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We’re Teaching Music (And Language) To Kids All Wrong
Education & Catastrophe 73
John Tan
October 01, 2023
Image Credit: Kanioko for The New York Times
Hey y’all! This is John.
This newsletter is about human flourishing. Ostensibly it’s about better parenting and fixing education, but ultimately what I really care about is helping young people flourish.
In this issue:
Why children don’t stick with music
Parallels between learning music and learning a language
Rethinking how we teach music and language from ground up
Let’s dive in!
In an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week, Grammy-nominated drummer Sammy Miller argued that children don’t stick with music after picking up an instrument because the way music is taught is far too rigid. Children lack the motivation to keep at it when lessons are taught to the test.
Educators lament that, as with other courses, band can frequently fall prey to “teaching to the test” — in this case, teaching to the holiday concert. A class that by definition is meant to be a creative endeavor winds up emphasizing rigid reading and rote memorization, in service of a single performance.
Regular readers of this newsletter know how I feel about standardised tests. I can’t say I’m surprised even an artistic pursuit like music is taught to the test. I’ve seen this play out with coding. Years ago when I started Saturday Kids, the goal was to help kids discover the joy of learning and give them an outlet for creative expression. As soon as other providers got on the bandwagon, coding became another thing to DSA (Direct School Admissions) into your secondary school of choice with, which necessarily means offering coding 101 to 109 to show admissions officers technical achievements.
It’s often been repeated that “music is a language,” yet we’re reluctant to teach it that way. When we learn a language, we don’t simply memorize phrases or spend all day reading — we practice the language together, sharing, speaking, stumbling but ultimately finding ways to connect.
Miller went on to explain how music should be taught the same way language is taught, not as a chore but as a common pursuit, a way of building community. As somebody who has been learning Japanese for the last few years, I can attest to the fact that using the language in context (ordering in a restaurant, making small talk at a bar etc.) is a much more effective and enjoyable way of learning language than memorising phrases and words. Learning languages this way should not be limited to beginners or foreign language learners. Why shouldn’t English and English Language Arts be taught this way as well?
English language is changing both as a subject and as a mode of communication. To learn English is to learn about 21st century communication practices. In order to be an effective communicator in the world today, students need to be adaptable, changeable, curious and resilient.
English language learning cannot just be about rules and routines. It must create a space for students to think for themselves, to negotiate meaning collaboratively, to learn through trial and error. This is something that's often unfortunately forgotten in many classrooms.
Most important, we need to let kids be terrible. In fact, we should encourage it. They’ll be plenty terrible on their own — at first. But too often kids associate music in school with a difficult undertaking they can’t hope to master, which leads them to give up. Music does not have to be, and in fact, shouldn’t be, about the pursuit of perfection. And the great musicians have plenty of lessons to teach students about the usefulness of failure.
As with music, the same thing is happening with English. Teachers often think that there's not enough time to teach all the content and skills they need to teach, so they teach in order to efficiently get across the ideas they think students need to master very quickly. They don't want to create a space where students make mistakes, because that cuts back on efficiency. Efficiency and effectiveness, however, are not synonymous with each other. Just because something teachers do in the classroom is efficient does not mean it is effective in making students better learners and effective communicators.
Language skills must be integrated and not taught separately. We have to teach language in authentic contexts, social contexts. Students must learn through dialogue and collaboration because this is the way we negotiate meaning and develop language socially.
This is what the future of language learning should look like:
Active Participation
Learning should follow socially relevant practices in which students constantly participate in online conversations.
Language Rich Environment
Learning should happen in a space in which language is present and can emerge.
Discovery and Exploration
Learning designed to get students to discover things for themselves rather than the teacher telling them what they should know.
Knowledge Making
Learning that encourages students to make knowledge for themselves because the knowledge that they make for themselves is going to be the knowledge that they remember in the long term.
Authentic Tasks
Learning that focuses on tasks students can invest in and believe in.
Meaningful Outcomes
Learning tasks with outcomes that are meaningful and personally relevant to students.
Designing lessons to meet all of the above is a lot to expect of teachers, many of whom are overworked and time-poor. It is because of this that Doyobi is designed to be used in the classroom to help learners make meaning in authentic contexts. Doyobi facilitators deliver the sessions online so teachers don’t have to do any lesson prep, and are able to observe and support students during Doyobi sessions.
Many teachers have told us how much more engaged their students are during Doyobi sessions compared to regular English classes, and how they have seen students become more confident with the English language. Students themselves have told us how much they enjoy Doyobi (hear it in their own voices).
In my ten years in the teaching service, Doyobi is the first time I’ve seen students come early for English remedial.
With the promise Doyobi is showing in English classes in public schools in Singapore, we are starting to work with international schools to help their EAL (English as Additional Language) learners become more proficient in English.
If you think Doyobi can benefit your EL or EAL learners, please get in touch via [email protected].
We also teach language through immersion, so let’s focus on creating an immersive experience in the language of music. Kids learn best when they’re part of communities filled with people of all skill levels for them to play along with, listen to music with, mess up with and just be silly with.
In a world where far too many kids (and adults) feel isolated and alienated, raising a generation of students with the tools to express themselves musically, and relate to others through that shared language, has obvious dividends.