A great victory for real education in Milwaukee, where the business community and politicians have been obsessed with “choice” for 30 years. From the FB page of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association.
This is a victory for students!
This is a victory for real education!
A Big Victory for Music in MPS!
70 photos5 hours ago
Last night the School Board decided to take the first step in moving towards giving the students of Milwaukee the schools they deserve by unanimously passing an initiative to bring music back to ALL MPS schools. This was a big first step in bringing our schools back to what they once were. Thanks to all who wrote letters, sent emails, made phone calls, and testified at the committee hearing on Tuesday to make this happen. We will win the schools our students deserve! Photos are from Tuesday’s committee hearing. #MPSproud
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh Lord, this is WONDERFUL!!!!
So, so, so important!!!
Am proud of my city for that action. But we have a long way to go. It is important to know that the Arts are not only for enjoyment, but are as much of a communication skill as reading and writing Now we must recognize the important of bringing thinking back to education beginning by shredding the big test in lieu of researching, analyzing, debating and coming to a conclusion. Not simply taking the same test and regurgitating the same damn answers. Public education: Change or perish. If politicians don’t allow change, teachers still own the classroom It’s time to take back education by kicking out the politicians and subverting the system from the ground up for the agenda of children.
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Well stated!
Last night the School Board decided to take the first step in moving towards giving the students of Milwaukee the schools they deserve by unanimously passing an initiative to bring music back to ALL MPS schools.
As a retired music teacher, this is indeed music to my ears. Children must have music. Unfortunately, in too many districts it is cut from the curriculum to save money. Music teachers are too often looked upon as convenient ‘baby sitters’. I hated that label.
And it needs to be implemented at the elementary school level. My son’s middle school has a music program that starts in 7th grade and the vast majority of students have zero experience with any instrument. I pity that music teacher.
Insane.
BTW, it is literally impossible for a person to develop perfect pitch as an adult, but almost everyone can if he or she starts musical instruction as a toddler. Why? Well, we are born able to identify individual notes, and that instruction simply associates a name to the thing that the toddler perceives (ah, that sound is Bb). If it’s not solidified by associating the note with its name while people are still toddlers, most will lose the ability because of neuroplasticity (said, these days, to be related to which neural circuits receive . myelination).
Pitch Deform
Deform would pitch the perfect pitch
In trade for perfect bot
Which leaves the music in the ditch
Cuz Mozart it is not
One can only imagine what would happen if the Deformers were actually interested in arts and music education. They would ban musical instruments from schools but have lots and lots of standardized tests on the Circle of Fifths and transposition of keys.
By the way, I will believe that strong AI has been achieved when a robot can rival a Mozart, Beethoven or Tchachovsy.
These “chess machines” or “Go machines” that can beat world champions may be impressive, but they are basically performing a routine, are not creative and here’s the key, don’t understand what they are doing.
Understanding is the true basis of intelligence and there is not a computer in existence that actually understands what it is doing.
Many of them use “neural nets” to get results, which means there is often no rhyme or reason involved and when they are thrown a curve that is outside their training database, they often fail miserably.
Here, a piece I recently wrote about this very topic. Troubling.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/the-new-new-creative-class-isnt-going-to-be-human/
The new creative class isn’t going to be human. It’s going to be AI that writes stories and sonatas.
I’ve listened to a lot of this AI-generated music that is supposed to “sound like” Beethoven or Bach. But it inevitably sounds lame and derivative because it is so rule-based. However, and this is scary, the stuff is getting better and better. As are the programs for writing stories. In Japan, these days, there is a huge following for virtual pop singers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPBRj0bE55w
If you listen to that amazing series of lectures that Adras Schiff gave on the Beethoven sonatas, which I posted above, one thing you’ll notice is how “strange,” how “weird,” how experimental and playful much of what Beethoven did in these was. Similarly, Harold Bloom, in his book Genius, says that the one thing the greatest writers in history have in common is how freaking weird they were. Finding the commonalities in works of art is the easy part, and it’s much easier to teach someone how to harmonize a melody, which is very rule-based, than to write an interesting, engaging, beautiful, original one, which isn’t. And even the former, if one just follows the rules all the time, will be boring.
The brilliant Rick Beato on how Beat Detective and Autotune and other such computer garbage destroyed rock music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaRIW-wZlw
It’s easy to make computer generated music that sounds good by making it sound like something that has been done before.
