On the Edge

It’s time for the five-year strategic plan at my school. The staff wrote down their personal Post-it reflections about why they teach in general and why they teach in our particular school. Reading the collage of testimonies, I noticed none said “Money” or “Status” or “Career Advancement.” There was a lot of passion involved, for children, for a particular subject, for the craft of teaching. As it should be.

In an effort to reach to the core of our collective identity, small groups grappled with the question of why our particular school exists. Again, the results were impressive— “sending the children as emissaries into a more harmonious, sustainable, peaceful and loving future, helping kids find their particular genius, teaching them self-awareness, other-awareness, independence and interdependence. Giving them the needed tools to think, to imagine, to feel, to care.” In my group, we edged toward the geography of the school as a place on the frontier, on the borders between multiple worlds, on the edge of mainstream thinking.

We are in the midst of building a new Community Center and in one Powerpoint presentation, there was a slide that read “Moving to the Center.” It was meant literally, but some of us felt it metaphorically. The poet e.e. cummings once quipped, “To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight.” That’s as true for institutions as it is for individuals and there are a lot of forces at work out there trying to homogenize and smooth out the rough and gritty characters that authentic schools have grown over the years. Some of it is mindless, some well-meaning, some trying to align “best practices,” but all of it is dangerous. The problem with conformity of any kind is that a puts a stop to thought. It straightjackets the imagination. It closes down the feeling heart.

I’ve lived on the edge most of my life and find it a glorious place to be. Sometimes lonely, often difficult, but always pulsing with something that feels real, that feels authentic, that feels alive. Why wouldn’t everyone want to be there?

If anything approaching a grain of insight has sprouted in this aging brain, I think the answer has something to do with the sheer difficulty, effort and even terror of pitching your tent near the cliff’s edge. Our school mission statement aims to “cultivate the intellectual, imaginative and humanitarian promise of each child,” but it is not easy task to cultivate real thinking, a working imagination and an open, caring heart.

Take thinking. It is hard to form a genuine thought that is not simply echoing what the teacher, preacher or Fox news tells us. It takes lots and lots of reading, writing and occasionally arithmetic joined with a relentless curiosity and probing “Why? How? What? How much? As for imagination, it is easy to dream up interesting ideas and images, but it takes a Herculean effort to put feet on one’s winged vision, be it a piece of art, a piece of music or a social program. And finally, it is all well and good to open one’s heart to love and joy and humor and good fellowship, but that mean’s you’re also vulnerable to loss and grief and pain and despair. That’s scary.

Away from the edge, people cover their thinking with comfortable soundbytes, give over their imagination to the entertainment industry and make sure their heart is well-armored. They become consumers of life, fans of the stars, a hand that holds the remote to keep themselves remote and changes the channel when things get uncomfortable. And who can blame them? It’s hard to think. It takes great effort to imagine. It hurts to feel.

But I still recommend it. Stay close to the edge. 

The Inverted Rube Goldberg (IRG) Approach to Assessment

I received a flyer yesterday about an Assessment in Arts Education Conference coming up in Taiwan. Reading over the speaker’s proposed sessions, I came upon this:

“Assessment is a key issue in music education and is particularly perplexing in relation to evaluating creativity assessment in music. There are different views on what counts as ‘creativity’ in music… this has made it difficult to construct assessment rating processes that translate contemporary assessment theory into viable classroom practices, particularly when they are required to fit different contexts and purposes whilst maintaining internal consistency and coherence.  The continuing problem is the lack of understanding of formative assessment and the dominance of the summative assessment regime in schools. From this and other research, we see that in order to embed creativity assessments that make clear distinctions between product-process and formative- summative practices, we need to examine conceptions of current assessment practices with a view to developing common criteria, and an empirical framework for use in assessing this aspect of pupil learning. We also need to develop and test criteria that assess the creativity in product outcomes, as well as criteria that assess the process of creativity leading to these outcomes. With reference to research evidence, and the distinctiveness of Bourdieu’s sociology and the role of cultural capital, I will make the case for the sociocultural construction of a paradigm of creativity assessment in music that will lead naturally to self-regulated creativity and creative learning in music.”

Anybody need some extra-strength Tylenol? I’m not going to be nice here. What the hell is this crap? Who does the speaker think she’s talking to with these run-on sentences and $100 phrases like “summative assessment regime,” “product outcomes,” “cultural capital,” and “sociocultural construction of a paradigm of creativity assessment?” Have she taught a three-year old recently?

