Geography, History, and Science

The Significance of Geography and History

This is the time of year when I am attempting to organize my thoughts and notes about teaching into something tangible which I can experiment with in practice.  Throughout the school year I tend to incorporate new ideas about teaching, methods of approaching various subjects in music, but they are always tied to the continuum of what has already been throughout the year.  Before the school year starts I have the opportunity for real structural change, and through this section of D&E I’m thinking very much about how these statements about teaching geography, history, and science are analogous to teaching music. 

 “The task of education, once more, is to see to it that such activities are performed in such ways and under such conditions as render these conditions as perceptible as possible. To ‘learn geography’ is to gain in power to perceive the spatial, the natural, connections of an ordinary act; to ‘learn history’ is essentially to gain in power to recognize its human connections” (p. 217).

This statement, like many of the preceding ideas, suggests to me that music has evolved embedded in the human event.  It seems far more relevant in teaching say rhythmic notation to imagine or even recreate the problems which may have led musicians towards this system, rather than teaching the note names and values in isolation.

"Nature is the medium of social occurrences. It furnishes original stimuli; it supplies obstacles and resources. Civilization is the progressive mastery of its varied energies. When this interdependence of the study of history, representing the human emphasis, with the study of geography, representing the natural, is ignored, history sinks to a listing of dates with an appended inventory of events…” (p. 219).

 “History deals with the past, but this past is the history of the present. An intelligent study of the discovery, explorations, colonization of America, of the pioneer movement westward, of immigration, etc., should be a study of the United States as it is to-day: of the country we now live in… It means equally that past events cannot be separated from the living present and retain meaning. The true starting point of history is always some present situation with its problems” (p. 222, emphasis mine).

So I’m thinking structurally about creating situations with musical problems, then facilitating investigations into musical history (how have other composers solved this problem?) or performance (what techniques deal with this problem?)

“Surely no better way could be devised of instilling a genuine sense of the part which mind has to play in life than a study of history which makes plain how the entire advance of humanity from savagery to civilization has been dependent upon intellectual discoveries and inventions…” (p. 225).

And so it is with music, the discoveries and inventions being literacy, instrumental groupings, tone qualities, form, and so on.

“Pursued in this fashion, history would most naturally become of ethical value in teaching… The use of history for cultivating a socialized intelligence constitutes its moral significance… The assistance which may be given by history to a more intelligent sympathetic understanding of the social situations of the present in which individuals share is a permanent and constructive moral asset” (p. 225).

“It is the nature of an experience to have implications which go far beyond what is at first consciously noted in it. Bringing these connections or implications to consciousness enhances the meaning of the experience” (p. 225).

Science in the Course of Study

“Science, in short, signifies a realization of the logical implications of any knowledge” (p. 227).
I think my analogies to teaching music stand here as well, that as historically significant discoveries and inventions have become common knowledge of musicians, they may be applied in ever greater ways, they have more implications. 

“To the non-expert, however, this perfected form is a stumbling block. Just because the material is stated with reference to the furtherance of knowledge as an end in itself, its connections with the material of everyday life are hidden” (p. 227).

“From the standpoint of the learner scientific form is an ideal to be achieved, not a starting point from which to set out” (p. 227).

“The pupils learn a ‘science’ instead of learning the scientific way of treating the familiar material of ordinary experience. The method of the advanced student dominates college teaching; the approach of the college is transferred into the high school, and so down the line, with such omissions as may make the subject easier” (p. 228).

Translated into music education the above statements suggests that the primary aim at the elementary level is not a high level of technical ability, but rather an attitude of thinking about things musically.  A more authentic aim might be the expression and communication of musical ideas, of musical sketches.

“No one would have a knowledge of a machine who could enumerate all the materials entering into its structure, but only he who knew their uses and could tell why they are employed as they are. In like fashion one has a knowledge of mathematical conceptions only when he sees the problems in which they function and their specific utility in dealing with these problems. "Knowing" the definitions, rules, formulae, etc., is like knowing the names of parts of a machine without knowing what they do. In one case, as in the other, the meaning, or intellectual content, is what the element accomplishes in the system of which it is a member” (p. 231).

This is a recurrent theme for Dewey, and it makes me think that structurally the aims of my curriculum should foster the “three fairly typical stages in the growth… knowledge exists as the content of intelligent ability -- power to do… [is] deepened through communicated knowledge or information… [and finally is] worked over into rationally or logically organized material” (p. 192).  This is how Dewey answers the question “what is it to know?”  And is a guide for planning experiences and also I think for assessment.  Can the student do, communicate, and apply? Or something along those lines. 

“Experimental science means the possibility of using past experiences as the servant, not the master, of mind. It means that reason operates within experience, not beyond it, to give it an intelligent or reasonable quality. Science is experience becoming rational. The effect of science is thus to change men's idea of the nature and inherent possibilities of experience” (p. 233, emphasis mine).

An investigation here may be to recreate a particular sound or mood in an existing piece of music.

“For abstraction deliberately selects from the subject matter of former experiences that which is thought helpful in dealing with the new. It signifies conscious transfer of a meaning embedded in past experience for use in a new one. It is the very artery of intelligence, of the intentional rendering of one experience available for guidance of another” (p. 234).

Identifying a particular sound or mood from a piece would be like abstracting a tool which could be used in future compositions or analysis of other pieces.

“Aesthetic formulation reveals and enhances the meaning of experiences one already has; scientific formulation supplies one with tools for constructing new experiences with transformed meanings” (pp. 235-236).