But it’s much harder to make something that sounds good that has never been done before.
Creativity builds on what has come before but is nonetheless new and fresh.
That can only come as the result of understanding. When there is no understanding, there is no real creativity.
Randomly throwing paint at a canvas or notes at a speaker is not creative. Not is tweaking an existing creation slightly.
AI proponents have got everyone convinced that they are on the verge of a major breakthrough. I don’t see the evidence. Most of what they do has little to do with real intelligence, which involves understanding.
Agreed. Here’s my major concern: This derivative, artificial crap will increasingly push out the original. Here, film writing made EZ!!!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/coming-soon/
I have a response, FLERP, but absurdly, it’s in moderation. WP craziness.
Another note: a kid can have perfect pitch and go through all 12 years of a K-12 education in the US and never have anyone notice this.
Process over product.
FLERP!
I have met some of the most amazing high school music teachers who teach music to low income students who have zero experience with instruments or reading music. I watched a concert in which most of the soon to be graduating seniors came to the microphone one by one and told the most incredible stories of their experience. Some of them started as indifferent students and even stopped coming to class or dropped music for a year, but they came back to it when they were ready and learned and loved it. I have no idea whether they were graduating as only semi-proficient beginning-level musicians, but I can tell you that the tears I saw that evening on the faces of the teacher and students and their parents was not something to be pitied. It was joy.
You are absolutely right that music needs to be implemented in elementary school. It’s especially great when a gifted elementary school teacher is able to teach young students about rhythm and notes and perhaps introduce them to reading music and playing an instrument. But often the advantage is to the students whose parents can then pay for private lessons or supervise practices, and other kids just won’t be interested at that time.
But maybe in 7th grade, when they are exposed again, they do get more interested. Or maybe it doesn’t happen until high school.
I have also been to middle and high schools that have music programs that do NOT have any interest in teaching kids who have never picked up an instrument before. They are for kids who can already play proficiently. And I pity THOSE music teachers who never get to see how much it means for a 15 year old to feel enabled to pick up an instrument as a rank beginner without feeling embarrassed or a “burden” because of how inept he is. I suspect it is incredibly satisfying for a teacher to watch a student realize that he or she can improve and start playing songs and then experience the ineffable joy of playing that instrument as part of a larger orchestra or band creating a groundswell of music. That is the kind of experience I think most good music teachers will take with them the rest of their lives. Even knowing many of those students may never reach real proficiency on their instrument.
^^I left out that what brought tears to my own eyes at the end of year concert was hearing how much these students LOVED their music teacher. They so eloquently expressed how much that teacher had done for them – sometimes it was just letting them come to the music room during free periods not necessarily to practice but to experience the community there. That is priceless.
Bless these teachers who strive to continue teaching despite the Ed Deform mania!
Bob Shepherd: How FANTASTIC!!
When I worked in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a youth orchestra came to perform at my school, the Santa Cruz Cooperative School. It was made up of very poor students and the string instruments had all been carved by hand. They did a MARVELOUS performance.
The kids wore black pants and white shirts and had shoes. For some, it was the first time they’d had such good clothes and for most of them, it was their first pair of shoes.
Some people are doing miraculous things to get music to children.
Here we are as a wealthy country, and our students far too often are being denied an education in music. Just like this country can’t afford healthcare for its citizens we also can’t afford to have music education.
This article is about a different orchestra in Bolivia. It was founded in 2011.
Bolivian youth orchestra plays for the future
COCAYAPU: When Mariel Chura joined a youth orchestra at age 14, she did not even know what a viola was.Seven years later, she loves the instrument, which has offered her an escape from the hardships of everyday life in Bolivia’s biggest coca-producing area.The Chulumani Youth Symphony Orchestra has helped teens avoid the usual pitfalls plaguing the region: drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and family drama, according to the group’s director and conductor Erik Castro.Instead, they learn the discipline of classical music, forge lasting friendships and dream of a future career in the arts.
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/leisure/2018/12/09/bolivian-youth-orchestra-plays-for-the-future/
Love your note, Carol!!! Thank you!!!
I heard Ken Burns speak at CU-Boulder. He said that he selects his music carefully, because music goes right to the soul.
Ever notice how many mathematicians love music? There is a relationship between mathematics and music…patterns and rhythms.