This invasion of pseudo-sociology and pseudo-science into the artistic realm of the human imagination is death to arts education. Nothing will kill a child’s natural creativity more quickly than adults observing with i-Pads poised with their “paradigm of creativity assessment” ready to pounce upon each sign of an imaginative moment with their assessment tools, eager to label, sort, judge, dissect, grade and fit into their pre-formatted “empirical frameworks.” What exactly are they trying to prove? Have they so little faith in the natural curiosity and prodigious imagination of young children that they have to straightjacket their behavior into some sardine-tin rubric? And all in the name of “creativity?”

The whole show reveals a cynical profound distrust of our capacity to respond to novel situations with intelligence and imagination, a fantasy that we can manufacture creativity in our micro-managed laboratory and prove with data that we have achieved our outcome. As if creativity a “thing” that we put on the check-list and go to sleep at night feeling better that we achieved our quota for the day. As if it’s a quality that stands alone as opposed to a team player with craft, technique, coherent structure and deep analysis. As if it were something we can assemble like a model airplane rather than simply a necessary and pleasurable way to live in this world.

This whole academic mindset is like those Rube Goldberg machines, those cartoons or devices designed to perform a very simple task in a very complex fashion. Minus the fun and creativity. Those machines are crazy contraptions that stretch the borders of our usual pedestrian thinking and thousands of dollars and hours can be spent for the simple pleasure of creating something absolutely insane. (For a taste of this, go see “This Too Shall Pass” on Youtube). These convoluted assessment models are deadly serious and all those hours spent produce absolutely nothing of value except increasing the profits of the Tylenol manufacturers.

I’m thinking I should apply to the Conference as a counter-keynote speaker. Here’s the summary of my assessment method:

“Watch the children.”

I give children countless opportunities to improvise, compose or choreograph responses to new situations, with unshakeable faith in their ability to come up with something. I watch them and note their ideas, their collaborative process, their habits of practice. After they perform, we discuss what happened as a group. They give a self-evaluation, the group gives feedback and in the process, all develop a firmer aesthetic criteria and ideas of how to edit, add, change, refine their improvisation, composition or choreography. My approach is an inverted Rube Goldberg image (should I make that a market soundbyte? the IRG approach?)— how to take the complex, non-capturable, elusive process of creativity and assess it with a simple process and simple language. One of my favorite criteria when it comes to composition is Duke Ellington’s own IRG idea:

“If it sounds good, it is good.”

So a word to my fellow teachers, University professors, administrators, policy makers, educational thinkers. Life is too short to even read sentences like the opening paragraph, never mind construct elaborate mazes to trap and quantify the creative impulse. Spend that time and energy learning how to do good work with children, leave some room for amazement at the working of their pre-formal mind and have yourself a little fun making stuff up with them. That’s enough.

Ten-Minute Sage on the Stage

A good idea poorly understood sometimes causes more damage than a bad idea well done. In the alternative education field I’ve been grazing in for some 40 years, there has been an ongoing visceral reaction to and disdain for the “sage on the stage” kind of education. That format, still alive and well in many universities nationwide, features the brilliant lecturer up on the podium with the adoring students frantically taking notes, hoping to catch even a small percentage of the nuggets of wisdom tossed their way. Knowledge is disembodied and the teacher-student relationship is unnecessary, and indeed, impossible in lecture halls filled with a few hundred students.

Enter the more democratic, hands-on, student-centered, experiential-based “guide on the side” model, with the teacher posing questions and problems for the students to solve and guiding them toward further questioning and their own solutions. The teacher’s job here is not to share what he or she knows, but to lead the students to the edge of their own discovery. Relationships between teacher and student, student and student, count high in this model and the children’s confidence in their own intelligence is spotlighted over the teacher’s brilliance.

(There also is a third model awaiting its catch phrase and articulate spokesperson—I keep trying but haven’t yet found the perfect combination of words. That is the “sing in the ring” model where the teacher is exploring with the students, participating in the active making of music (in my case) and combining both models above as the situation calls for it. But this is a matter for another posting.)

When push comes to shove, I lean heavily toward the discovery model, but worry about what gets tossed out with the bathwater when the lecture mode is considered obsolete. Fact is, I love to go to lectures and hear interesting people speak and never feel disappointed that they didn’t make us get into little groups and problem-solve. I’m a long time patron of the City Arts and Lecture Series in San Francisco, recently heard Dan Pink speak at the Jewish Community Center Series and go soon to hear Dave Barry. And apparently I have company. The houses are almost always full as people pay money and take time to sit and listen to someone talk on a stage.

