For students to learn the student must be involved. A Native American proverb states: ‘Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may not remember… Involve me and I’ll understand.’ While class attendance becomes a factor in the grading scale and certified associations become virtually a substitute for demonstrable skill or personal integrity, shadows are cast unto conscious attendance and individual capacity. Even if a student is physically present and apparently attentive, it does not follow that they are consciously involved in the happenings of their environment; it does not follow that because someone has a degree or certificate that they are capable of applying the information they supposedly acquired. How then, considering the vitality of involvement in education, is it possible to gauge and correlate a student’s involvement relative to the content of their temporal and spatial (psychological) environment?
Some common methods of measuring a student’s understanding are standardized testing, benchmark assessments (local, state, and federal), multiple-choice and essay examinations, class discussions, unit-based assignments, topic-oriented projects, and individual or group presentations. There is obscurity in these methods, which may be brought to the forefront by studies such as the Josephson Institute’s survey , which revealed that 75-98% of college students surveyed admitted to cheating at some point in their college careers. This means that 75-98% of students were graded inaccurately at some point or another and subsequently received degrees and, subsequently, socioeconomic positions invalidly. The methods of measuring, then, are not reflections of a student’s understanding or skill per se, but of the student’s ability to provide standardized answers and demonstrate mass-produced ‘intelligence’.
The methods of assessing intelligence itself were shown by T. Anne Cleary (1968) to be relative to the content of the assessment and experiences of the individuals involved, rather than an expression of a person’s abilities and/or understanding. It is quite simple: If you define intelligence to be some degree of accumulation of particular information, then anyone void of this information is rendered unintelligent. Yet, this measure says nothing of their understanding of the information that they have become familiar with in their experience of their life and thus, this measure says little, if nothing, of the person’s learning abilities or comprehension and analysis skills. Furthermore, a language-based (verbal, written, or electronic) assessment does little more than reflect an individual’s performance under the conditions of the grammatical and interpersonal environment, respectively. It is like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: as one property is measured, the less accurately may another property be known.
“We are not, any of us, to be found in sets of tasks or lists of attributes; we cannot be defined or classified. We can be known only in the singular unfolding of our unique stories within the context of everyday events.” –Vivian Gussin Paley, from Must Teachers Also be Writers?
“You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet… You’re not your f_(%ing khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” –Tyler Durden, from David Fincher’s film, Fight Club
“You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world” – what this means is that you “cannot be defined or classified,” because you are made of the same prima materia from which Heisenberg derived the principle and which lead Henry David Thoreau to state: "Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye, a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself." Amazonian shamans have time and again tried to explain this to anthropological researchers, responding to prompts of psychological assessments with answers unrelated to the question but regarding the nature of life and the researcher’s place there and then. These answers, unsurprisingly, have, time and again, been interpreted by the intellect worshiping servants of logic of Western academia to be testament to the Shaman’s role as trickster and as mentally deranged. Trickster? Yes. Deranged? No more than the next human.
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.” –Albert Einstein (1)
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." - Albert Einstein (2)
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” -Albert Einstein (3)
Aaron Copland (Harvard professor, 1945 Pulitzer prize winner, Director of League of Composers from 1948-1951, 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom award winner, and much more) said that the “imaginative mind is essential to the creation of art in any medium,” which I would like to combine with another Einstein line: “The greatest scientists are artists as well.”
Music is the art of the imagination, it expresses our inner lives from which we derive meaning anywhere and everywhere else. Learning experiences can themselves become musical if we learn, by studying music and by studying those who study music (especially ourselves). Music is capable of saying more than word, because as logic, word is limited. Music is direct communication, and according to Columbia University physicist Brian Green: “At the heart of matter is music.”
So let’s teach through the heart.
1.) Einstein, Albert. Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed through His Own Words. New York: Wings, 1993.
2.) Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment: Concepts, Connections, and Solutions. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 2009. Pg. 51
3.) Einstein, Albert. Einstein on Cosmic Religion: And Other Opinions and Aphorisms. Ed. Bernard Shaw. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2009. Pg. 97
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