Sound On

Alfie Kohn writes:

“There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data.  Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic caring communities.  Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them.  Homework continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.”

Beyond Homework

Alfie Kohn isn’t just writing about homework, he’s writing about how decisions are made in education. The first sentence nails it: policies in education are not being influenced by available data. Decisions are made on whims. Someone tried something, and it seemed to be ok, so they kept doing it. Or it is simply considered “conventional wisdom” that a given practice is the best approach. But actual research is being done in the field of education; it’s just that, for some reason, people aren’t letting the research guide their practice.

Research In Education

Granted, research in education isn’t perfect. It’s not appropriate to raise children up in an isolated chamber only to expose them to a certain thing at a certain age. But you can assess two groups, try something one way with group A, a different way with group B, and see which group has better achievement in the end. It’s the best we can do, and it’s leaps and bounds above “but we’ve always done this way.”

Research In Music Education

Dear Music Education Professionals: please check out the work of Dr. Edwin Gordon, especially the tome Learning Sequences in Music.

The Data Is Out There

It is my hope that parents, teachers, and especially policy-makers in education seek out research, and not just know it, but let it influence their feelings, their thoughts, and their actions.

You might have noticed that uploading a very high quality mp3 to the website http://myspace.com results in a very poor quality sound on the flash player. This is because MySpace will down-convert any mp3 above 96kbps 22khz stereo to the aforementioned bitrate and sample size.

Solution

Before uploading music to MySpace, save a copy of your pristine, high quality master wave file as 96kbps 22khz stereo (11khz per channel). The website will post the file as uploaded without conversions.

Inner city schools present very challenging situations. The students are angry and want to kill each other. How do you build a community when the community members want to kill each other?

Teachers have to be military commanders. They have to mean business all the time. They have to ferociously scold, and then turn it off like a light switch, and praise and love. If your heart is in it, you can learn how to do it. It takes about three years.

There are experienced teachers who have total control of their classrooms - absolutely no violence amongst the students, and high test scores. The students straighten up at the sound of a little whistle. They are obedient and compliant. But what happens when they walk out of those classrooms? They turn again to violence. What does this tell me? The students in those classrooms do not really learn compassion, love, and respect. They have no opportunity to learn morality. All they learn is to obey authority, and compliance is ever so temporary. While my heart is in education, I don’t have it in myself to be a military commander, because I believe I would be not only teaching the wrong lessons, but not teaching the right ones - critical lessons, like how to live together.

But the teachers have to mean business all the time at inner city schools. The students are angry and want to kill each other.