The Semester Thus Far…
Lili Koblentz
Dr. Schmidt
10/20/09
The semester thus far…
These past few weeks of Critical Pedagogy III have been intriguing. The main focus was on the words of Peter Block in ‘Community: The Structure of Belonging.’ At a first glance, the book seemed as if it was very unrelated to our futures as music educators, as the focus was on business managers, not teaching or music. Upon deeper reading, a few key ideas stood out to me.
The first of these ideas was the dichotomy between viewing communities as problems to be solved as opposed to communities as full of possibility. This is incredibly important to music education. Our view of the classroom will color our teaching, which in turn colors the education of our students. Pessimistically viewing classrooms as problems to be solved puts a cap on students’ abilities. The video we watched in class about a teacher who viewed his students as full of possibilities was an excellent example of this. One student in particular would have, in the pessimistic viewpoint, been seen as a behavior problem, and would likely be consistently reprimanded and held back. The teacher however chose to view him as full of possibilities, and made sure that the student knew that he was special and could do anything. Having this view applied to the entire classroom should evoke greater learning, a greater sense of the self and what the self can do, and a greater feel of community as a whole.
This issue of point of view is pertinent to the next point from Blocks book. He talks about the aspects of excellent questions; 1.) That it evokes anxiety, 2.) That it is personal, and 3.) That it is ambiguous. The first aspect is one I personally disagree with. While anxiety can push some people to do more, and to make them perform better, others can completely shut down and stop progressing, out of sheer frustration. In some cases, anxiety can even become a health issue, causing a fair amount of misery to the sufferer. I feel a better thing to evoke would be a desire to know, which is a more positive viewpoint to take. Making students want to know something puts them in control, rather than creating a sense that they are not in control, which a feeling of anxiety would do. The second aspect is one I agree with. Any question or piece of information should be something that pertains to the student’s life. Things that are personal to the student, or are deeply connected to the student will be responded to much better than something for which they only have a nebulous appreciation. While I understand the meaning of the third aspect, I feel it could be construed incorrectly. I feel that questions should be open to interpretation, something with multiple answers, and hopefully a different answer for each answerer. Ambiguity, however, has the same problems as ‘anxiety.’ As I said earlier, we have been taught that ambiguity is a bad thing since grade school, and such conditioning makes us uncomfortable with ambiguity. I feel that some structure is necessary for comprehension of the task at hand, but little more than a skeleton or scaffolding. Any more that, and the teacher runs the risk of influencing the answers.
Another thing that sticks out in my mind was this overarching theme that suggests the suppression of the self for the good of the community. I have mixed feelings about this. In any community, the group needs to exist as a group, not just as a collection of solo entities, this is especially true in musical communities, where a blend of sounds must be achieved. However, the unique qualities of the individual are what makes the ensemble unique; every person contributes to the whole by being an individual.
