temperate San Francisco and it sits dormant in my closet. My colleague Sofia was given the same gift at the end of our first Orff course we ever taught together and we still laugh remembering how we took a walk to a hill overlooking Reykavic and looking out over the red-tiled roofs and charming architecture, I turned to Sofia and said “I like Europe.” There was a long pause of silence and a confused look on her face and then she finally said, “What did you say? “ “I like Europe,” I repeated and she looked relieved and confessed, “Oh, I thought you said, ‘I like your rib.’”

As for our lovely Icelandic hosts, we’re still somewhat in touch with Kristine, Elfa and Nanna and happily so.

 

Taking off the rain pants and boots, I remembered buying them for the six weeks in 2003 I first taught the Special Course at the Orff Institut. I lived in the nearby village of Anif and bicycled the 20-minutes through the beautiful landscape— and in all kinds of weather. Because it was March and April, I biked regardless of rain, wind, or snow— and was well-prepared with my boots, and rain pants. It was one of the most marvelous times of my life— immersed in beauty every day, the excitement of living on my own in a new place, teaching what I love in the historic center of the Orff Schulwerk, working with 16 people from some 10 different countries— Spain, Italy, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Greece, Turkey, Finland, Iceland, the U.S., many of whom I’m still in touch with. 

 

My undershirt while snowshoeing was from Australia with a logo of the National Conference I taught at in 1994. Another memorable time, not only my first time in Australia, but a time of rampant bush fires and people being evacuated. My work was well-received, I met a lovely group of people and just had a reunion with some 15 of them last year on a return trip to Australia. My host back in ’94 was Margie Moore and I have had the grand pleasure of keeping touch with her throughout the years, most recently with her and her husband serving as tour guides last May on our trip to Oxford. 

 

Amongst many memorable stories from that first Australia trip was a woman participating in a folk dance I taught carrying a big purse. I was mildly irritated, feeling like she should know she needed her hands free. So I walked over and offered to put it off to the side for her. She reluctantly handed it over and thank goodness I didn’t just toss it to the side. Because when I sat at her table for lunch, I noticed she seemed to me nursing something with a bottle—and it was a joey! A baby kangaroo who had lost its mother, so her purse was acting as a pouch and that’s why she carried it with her into the dance!

As for the hat, my Orff student/colleague Laura Ruppert, knits them and this past Fall, at the end of a memorable visit to Seattle staying at her, she gifted one to me. Keeping your head warm is one of the prime strategies for warming the whole body and this was does the trick admirably. Besides many memorable moments we shared in workshops and courses, Laura came to sing with me at the Jewish Home for couple of years, alternating between singing jazz standards and then dipping into an Opera repertoire that was her training. She moved to Seattle a couple of years ago and the Home residents miss her dearly, as do I when I go there to play. But now I have her hat as a reminder! 

 

And so the clothes I wore today warmed me twice. Once keeping my body temperature regulated and once kindling the fires of warm memories recalling when I first wore each item and what I was doing and who was with me. We are our stories and it’s an interesting notion that everyday, we wear some of our history and literally carry it with us. 

 

And what are you wearing today?

 

 

New Tricks

 

In defiance of the “old dogs and new tricks” adage, the trip up toward Yosemite with my wife Karen and daughter Talia is filled with surprises. The three to four feet snowdrifts out the window make it remarkable to remember that a mere two weeks ago, I was swimming in tropical temperatures in Bangkok. Our first night here, we walked barefoot through snow in our bathing suits to soak in an outdoor hot tub with open umbrellas over our head as the snow kept falling. That was a first. As was playing pool (the kind with a table, sticks and balls) with my wife— our first game ever in 52 years together—and she was good! She also joined Talia and I putting together a jigsaw puzzle (she never does them) and Talia and I joined her with a glass of wine (likewise, something we never do). In the spirit of surprising each other, Talia suggested I knit a few rows and Karen showed me how. So yes, you can teach an old Doug new tricks.

 

Awoke this morning to a clear day and the snowfall on hold. Thinking about snowshoeing, something we did a little of decades ago and this is clearly the time to try it again. We walked a bit yesterday, but cleared trails were few and though I was warm enough in my Icelandic Sweater gifted to me while teaching in Iceland back in 1995 and mostly sitting dormant in my closet, the wind on our faces was enough to keep the walk short— and that’s when we found the indoor pool table.

 

With another storm on the way, we were leaning to leaving today a day early, but a downed tree and a stranded chipper truck has us captive here for a while more. We may have no choice but to stay one more night and take our chances on an exit tomorrow. 

 

That’s the news, such as it is, from the Evergreen Lodge near Hetch Hetchy. 

 

At Your Service

On Tuesday, I took my granddaughter to the SF Airport to complete her return home from Portland, parked in the lot and sat at the gate with her. Then reeling with jet-lag, I went to my old school to sub for my old colleague Sofia, who was home sick. 

 

On Wednesday, Sofia had not improved, so I went into school again, accompanied by my jet lag, to teach 1^st graders and 4-year-olds. 

 

On Thursday, I met with James and Sofia to accept people into our Orff Summer Training Course. 

 

On Friday, I went to the Jewish Home and sang love songs with the elders for an hour. 

 

On Saturday, I drove up to Santa Rosa to see my nephew Damion perform as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet. The play ended at 11:00 pm, got home around 12:15 am. (He was excellent!)

 

Today, Sunday, I led another Valentine’s sing at The Redwoods Assisted Living Home in Marin and spent some time with my freshly-widowed friend Heidi—talks, tears and hugs. 

 

Tomorrow, I’m heading up to Yosemite with my wife and daughter Talia, a trip initiated by Talia because she has a week off and boyfriend Matt doesn’t. Never say no to a daughter’s invitation to spend time with you, even if it means heading up into what looks to be a monster snowstorm and you were hoping to enjoy the plum-blossom/ daffodils signs of Spring coming into San Francisco. 

 

In short, though I consider myself a self-directed adult with plenty on my plate, I seem to be happy to be of service to anyone who asks for something within my schedule and skillset. I’d be happy to know that someone at a future Memorial Service (please note future, hopefully paired with “far–“) will testify that in spite of all that can could be interpreted as self-serving, arrogant, egotistical, that they noticed I’m also reliable, dependable, generous, and willing to be of service at the drop of a hat. And if nobody noticed, I guess I’m giving them a hint here. Ha ha!

 

Anyone need a ride to the airport? I’m your man!