What is Music?
May 16th, 2006 by jenh
Radio Lab, a public radio show, tries to answer this question on its show entitled Musical Language.
One of the issues brought up on the Musical Language show is the notion that the artist has a duty to present people with work that is not easily assimilated into their prior experiences, such as when Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring debuted. Yet, a year later, this same piece of music was heralded a triumph and then eventually used in the Disney movie Fantasia. Like artists, do educators sometimes have to structure uncomfortable or even shocking experiences for their students in order to foster leaps in their students’ growth?
Yes. If teaching only occurrs in a small assortment of modalities, the process of education will become mundane. If teaching is varied and exciting, you captivate your students. If students are interested in the lesson, they will be more likely to think about it after they leave the classroom, ask questions and take an active role in their own education. I think any one of us could remember a wonderfully different lesson that a teacher decided to use in the classroom. It probably made you laugh, wonder and appreciate a lesson that would have otherwise been forgotten versus comitted to memory.