I had a question from a parent and need some help. Below is her question and I’m wondering if anyone knows of an article about this. Thanks!
What I need from the experts (YOU) is the influence music has on our children. I am very surprised by the one parent I spoke with that their impression is the children do not “understand.”. Even if a child does not know the meaning of a word, it carries an intent. Is there any articles where it discusses the other than consciousness experience a child has when listening to music??? Something that would wake up an already very educated population with an AH HA!
I don’t quite understand your question, Laura. But. . .
Some personal experiences: I walked into my 6th grade general music class and 3 girls were crying. The whole class looked somber and I later learned they’d had a big talking-to by their teacher. I took a deep breath and changed the song I had planned to something with a long, soothing line—plus a bit difficult to learn, and requiring concentration. (Galileo’s Epitaph, by Haydn, in the packet from Andrea Lyman) The teacher stayed in the back of the room, observing. Slowly, the sniffling stopped. Everyone was concentrating. They sang it (in unison) beautifully. Their teacher thought the music had a very good effect on calming them.
A parent wrote on her “Why Waldorf” entry that she has seen her daughter learn to use music to help her regulate her emotions.
Many times I have seen students have a wonderful burst of triumphant confidence when they “get” something on the flute or violin. It’s wonderful to see. Anything that boosts that sense of, “If I keep at it, I can DO IT!” is okay by me, and a powerful experience of learning the lesson of persistence.
Related to that, I had been working with the second grade class on Blackbird (on flute.) It was proving too hard (for the time being) for some of them, and I wanted an experience of success for the class as a whole, so we did the “chickadee” (just the bird-call part) of Chickadee and they all got it. I was really happy and so were they. Later, a second-grader (my son, actually) said to me, “I want to do another song like Blackbird!” I asked why. He said, “It’s like math. It’s hard but you really keep working on it.” So he relishes the challenge. And that was a good lesson for me. Give them things that are hard, because the sense of triumph increases all the more when the hard thing is conquered.
For specific stuff about music and brain, see MUSICOPHILIA by Oliver Sacks (it was a best-seller) and THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC by Daniel L______, who was formerly a music producer for a famous band that I can’t remember the name of because I don’t know those things. There is lots of amazing research being done.
Plus, all the fine motor-skill stuff. Maybe your extra lesson teacher could help? There was an article in the NYTimes about handwriting and cursive being so good for brain development. Well, what about those finger games we do? And the flute? And the strings? (Not to mention the assymetrical stuff when playing strings. Talk about good for brain development, concentration!)
Plus, memorizing.
Plus, organizing information into groups and quickly digesting it. (Learning to recognize patterns of rhythm, melody, the way your fingers have to move for a certain pattern of notes, etc.)
And there’s always the factor of feeding the soul. Having more beauty in one’s life (or more joy, or more ways to be comforted in sorr9ow) is hugely positive for one’s quality of life.
Those books were best-sellers. Also, there might still be links on NPR to interviews that Teri Gross did with the authors on Fresh Air.
What she is asking about is specifically about pop/country music that children listen to on the radio. She wants families to ‘ban’ that on playdates like they do screen time. She wants an article about the effect of pop lyrics that are too sexualized for 2nd graders. I will look at the books you mention. I re-read what I posted and realized I should have included more of her email.
Thanks for your help and would love to hear from others!
Hi everyone! I think the question about the lyrics can be easily answered: if the words are inappropriate, then the words are inappropriate. That being said, I think that the parents’ question could also be addressed by explaining the different qualities of music. Music, with or without text, has the ability to conjure emotions, thoughts, and movement. How many of people have a “work-out” playlist that inspires fast, and strenuous exercise? How about a piece of music that can bring us to tears by just listening to it? The piece so popular at commencement ceremonies, Pomp and Circumstance, sounds regal, proud, accomplished. As human beings, we find ourselves easily swayed by the music we hear. As adults, we must ask if, when, and how we should either bring or protect children from these strong emotional attachments to music as a listening experience. So many times we realize that the emotional outcome of hearing music almost has a prescribed effect by the composer. That’s one of the wonderful gifts that composers have! In the early years of Waldorf education we, as educators and parents, aim to allow the children to create their own relationship to the world around them: dolls have no faces, we sing in the mood of the 5th to inspire wonder, at the end of a fable, we don’t ask the children to summarize the moral of the story … We must consider if the music invokes beauty or pain, peace or aggression, simplicity or sexuality. Just a few quick and rambling thoughts on the subject!
Hi All… Rusty Vail here, from Westside Waldorf, Pacific Palisades, just south of Malibu and fully imbued with every aspect of the relentless entertainment industry. Agreed! … and I hear everyone’s concerns and “feel your pain” so clearly and deeply.
It is to me heart-breaking when I walk in to 1st grade after first grade, literally so polluted with every over-stimulatiing rap, rock, and/or inappropriate, heavily syncopated Broadway show-tune from home, the neighbors, or the last location they were on with mom or dad, that to bring a beautiful mood of the fifth song is not only very challenging for them to sing or even hear, but it is clearly the most important thing I can try and do with these children.