Our students NEED MUSIC.
So GREAT to learn that Milwaukee School Board has reinstated MUSIC. Watch those students soar. 🎼
Yes! The initiative is starting with elementary schools first!
Awesome. As well it should!!!
It’s SO great to read three positive posts (Milwaukee, Boston & Nashville) in just one day; what a breath of fresh air, & kudos to all who made this happen.
“Please, sir, may I (we) have some more?”
Nope…no asking politely…continue to fight like mad for your public schools & kids.
& vote on Election Day; as has always been, paper is SAFER (unhackable).
Actually, I have seen music teachers do amazing things in middle school with students who have never played an instrument.
Both my nephews started playing saxaphone in 7th grade and were able to play a concert in about 4 months.
Yes, it’s hard but it is possible. Most instruments are really not that hard to pick up IF the kids enjoy learning.
Supposed to be a reply to FLERP! Above.
Not sure why it went there. WordPress has a mind of its own
SomeDAM Poet: My LOVE is beginning band. The middle school at the International School of Kuala Lumpur did have a beginning band. I started kids in the 5th grade.
It is SUCH a delight to start the year when kids don’t know how to open their cases and by the end of the year we sound fantastic.
Hopefully, people are catching on to the fact and so-called reform is a con game that forces them to pay for a whole lot of nothing while it undermines public education.
I remember when I was young, growing up in Illinois, we always envied Wisconsin’s education system and especially their great music programs. We always said the best musicians came out of Wisconsin public schools. Hopefully we can say that again, one day.
Yes! That’s our hope!!
This is great news.
I wonder if this restoration will be a full spectrum program and if so, how the district is managing staff and equipment for vocal and instrumental music, K-12.
Little known factoid. For many years the USDE Office of Innovation, Arts in Education program required grant recipients in arts education to provide evidence of improving math and reading.
The newest iteration of this mindset and policy position is the “Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD)” program.
Quote:
AEMDD funds go to school districts and non-profit arts organizations working in partnership with school districts in elementary and middle schools. They should be used in public schools to improve the connection between arts integration and the other core academic subjects, to strengthen arts instruction, and to improve student achievement. This must be done by using approaches that have proven successful in doing this and enhancing, expanding, documenting, evaluating and disseminating them. Recipients are required to compare the academic results of students benefiting from this program to students who are not. https://arts.ed.gov/#program/about-the-programs
I think this requirement is absurd.
Laura H. Chapman: I had a principal at one of my schools who insisted that I talk with the reading teacher and plan my music lesson plans to help improve reading skills. I actually had to make up lesson plans incorporating this. That principal had no idea that music is not to be used to improve reading skills. It is important in its own right.
At some schools I was thought of as a baby sitter whose main job was to give breaks to the classroom teachers. Some teachers got mad if I got ill and they missed their breaks. I know that teachers need breaks but why was I blamed for getting sick?
One principal said that my music program took time away from the classroom teachers’ break. Right after a major concert, I had to hurry up and put away all of the Orff Schulwerk instruments and watch 75 kids in one room so that these teachers could get their break. One teacher got mad because I wasn’t putting the instruments away fast enough. I didn’t matter that the kids were all worked up from just having finished a concert.
I have other stories. GLAD I’m retired. Sometimes music INSIDE schools isn’t respected.
Here is the motion with the guide for implementation:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B91DVeRgYH39Z1lya0NGU1UtMGdESDRrYzVvUHZLemlCb0tR/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword
Wonderful!
And I love this: 10. Implement professional development that integrates multicultural and culturally responsive music
into all classrooms.
I used to do a week in my American lit classes on the development of African-American music from West African roots to field hollers and work songs and spirituals and blues to ragtime, Dixieland, gospel, boogie woogie, jazz, rock n roll, soul, R&B, funk, hip hop, Afropop. Lots and lots of opportunity for significant instruction there related to literary forms and techniques, the social and political influence of the arts, influence and diffusion of motifs. Really great stuff.
Someone should suggest to Bill and Melinda Gates that they fund music programs with no strings attached — except to the stringed instruments😀
Imagine the number of school instruments they could have bought and music teachers they could have funded with the 2 billion dollars they threw down the rat hole that is Common Core.
until they can figure out how to profit from kids learning music I don’t suppose we’ll see much interest from them…
Of course, that’s just pure fantasy because everyone knows the Gates would never fund anything with no tests or other strings attached to it.
