Six Principles of Learning in School Jazz Programs

Jazz is complex music that even some professional musicians have difficulty playing. Yet somehow, jazz-band teachers create new jazz musicians out of youngsters who just a few years earlier knew nothing about music. What magic must they be using? In the spring of every year in Texas, Katy High School near Houston hosts a jazz festival that showcases junior- and high-school stage bands from around the state. I have attended several times and never failed to be astonished at the musicianship of these youngsters. Each year, there is one or more middle-school band. Even the professional musicians who critique each band’s performance are amazed that these 7^th and 8^th graders “play like adults!”

I never cease to be astonished at how accomplished these students are. I ask myself, “How did those kids learn such complex music?" The music played by the school stage bands is mostly the big-band music of Goodman, Basie, Kenton, Ellington, and others from the eras of swing and progressive/modern jazz of the 50s and 60s. They also play more modern jazz.

The emphasis on teaching reaches into the festival itself. Each band or ensemble performs for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of critique from professional jazz musicians (some of whom are music professors at universities). The critiques are shared with the audience, consisting mostly by family and friends. Are university professors ever asked to evaluate student performance in regular secondary school academic classes?

The festival includes small-group performances, which are also openly critiqued by professional musicians. Katy High puts great emphasis on music teaching and has built a magnificent Performing Arts Center, where the festival takes place. If Texas schools are hurting for funds, it certainly isn’t evident at Katy High School. I bet they get extra support from parents.

Jazz fans everywhere lament that jazz seems like a dying art form overwhelmed by the simpler music of country, rap, hip-hop, rock, and whatever it is that most kids listen to these days. But the professional “coaches” at the festival reassure the audience that “jazz is in good hands.” The future of jazz is bolstered by the fact that many school and university music programs teach jazz.

Learning to playing any musical instrument is hard, but playing jazz is the ultimate challenge. In jazz, you not only have to know the tunes, you also have to use the chord structure and complex rhythms to compose on the fly. A jazz professor from North Texas State University counseled in one of his critiques, “I know you have sheet music you have to follow, but when you hear something in your head, play it. That’s what we (jazz musicians) do — improvise!” My impression is that in regular academic classes, we don't do much to encourage the creative application of knowledge. In jazz, it is the whole point.

Another jazz professor during a critique session had two bands re-play a number from their performance. About one-third of the way through, he silently and casually walked through the rhythm section (piano, guitar, bass, and drums) and picked up the sheet music. The kids went right on playing without skipping a beat, because they had already memorized the sheet music. His point was they were using the sheet music as a crutch and not engaging with each other. Musicians talk to each other with their instruments, and listening is a big part of jazz improvisation. Students playing jazz need to be engaged with what each member of the rhythm section is doing, and, moreover, the rhythm section needs to interact with the saxes, trombones, and trumpets.

Hearing such wonderful music from children raised a nagging question. Why can’t kids master science, math, language arts, or social studies? Why does everybody struggle so mightily to get kids to pass simple-minded government-mandated tests in academic subjects? And then it hit me. Jazz-band teachers do the right things in teaching that other teachers need to do more of.

Two things are essential in teaching: the professionalism of the teacher and the motivation of the students. Most school jazz programs provide both. Sad to say, this is not so true of traditional curriculum.

Consider professionalism. It was clear that these band directors really knew what they were doing. Some had professional playing experience. Most, I am certain, were music majors in college. Think about what they have to do. They take young kids who know little about music beyond humming a tune and teach them music theory, teach them to read music, and teach them to play the different instruments in a band. And then they have to teach students how to compose on the fly. You can’t do that without being a real professional.

As for motivation, teaching and learning jazz involves clearly identifiable motivating features. Jazz-band teachers can’t take credit for some of these features, but creative teachers in other subject areas can think of similar motivating things they could be doing, based on what is involved in jazz.

First, there is passion. Jazz stirs the emotions, from blues to ballads to hot swing. If Benny Goodman’s music doesn’t make you want to jump up and dance, you better check your pulse to see if you are still alive. That brings up this point: jazz is fun! Learning chemistry, for example, is almost never considered by students to be fun — but teachers should be thinking of ways to make it fun. 

Some academic subjects do have intrinsic emotional impact. If, for example, the emotions of history students are not stirred by the Federalist Papers or the turmoil of the Civil War and the country’s other wars, then history is not being competently taught. If the beauty of the laws of physics and chemistry or the biology of life are not evident in the teaching of science, it is the teacher’s fault. 

Second is that jazz involves personal ownership. A jazz student intellectually owns his instrument. He or she owns the assigned space on the bandstand. One critiquing musician at the festival reminded students that they own that space, and if the sheet music stand or the audio at their station was not left just right from the previous band, they must fix it. It is now their space.

Jazz players demonstrate their learning in public. How well a student has learned jazz is public knowledge. What you know and can do is on public display all the time in practice sessions with fellow band members and, of course, in public performances. Unlike many traditional classrooms, there is no way to hide. Every student is exposed to embarrassment by mistakes. In a traditional classroom, the teacher is counseled not to embarrass students. It is actually against federal law for teachers to reveal grades on individual performance, even within the more private area of the classroom. The belief system in education these days is that you should not allow an unprepared and under-performing student to be embarrassed. What dingbat policymaker came up with that? I know; it comes from the perverse politically correct movement that ignores the reality that youngsters have to earn self-esteem.

Third is that jazz is ultimate constructivism. All teachers know about constructivism, which is the idea that students have to do something to show they have mastered the learning task. Student jazz bands and combos demonstrate personal accomplishment all the time in rehearsals and stage performances. But in many traditional courses, the main constructive thing students do is fill in circles on a Scantron test answer sheet. In science, “science fairs” encourage constructivism, but these are usually one-time events. Students need to be doing something every day to demonstrate their learning. In English, how often do students write and rewrite an essay, poem, or short story? Does anybody write book reports anymore? In social studies, how many students are required to explain and debate capitalism, socialism, fascism, democracy, and republican government? Do students in academic courses spend hours in deliberate practice and applying their learning comparable to what a jazz student spends in practice? 