They are indeed deeply affected by every aspect of recorded music: lyric, beat, vocal nuance, all of it, for better or worse. I make it a mission to keep knocking at the door of illumination of colleagues, some of whom start in ML teaching harmony in grade 2, who invite parent vocalists to “teach’ soul-sung spirituals in 3rd, who drum like there’s no tomorrow in 4th. I really don’t think anyone does this with anything but lack of understanding of the profound ‘nature of music and the experience of tone’ and how it works on human beings.
Parent education is the next place to go: A RS quote about music goes in every end-of-year report, in hopes that a little will sink in somewhere.
I wish the children could remain unpolluted and be allowed to unfold gradually in their tone world, “wake up” at the age appropriate time; but that is not what we have. I am of the opinion it’s even more important nowadays, to give them that tone haven and be true to Steiner’s “roll-out” of musical forms, trying to minimize exposure to unwanted effects of lyrics/beat/tonality/ and intention, bringing up incorrect impressions at the wrong time.
Hey who’s going to Louisville!? Let’s talk.
Thank you, Rusty! So well said and true to the word. Adults in our time have indeed lost their sense of the kind of nuanced exposure for children that can cultivate what is healthy and nourishing for them. And it is amazing how even in our Waldorf Schools, music is so very often the LAST arena where parents and teachers alike are willing and able to apply what they have come to understand about nuanced exposure in every other area of children’s lives! I feel that we must begin with our colleagues – to try and provide for them experiences of pure tone sounding out of silence – even for 5 minutes at the beginning or end of a faculty meeting – so that they can once again feel for themselves what is profound and real in music. The shared experience and conviction of colleagues will go a long way toward the next major task of educating our parents……
P.S. And yes! See you in Louisville 🙂
A strong second comes from me here at Pasadena Waldorf, not far from Rusty in Southern California, but perhaps a bit less steeped in the “industry” than she experiences at Westside. I would add that each year seems to bring a new challenge from the children and families, and what I’m seeing now more than ever is the lack of connection among parents with music as an individual art, as a human birthright, as an act in which their engagement, and that of their children, is encouraged, invited, assumed. Many of them have recorded music going all of the time, so the children are experiencing music primarily as a passive activity, and not one which demands their participation even as listeners. Students are as likely to stand and WATCH during a lesson as they are to imitate or engage. It requires so much patience and encouragement for them to actively participate. I’m up for the challenge, but it’s really an interesting commentary on the vicarious experiencing of life that has permeated the culture.
I’ll miss you all this year at Louisville! Blessings.
Thank you, Karen! It is so important to be able to fully grasp and attempt to characterize the cultural phenomenon that is evolving around us. This disconnection with the PROCESS of music and music-making is a deeply serious situation, exactly because it strikes such a major blow to our experience of being human! For the last few years I have felt very strongly that almost all of our work with real music now has the possibility of providing first and foremost a therapeutic benefit for both children and adults! Once they have CONNECTED with music inwardly, either through real listening or through creating, we then have the groundwork laid to go further with our pedagogical goals. I believe that this is critical to understand as an overriding phenomenon of our contemporary lives – one that needs to be worked with consciously, just as you and so many others are doing!
Yes Sheila, Karen et al…, an inward connection and outward willful action. I wish it always came with DOING….the PROCESS as Sheila says, is in a fight for its life.
My quote was a gentle one, at the start of every child’s end-of-year report, “”Actually, what is the human organism? Viewed from an artistic standpoint, it is really a musical instrument.” Rudolf Steiner, 1922.
I think the reality that RS had anything to say about music is news to many parents and some teachers alike; Good news!
This past year, I did a parent singing group on Tuesday mornings right before the biography committee met. I taught them some of what their children were learning and some ‘simply fun songs’ to sing in harmony. It was a lovely, albeit small clutch of moms who just missed singing. They were, all of them, concerned they didn’t have “a good voice,” but when we sang all together, that sort of went away. One could sneak in a Werbeck exercise here and there, and do some simple harmonies, an apparent miracle when the experience is a new one. We’ll build on that again this coming school year and maybe it will bring in a few more. Anything at school which brings the ACT of singing into the realm of possibility is good. I also think that infiltrating the parent body with active, GROUP music is a good idea. Soloists are everywhere in LA! It’s the GROUP endeavor and “ensemble effect” that really makes active participation in music possible for most people.
Who else is doing this? Any ideas to throw out – repertoire, promoting it as a fun thing, ways and means? I’m determined to bring a “singing is a birthright” culture at my school… and am always eager and appreciative to hear stories from around the world about all these things.
Louisville 2015! I really cannot wait.
Love the direction of all of your thinking here, Rusty! Yes, indeed, planting seeds of music making wherever we find any patch of soil, so-to-speak, is something to which we must be ever more alert. At WWS, we took a page from the Kimberton WS schedule and started have once a week singing times with all high schoolers and faculty together! Any and all combinations can be fruitful (once you are dealing with 7th graders and older, that is) So looking forward to seeing you again in Louisville 🙂 A big hug to your mom, please!
I’ve had a parent singing session once a week for years. We always end with Dona Nobis Pacem in the Peace Garden. This year we made a special effort to include the parent singers on songs with faculty for winter and end of year assemblies. I am always hoping to build a singing time into the schedule each week but it hasn’t happened yet!