Speaking of the Gates. Epstein’s former butler in Paris says both Bill and Melinda visited Epsteins Residence there. Big Butler is watching!
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-epsteins-butler-says-celebs-like-steve-bannon-bill-gates-visited-20190927-7t74ld277rclxcyms4yg64v7gm-story.html
By the way, it sounds to me like the USS Deform is breaking up.
Scotty: “i’m giving the shields everything I’ve got, Captain, but she can’t take any more of these independent school boards! Can you believe it? They called the Deform a garbage scow!”
Haaa!!!! Hilarious!!!
What would life be without music? This is such great news!!!
In case you missed these. Glorious. https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/podcasts/andras-schiff-beethoven-lecture-recitals?fbclid=IwAR0ohNEHc0IOWUaI1j8EKuI8Pfmt4zs-JJg1uGpgLsQdzwCfjBQaBiJj284
Life without music
Life without music
Like life without art
We all should refuse it
It’s end without start
Life without widgets
Life without widgets
Like life without smoke
The junk and the gadgets
Will leave us all broke
A nice pairing, SomeDAM!!!
&–let’s not forget Art. Without art, heART is just he.
Without art, there’s no EARTh, just…eh.
Earth without art is Canadian, eh?
And art without Earth is an alien
Ha,ha! Leave it to you to inject clever humor, SDP!
(& what you said below, as well.)
Students should have access to PE, art, music and a great library. Too many schools have been stripped bare of anything but reading and math. Yet. all of these resources tap into the diverse needs and talents of young people. These subjects should be available to all students without question.
My ELLs spent most of their days trying to make sense of a new world. When it came time for one of these specials, it was a time for them to enjoy, not just struggle. These subjects balance out curricula and enrich education.
It’s very ironic that the people who decided that may and language arts are the only important subjects are often not good at either.
People like Bill Gates who called for the VAMnation of teachers, despite the fact that it is junk math as any real mathematician will tell you.
And people like David Coleman who could not make a coherent verbal argument if his life depended on it. Epitome of an Oxfordmoron
The VAMnation of teachers. Oh, that is perfect!!! And Oxfordmoron ought to be an oxymoron but alas, in at least this case, isn’t.
It doesn’t escape the notice of those who manage “nonprofit” charter schools that a) the arts aren’t on the state tests and b) if they don’t spend any money on instruments, art supplies and art labs, theatres, gymnasiums, etc., then there will be a lot more money to divert to buying company cars and fancy company offices and paying exorbitant salaries to the management company execs.
But sometimes it is even worse than that.
Sometimes those “nonprofit” charters get tens of millions of dollars from rich pro-charter billionaires and they use some of that money to include art and theater and music programs that public schools can no longer afford, thanks to those very same billionaires owning politicians that cut public school budgets.
That attracts parents who are most involved in their kids’ education. They can send their kid to a charter that is overflowing with money to offer arts and theater and music and all the other things public schools no longer have.
Charters perform no better than public schools overall, as we know from numerous studies, so how to compete? By having their right wing privatizing billionaires work hard to enact policies that make public schools as unappealing as possible — and one way is cutting art and music programs to the bone.
Charters are so awash in money that they can pay their administrators exorbitant salaries and rent extravagant fancy office space and spend extraordinary amounts of money on public relations and marketing and still have money left to have art and music if they want. And it helps their marketing efforts to parents if their “competition” — the public schools — no longer have the money to offer arts programs.
Many charter schools are really, really bare bones operations. No supplies for teachers. No art or science labs. No gyms. No theatres. Many are simply former strip mall storefronts with desks.
And then there are the charters will really, really nice buildings on really, really nice land that have none of those facilities because they are all about using taxpayer dollars to build real-estate equity.
Some of the charters near New York City are sitting on a mountain of hedge fund money that provides tax breaks for Wall St. They still take from public schools!
retired teacher,
It just occurred to me why Bob and I have different perspectives. The public elementary schools in NYC are generally better than in most poor urban areas . There are some excellent ones and many that serve incredibly high numbers of disadvantaged students but do a decent job even if the test scores don’t show it.
So I don’t think there are many of those cut rate charters here in NYC because those kinds of charters aren’t likely to pull parents away from their public school. Instead, hedge fund billionaires often subsidize charters here so some of them are awash with money. They can offer some of those extras that public schools with straining budgets often have to cut.