Before radio, film and TV at the turn of the century, such lectures were part and parcel of our culture. People spoke at clubs, libraries, Universities, rented halls and even soapboxes in the local park. People traded in thoughts and ideas in diverse subjects ranging from science to art to politics to gardening. Early radio and even TV continued somewhat with the lecture format. But given a choice between chewing on the ramifications of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and watching the Keystone Cops hit each other over the head and run down the street in chase scenes with ragtime music, entertainment gained some ground over intellectual rumination. And today, the image, mostly laced with sex and violence, reigns supreme over public discourse and is the new coin of the realm.

And yet, the TED Video series, along with the live events described above, is enormously popular and mostly consist of people speaking for 20 minutes. A good speaker with a good idea still attracts us and holds our attention. Yes, extra credit if they’re funny and dynamic and good-looking, but it’s not required. I find that fascinating.

I gave my own TEDx talk today (TEDx is smaller audience and half the time) and though nervous about seeing the image of my receding TV-image glamour, I believe I spoke from the heart about what I know and what I believe and what I value and worked hard to make the connection with the audience, believing that they cared about the same things— in this case, a music education worthy of their children. No one rushed the stage as if I had scored the winning touchdown or threw money at my rock-star feet, but I received a few verbal appreciations at the end and more importantly, there now is a document that can travel further than my own physical body to join the chorus of concern that we’re failing our children when we don’t give them the opportunity for artistic expression.

So having officially joined the world of noble lecturers and had my 10 minutes as the Sage on the Stage, I’m ready to sit on the couch and watch a Marx Brothers movie.

I believe I earned it.

Let Them Have Music!

Yesterday's posting mentioned my upcoming TEDx talk this Saturday. Below is a draft of my thoughts. Any readers out there who want to give me advice or encouragement, write to Goodkindg@aol.com. 

Often when I begin a music workshop with university students or classroom teachers, I ask “Who here is a musician? Who here is musical? Who hear loves to listen to music?” Invariably, a few raise their hands for the first question, some more tentatively put their hands up for the second (usually around 25%) and everybody raises their hands high for the last. The first is understandable— not all are willing or have the opportunity to devote the necessary time to master the difficult language of music. The last is predictable and simple proof that music is as essential to our humanity as bread. But the part that concerns me is the 75% who think they’re not musical. Why is that?  Often because  nobody in their schooling (including some music teachers!) took them by their hand and led them through the door of their own musicality. At my school and at every age from 3 years old to 8^th grade, all the children raise their hands for all three questions. 

So my life’s work is to raise the percentage of our musical population and convince schools and teachers and administrators and parents that this is important and necessary. And if they’ve never had music in their schooling or never had a music education that was truly musical, this is a challenge.

My first job is to expand the definition of music from learning to play a particular instruments and read notes to a way of experiencing the music in every aspect of our life, finding the music in language, in math, in our own bodies, with simple materials close at hand, no assembly required. I’m lucky to have stumbled into an approach to music education developed by Carl Orff, the Orff Schulwerk, that does precisely that.

The second is to make real Howard Gardner’s assertion that music is an intelligence we all equally possess as a potential, not an inborn talent reserved for the special few. At my school, every child has music almost every day for the full eleven years, from 3 years old to 8^th grade and they’ve proven that Gardner was right— music is an intelligence that can be nurtured and cultivated like any other. Here’s a testimony from one of the students who came late to our school in 6^th grade:

“I learned to play jazz which is really cool because I thought I couldn’t play anything. I’ve  always thought that you can’t learn music, but being in your class really changed my mind.”

So when I say that music is the birthright of all and that school is one place we can gift children with it, I mean all children at every age in every school and nothing less. In every class I teach, the children show me why music in schools is essential—not one of them needs to be convinced. But for all of you sitting on these imaginary school boards who haven’t experienced this for yourselves, it’s harder to understand why we should care so much about this. So let’s look at the big picture.

