A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. "We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world." Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made — all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
The reader is confronted with a silly story about a musician waking from a nightmare. The story is meant to engage the reader by describing the state of math education in this peculiar manner, by analogy with music education (which does not operate as described).
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-18 6:20
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.
The author is implying that the notation and standard terminology of math is analogous to the notation and terminology of music. The reader is meant to begin thinking that the doing of math is akin to the doing of music, and that just as music is less enjoyable if the learning involves no actual sound of music, math is less enjoyable if the learning involves no actual math which somehow exists independent of the notation and terminology as much as does the music in our ears. Therefore, the author is claiming that learning notation and standard terminology in general is not enjoyable, and for math is akin to studying music without hearing any actual sound. The author is claiming that notation and terminology of math is not math and does not foster desire to learn math. The nonsensical implication is that somehow the ideas of math are better learned without reference to the standard language by which we communicate ideas of math, because doing math is like playing music.
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Anonymous2008-07-18 6:28
As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language — to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: "Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way."
The author continues to imply that adherence to the standard notation of math is overly strict and unenjoyable, and is empty of actual "music" (math).
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-18 6:30
In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. "I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs."
The math-as-music idea is further described, implying that boring math skills are taught too early. The reference to humming and silly songs is the author’s way of saying that "real" (non-standard notational and non-computational skill) math is something that children would naturally do and desire to do.