That’s fascinating, NYC parent! Here in Florida, there are basically two types. There are the ones in superficially big, beautiful buildings that don’t have libraries and art labs and gyms for teachers because the funds are being spent on the big salaries of the execs in the management firms. And then there are the small ones run out of storefronts in strip malls. A lot of graft. A lot of diversion of the funds. A lot of bare-bones making do on the part of the teachers. In one of these schools, at the beginning of the year, they actually open a box of staples and take out the individual strands of staples and put a couple in each teacher’s mailbox. There. That’s your staples allotment for the year. LMAO. Yes, it’s that bad.
Bob Shepherd: I worked in one school district in Illinois where I had to buy everything. [I was new that year and hadn’t been given any budget for supplies. I have no idea how much was given to each teacher. I assume it wasn’t very much.] I was given a card to use at the copy machine. If my card was filled, due to the use of other teachers, I could go to the district office and copy things. I started stealing a few rubber bands at the main office because I was so angry.
Sometimes teachers would have to go to FedEx to make copies.
Teachers would line up at the copy machine at the beginning of each month when their cards started over again. There were only so many copies allowed on each card.
I left my textbooks in their boxes. They were awful. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of my own money on copying selections and handouts. Yikes, the carbon footprint of that!!! But I saved the stuff for reuse.
Bob Shepherd: I spent around $1,000 a year on things that would make teaching music more interesting. Most districts didn’t have much except a set of music textbooks. I did not expect to spend my money on staplers, staples, chalk, masking tape, colored paper, etc. I still had to put up bulletin boards.
What matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWYA9uvwK0&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3OwrBdbvlmanRNXKcV5oVPlmpGk-jHg5yjaSe2xAFsbV-sHiy1bHJXh8A
Thank you, Bob, for sharing this video. I have to explain that these children are two of my daughter’s students. She teaches music, health, and phys ed (all related, obviously) at a small elementary charter school in South Providence, RI. I share your dismay at the charter industry, but I have to point out in all fairness, that this particular school has a director who totally embraces my daughter’s approach to teaching. My daughter is a hip-hop artist, yoga teacher, graphic designer, and long-time advocate for and teacher of marginalized students of all ages. She would never be able to work her magic like this in a public school.
We need to have authority returned to our public schools–taken away from states and districts and placed in the hands of local teachers. That’s how we get schools that serve particular students’ needs and that are truly innovative.
Bob,
This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. The poster above wrote: “She would never be able to work her magic like this in a public school.” Why not? It’s not as if the vast majority of public school teachers and administrators hate music education and can’t wait to get rid of it all. It is because they have to run a public school — likely badly underfunded — in a climate where “wasting” money on that is not allowed. The pro-charter critics and their vast propaganda machine will attack your public school if the test scores aren’t superb when they could be spending that money on more “important” things that can lead to the “all students are academically above average” fantasy that public schools are ordered to meet.
Such positive self expression was frequently celebrated in my diverse public school in suburban New York City. Our principal held a daily morning program while buses arrived. Students often performed musical pieces, poems, skits as well as other forms of self expression. The only condition was that the content had to be appropriate for school. It was an affirming way to start the day.
But there is this grain of truth there: Deformers at the district level have so saddled public schools with test-driven imperatives (test preppy curricula, practice tests, diversion of funding to support test preppiness, VAM, school grading, data walls and data chats, and so on) that many are finding it very difficult to do exciting work within public schools, especially in ones with administrators who buy into the deforms. This is why it is absolutely essential to lift the federal standardized testing mandate, which has so distorted our public schools and made them far too often into places where good teaching occurs surreptitiously, because teachers are closing their doors and actually teaching DESPITE directives from the district office or from their own administrations. All praise to those brave teachers, but many are being driven out of the profession.
It should also be noted that there are many, many charter schools where teachers have FAR LESS freedom than they do in public schools, even in these dark times when public schools are often under occupation by test-crazy deformers at the district level.
Wow, retired teacher. That’s great. Lucky you to have had such a principal!
These people need to be careful. If they keep doing things like expanding music programs and making them available to everyone, they might end up making school a thrilling, exciting, engaging, interesting experience that kids look forward to.
Of course, we could avoid that with more standardized testing on the circle of fifths.