I’ve heard it said that no kid in jail has ever been in a band. That’s another way to say that a kid who joins a gang is telling us, “You have not given me what I need so I have to find it myself. I’ll belong to a gang, apprentice myself to violence, show my power with guns or knives, be known through the newspaper headline.” The things that drive kids to gangs and violence are the same basic human needs and drives that we all share put into the wrong container. The band—and here I mean any band— the jazz band, the string orchestra, the Orff ensemble, the dance group— is the right container for those energies.

And this is not conjecture. Someone like José Abreu en Venezuela armed youth-at-risk with violins in his work known as El Sistema and saved some 400,000 lives from going down the dark path, bringing beauty and belonging into their lives.  It works. Big time. Here’s a list of five deep needs a good music program can feed and nourish:

• DISCIPLINE: The old joke “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice” is true. We all have an urge for mastery and disciplined practice is the only road to success. Children who practice have a sense of being connected to something worthy where they can note their growth and progress, enjoy a sense of achievement, wake up each morning with a purpose and something that connects the dots of each day. The musician is always working on something, on their way somewhere and that keeps them fresh and vital.

• POWER: There is nothing worse than feeling powerless— think of your rage when you push a button on the computer and nothing happens. Children especially feel helpless and look for power in all sorts of places—superheroes, temper tantrums, video games. Music puts the right kind of power in their hands, the power to shape a phrase and express an emotion and communicate with others. To learn how to get vibrato from a string or the right touch for each hand in the Mozart sonata or how to growl or bend a blues note on the horn gives children a sense of powerful control and puts in literally in their hands.

• BELONGING: We are social creatures and go to great lengths to belong to groups, to feel part of a group. At its best, we also want to feel that we are of value to the group, are known and celebrated in the group and can contribute something worthwhile. Well, that’s music. Whether you’re playing first violin or last triangle, your note is necessary to the overall effect and you must do the work to get the note in the right place at the right pitch with the right feeling. Then you connect with something larger than yourself, that beautiful feeling of blending into the big choral sound or losing yourself in the thundering of drums. There are so many levels to this belonging. To the ensemble, to the instrument group inside of the ensemble, to the musical style, to the music itself, to the community refreshed by the performance.

• MEANING: There are other things that offer discipline, power and belonging. Sports, for example. But there are two more things that music gives us that nothing else quite does in the same way. The first is another basic human need as old as our evolved brain. The brain’s number one job is to perceive pattern and make sense out of apparently random information, all the way from “how do I get food in this cafeteria?” to “What is the meaning of life?” One reason why we crave music is that it’s one of humanity’s finest expressions of meaning. We sit in the concert hall, a note sounds that announces it’s time to leave clock time and the world of randomness and release ourselves to a journey in which each note is connected to every other in a coherent pattern. It proceeds in its own inexorable logic  reaches a conclusion and sets us back down to clock time. We’re not only refreshed by the way music’s vibrations affects our nervous system, our muscles, our brain waves, our breathing rhythms, but by the soothing effect of being in a world, however briefly, where everything makes sense. Here’s how a character in Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain talks about it:

"Music held more for him that just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of creation. What the music said was there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift but have a shape, an aim.”

BEAUTY: And finally, beauty. Beauty doesn’t scan well in the school curriculum and testing talk, but we all—children and adults alike— hunger for it . Here’s a quote from Les Mis— the book!

“You are always eager to make everything useful, yet here is a useless plot. It would be much better to have salads here than bouquets.”

…the bishop replied, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps more so.” 

Come with me when I play piano for my Mom at her Old Age home and you’ll see the wheelchairs racing to the piano like wildlife flocking to the waterhole in a drought to drink from the fount of music. Come sing with me to my one-year old grandchild to see how the beautiful tones soothe her and rock her to sleep. Come watch the children in my music class so joyfully playing, singing and dancing. Imagine your own children given this gift of belonging, discipline, self-power, meaning and the lifelong habit of pursuing beauty. Listen to the testimony of these two wise 7^th graders:

"Music is very important to me. Why? Because it can fill in your blanks. It's flexible the way you are. You can always find music that fits your mood. You know that saying "misery loves company?" Well, music is a perfect proof of that. It makes you feel that there is someone else out there who feels the same way you do. It shares your pain and builds your spirits. It fills those bare silences. Music is like colorful emotion that spreads over the room whenever it is played. Everyone should be allowed or able to feel that color, that emotion as it flows through them. "      - Morgan Cundiff

“Music isn’t just notes written on paper or different frequencies. Music isn’t a “thing” at all. Music is a way of life. You can live through music, you can feed on it, you can find relief in it. I use music as a passage and the passage can go wherever I want it to. Jazz, classical, rock ‘n’ roll, they're all different passageways of music. Music brings you to a new dimension. Perhaps it’s an Ab major dimension or a Techno dimension. Whatever that dimension is, it’s the one you want.”  - Jackson Vanfleet-Brown

“It’s the one you want.” Every day of my teaching life tells me it is indeed what the children want. It’s what they deeply need. My advice to you, to your children’s schools, to schools everywhere, is very simple, “Let’s give it to them.”

