Is it Brainwashing or Education?

There has been discouraging news from Texas this week. The Texas Board of Education has voted 10-5 (along party lines) to approve conservative curriculum changes across the state. The resolution will impact history, economics, and social studies curricula. Surprisingly, the science curriculum was left untouched--luckily no creationist theories will be 'taught' to Texas children in the public schools. The changes to curricula will be largely to dictate conservative political ideals upon students.

The curriculum change will impact millions of Texas students, but the scope of change could possibly become a National issue. Texas, due to its size, is one of the largest buyers from textbook companies. Publishers will be forced to produce textbooks to meet the Texas curriculum. Depending on the publisher, this demand for such specialized textbooks could impact their entire production. Schools all across America may be forced to adopt the Texas conservative curriculum without choice.

The Texas Board of Education is made up of "lawyers, a dentist and a weekly newspaper publisher." No educators or education reform professionals have voted on the reform. The changes, from what I can tell, are not grounded in educational theory and are not keyed to improving student understanding. The changes, in my opinion, are simply to brainwash and implement political partisanship instead of political choice.

Read these various articles and decide for yourself:

From the Huffington Post

From the New York Times

From the Dallas Morning News

"Classical" Punishment

After a long hiatus, I am back to the blog!

I recently found this article (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2010/03/04/classical-music-punishment.html?ref=rss#ixzz0hWr49Mrx) that is a MUST read for all educators, not just music educators. The article explains one school administrator's decision to use classical music as a means of punishment. Apparently, the headmaster decided to pipe "classical" music into the detention hall. He reports that the number of infractions that violate school rules "[has] dropped by about 60 percent since he began the special detentions."

The reporter likens this discouraging practice to the therapy given to the protagonist, Alex, in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Some twisted musical/violence therapy makes Alex hate his beloved Beethoven much in the same subliminal way piping "classical" music into the detention hall makes students hate "classical" music.

A comment was posted about the article that read, "Mozart is good for the truants, certainly better than Rap, which is probably all they hear and is what probably incites them to cause trouble."

This practice is carving new voids between "school music" and "out-of-school music" as we know them. Students will begin to associate "classical" music with punishment and high society, the Man, authority, and they will have no interest (beyond what they do now) to learn about the great Western Canon.

The reporter references Brendan O'Neill's article Weaponizing Mozart. (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/weoponizing-mozart)