A whole new education.....

Yesterday I attended a talk given by author Daniel Pink titled "A Whole New Education" which was based on his book, "A Whole New Mind".

1. The left brain is very important but the right brain is the new #1 of equals.
2.The continuted left brained dominance of education is the legislature's fault. (not the students, not the parents, not the teachers, not the principals, not the superintendants...)

I'm wrestling with the lack of momentum of his ideas. He book was published in 2005 and here we are listening to him say the SAME things. There was nothing new. This is 2008 and things are moving so fast in this day and age! Everything is moving so fast except...education.

What is the institution of education to do, exactly? We must still maintain an excellence in left brained knowing. The SAT's and flow charts continue to be important--we'd sink with the right brain that lets go of the left brain. So do we expect the school day to get longer? Add art and music to the 4 year requirements of highschoolers who already are having to be at school for classes before "first hour"?

Here's MY theory: trust students to develop left brains in a right brain environment.

A friend of mine who is taking violin Suzuki style with her daughter (that means mom gets to learn right along side--actually playing violins with her daughter). She described a leap of (FAITH) brain activity that she experienced. The teacher gave them a new piece to work on and with much concentration of violin position, finger placement, bow placement and direction, listening for intonation, etc. she started to master the music. Later mom picked up her violin again and it seemed that she had gone backwards in the mastery but the execution was feeling different....with less focus on each separate detail. After a couple more repetitions she knew the understanding of everything it takes to play the music had shifted and she could play with out "thinking". She has given the execution over to muscle memory. This is where I believe the music can now live in the right hemisphere.

Last week I was eavesdropping on my daughter, Claire, while she was teaching a violin lesson. Her student was a junior high school student and they were working on musicality and tone. Claire was using words like weight, speed, and division. Sounds like a physics lesson or geometry maybe. There were angles, perpendicular and parallel lines, but no numbers, formulas, or symbols. They were working on bow technique and when they added it up the right answer was obvious...beauty.

How do we assess that? ......there you go again, dipping back into believing the left brain is the end all.

Musically yours,
Yvette
PS if, in paragraph that begins: MY theory, the word "trust" sends you into a nosedive then we need to sit down and talk. Invite me for coffee!