Belated Christmas Gift

The title is not about this recent Christmas, but one two years ago, when I put out a request to friends and acquaintances to nominate me to give a TED Talk. Following Robert Frost’s famous quote (“I’ve had a lover’s quarrel with the world”), my six-word bio reads: “Called World to quarrel. No answer.” I thought—and think— I had a worthy complaint that World should hear: “Why don’t all children have an effective, happy and loving music education?” But as I said, all my preaching was to choirs and small ones at that. I wanted to up the ante and TED seemed the perfect vehicle.

It turns out that many people did indeed send a message to TED, but he didn’t pick up. No surprise— the story of my life, always one brick short of a media-exposure barbecue. But in some “be careful what you wish for” kind of drama, it turns out I’m giving a mini-TED talk this Saturday in L.A. It’s called TEDx, which doesn’t mean the same as the movie rating, but rather a shorter time (9 minutes instead of 20) and not up there with the big guns on the TED Channel (though perhaps available in some Youtube format— I’ll keep you posted).

When I first told a friend I wanted to speak on TED, he laughed ruefully and said, “Do you realize you would only have twenty minutes to speak? !!” He knew me well. But now with nine minutes, twenty seems like a luxury. These blogs have helped me get to the point faster and with fewer turns down the side roads, but still— nine minutes to condense a life’s work of thinking about the thousand reasons why music should be in the schools? That’s just cruel.

The composer Schoenberg once said “the most important tool for the composer is the eraser” and I think that’s true for every artist. So I’ve whittled my talk down to four pages and five points, but suspect it’s still four minutes too long. Aargh!

Tomorrow I will post it for any reader who has good advice for me, but hurry— the talk is on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, I’m going to write a thank you note to Santa. A short one.

The Sacred Portals of the Future

What a day! The equivalent of a grand slam in baseball! Martin Luther King was honored, Barack Obama was inauguarated for his second term and the new SF Jazz Building opened its doors with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, brass bands, speeches and general good spirit— all on the same day!

At the SF Jazz ceremony, John Santos gave a stirring speech about the working class roots of jazz, a good reminder as this shiny new building takes its place amongst the traditionally elite culture of Opera and Symphony and Conservatory in a neighborhood with restaurants priced on the higher end. He then sang an invocation to Eleguá, the Yoruban Orisha-deity of openings and closings, doorways, portals and crossroads. Eleguá is the West African/ Caribbean version of the Greek Hermes, the Roman Janus and host of other such gods in various cultures worldwide. He is depicted sometimes as a child and is attracted to children’s toys and candy.

So while I’m mixing cultural references, above is the Temple of the Three Windows in the Sacred plaza of Machu Picchu, dedicated to the Inti, the Sun God. It’s a good image for today’s historic sacred portals to the future— the one that Martin Luther King threw open wide so we could see the same mountaintop of justice he saw, the one that Barack Obama is hopefully re-dedicating himself to with renewed fervor, less naivete and stronger backbone and the window into the next step in the story of jazz in the U.S. of A.

The Incas were deeply steeped in hierarchy. If fact, Inca technically is the word for the ruler come to earth as divine representative of the Sun God Inti. It was an inherited position and when one such king died, he was mummified and his power remained intact in that form while the next was crowned. Anyone who knows even a little of jazz’s colorful history knows that it began in poverty, in cotton fields and ghetto ‘hoods and if you rose to be the Empress of the Blues or Mr. Duke Ellington or Mr. Count Basie or Lady Day, it was not from inherited privilege, but talent married with dedication and a prodigious technique and imagination. And a whole lotta soul. And at the ceremony, giant photos of the above musicians and more shone out from the building across the streets, reminding us that their sacred power is still helping to direct the show long after they’re gone.

So this is the New Ruling Class, American style. Martin Luther King, a poor country preacher, became the remembered conscience and spiritual beacon for a whole country. “By what sends the white kids, I ain’t sent, I know I can’t be President” wrote Langston Hughes a while back, but Barack Obama proved him eventually wrong— twice. And after a century of being the underdog in mainstream culture, jazz has finally risen to the top. It is the new nobility of American culture. In fact, perhaps too much so for some, not prepared for the level of sophistication by a culture with jazz still on the low end on the radio dial and with music programs dropping all over the nation.

And that brings me back to Eleguá and the children. The speeches acknowledged the fine work SF Jazz has done with the High School All-Stars and the Jazz in the Middle School program, but conspicuously absent are the elementary school children. All of them. Not just the ones who already study sax or are ready to dedicate their life to this music. Just the ones who want to get a taste of what it feels like to play jazz at their level. I’ve been pounding at the door the last 10 years or so, shouting, “I’m your guy! You need me!” and it’s starting to slowly open. (Come to my post-Family Jazz workshop on April 13^th). I say this in all humility— I simply haven’t met someone who has worked so extensively to bring hands-on jazz to three-year olds, eight year-olds and 8^th graders in a way that makes sense to them. I happen to think it’s a next important step and just hope I’m still around when others start to agree.

Meanwhile, I’m well-aware that this posting breaks every rule of coherent writing with its patchwork themes, so might as well throw in the final one. I mixed a baseball grand slam with the Three Sacred Windows of the Incas, further confusing matters with references to  4 runs and 3 windows. So what’s the 4^th? Yesterday’s 49’ers football game!! (Nice one, Doug! From baseball’s home run to football touchdowns. Huh?)

There! Now I’ve thoroughly earned the F- in essay writing while illuminating ancient history, contemporary culture and hopes for the future. Remember all of this next time you think of January 21, 2013.

Go Niners?

I’m continuing my M.O. of being a fair-weather sports fan. First the Giants in the World Series and now the Niners. Turned on the TV in the 2^nd quarter with the score 17 to 7 and things looked promising when the 49’ers scored within minutes of my watching. Coincidence? I think not! I’m sure that my screaming at the T.V. and my little physical twitches aiming the ball at the right spot were entirely responsible for their victory.

It was a Shakespearean game, overflowing with high drama moments. But instead of writing a sonnet, I tried to capture it in a haiku, complete with the 5-7-5 syllabic structure:

Football Haiku

Missed field goal hits post

Fumble at the one… and yet,

Niners! Super Bowl!!

If I say it was an offensive game, sports fans will know it’s not an insult, but an analysis. But the unsung hero’s were the 49’ers defense holding Atlanta at bay at the 10-yard line. Way to go, fellas!

Since it was the first game I’ve watched all season, I didn’t have the pleasure of identifying with the players. But I was struck by the quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s  little knee-lift just before the hike and his occasional jog up to scrimmage shouting to his linemen. Also some pretty intense tattoos— and he had a lot of company there.

So I’m stoked! Could it be Giants and 49’ers in one (kind of) year? I even wrote another poem.

Joining the Crowd

It takes so little imagination

to join the throngs and shout,

“Go Niners!!!

And yet,

I so happily do so.

GO NINERS!!!

But in the midst of the excitement, I wonder how Martin Luther King would have liked the game. I’m preparing for my first TED talk (hooray! more on that later) about the importance of arts education and note that both sports and arts offer some of the same things to kids— discipline, a sense of belonging to a team, of working toward a common goal, of feeling personal power through focused achievement and more. But their final purpose is distinct enough to note. You could play a fantastic game, as Atlanta surely did, and leave the stadium downhearted. As did not only the players, but all the Atlanta fans. But if the SF Symphony and Atlanta Symphony both played a rousing version of Beethoven’s 5^th on the same night or even in the same concert hall, they all would leave uplifted. And the audience members too. That’s a difference worth noting.

Of course, I jumped up and down and joined the Facebook “Go Niners!” chorus and generally felt like I achieved something worthwhile by picking San Francisco as my home city. But truth be told, I felt compassion for the Atlanta folks— and later the New England folks (including my son-in-law Ronnie and grandson Alijah). Why does my exultation have to be at the expense of their disappointment? Well, that’s the way the game works and luckily there are other games in town— like the symphony and jazz clubs and gamelans and taiko groups and Orff classes. Thank goodness for that.

Meanwhile, I guess I should it say it one more time, but this time in deference to my brothers and sisters in Atlanta and Boston— “Go Niners.”