Fourth, jazz is social. Jazz students perform as a group, either in a big band or combo. Recall the earlier example from the Katy festival, where the professionals had to emphasize this point by taking away the sheet music. Students had to learn to talk and listen to each other through their instruments. In traditional education, there is a movement called collaborative learning, the idea of learning teams, but many teachers don’t use this approach or do it without regard for the proven formalisms needed for success. Regardless of academic subject, students benefit when they learn how to help each other learn.

Part of the social aspect of jazz is competition. In many schools, many students don’t have to compete to get into a music class. But once in, they have to display learning in order to advance into more prestigious classes (think the “One-o-clock Lab Band" at the University of North Texas). In whatever music lab they are in, they have to compete for “first chair” in their instrument section. It is like competing to make the varsity and then the first team in sports. Where is the equivalent in science, social studies, or language arts?

The fifth point: Unlike a traditional education, where the goal is to meet minimum standards on state-mandated tests, jazz band directors make very clear their high expectations that everybody in each band class should become as proficient as they can. The whole point of their teaching is mastery and excellence, not just achieving minimum standards. They expect excellence, and they get it, as documented by the festival performances. Thanks to the unenlightened thinking of No Child Left Behind law, our public education has degenerated into “No Child Pushed Forward.”

And finally we consider the matter of reward. Somewhere in teacher college courses, pre-service teachers learn about “positive reinforcement,” and most teachers try to use these ideas to shape the learning achievements of their students. But jazz performance provides public reward, in the form of public applause. Is there anything comparable in the teaching of science, social studies, or language arts? Is publishing (inflated) Honor Roll lists in the newspaper the best we can do?

So in a nutshell, the reason jazz students do so well is because their learning environment is built around six motivating factors:

1. Passion

2. Personal ownership and accountability

3. Constructivism

4. Social interaction, both collaborative and competitive

5. High expectations

6. Reward

What I take home from attended these school-band performances is a renewed feeling that, outside of jazz music programs, our schools are letting our children down. These young musicians prove that when motivated and challenged, they can do astonishing things. The printed program for the festival concluded with the comment, “The future belongs to those who are able to capture their creative intelligence. Jazz music education and performance develop the ability to create and produce the ideas that are individually unique.” Why can’t the rest of education do that?

Reference: Klemm, W. R. 2017. The Learning Skills cycle. A Way to Rethink Education Reform. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Knowing What You Know. How It Matters

Whoever said "what you don't know can't hurt you" needs to rethink the position. Knowing what you don't know keeps you from learning what you need to know or would benefit from if you did know it. Likewise, there is the foolish notion, "Ignorance is bliss." We teach these mindless ideas to our children and then wonder why so many don't like school.

Anyway, what I really want to explore here is the notion of thinking about thinking. Scholars call this metacognition. But, it really is a simple idea that we all experience every day to various degrees. Suppose you look up a phone number in the phone book. You have to quiz yourself to see if you remember it well enough to dial it. That is, you have to think about what you know and if you know enough to complete the task.

These things are often done consciously, and your conscious mind has to allocate enough effort and thinking resources to perform the task. In this particular case, we are talking about working memory. You test yourself to see if you still hold all the phone number digits in working memory long enough to dial them without error.

The principle applies more generally to other and more complex tasks. Basically, humans use memory awareness to determine if they have enough relevant knowledge before they act. Obviously, such awareness improves the appropriateness and quality of the act. This reminds me to tell you about my new book coming out on April 8, Mental Biology,[1] in which I explore how the brain creates awareness and what consciousness is and what it does. In my view, consciousness does many things, but this ability to realize what you know and don't know provides the enormous advantage of helping you know if you know enough and decide what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Notably, there are many scientists now arguing that consciousness does not do anything. Everything we do, they claim, is driven by genes and unconscious programming. To them, consciousness is just the brain's TV screen to show you some of what it is doing. These people will hate my book.

Metacognition even occurs in some higher animals, and there are some interesting animal experiments on metacognition. For example, one study[2] showed that monkeys can track what they are holding in working memory. In the test, food was hidden in one of four opaque tubes. On half the trials monkeys watched the experimenter bait the tube, so that they had to know if they remembered which tube had the food. On the other half of trials, monkeys did not get to see where food was placed. After a short delay, the monkeys were given a chance to pick a tube to get a food reward, and on uninformed trials the monkeys peeked into the end of each tube to see which one had the food. That is, they knew they didn't know which tube was baited, so instead of guessing they looked into each tube before acting. When monkeys saw the baiting, they immediately went to the right tube without peeking. That is they knew where the food was and they knew that they knew.

The food was a reward, and as we all know positive reinforcement typically motivates us and drives behavior. We do things if there is some benefit to doing it. This leads me to consider another study[3] that explored the role of human consciousness in evaluating rewards and their degree of attainability. It is no surprise that high value rewards improve mental performance, and this works whether you assess the value consciously or unconsciously (as in conditioned reflexes, for example). How motivating high rewards are depends on what we know about their attainability. If we know we don't know enough to earn the reward, we may not make the effort needed. If we think the reward is unattainable, we won't even try.

The study asked the question of whether this principle applies to unconscious processing. In other words, can unconscious mind integrate reward contingencies with attainability estimates? In the experiment, each trial included showing volunteers a picture of either a penny or a 50 cent coin which would serve as a reward if they performed a subsequent working memory task correctly. But sometimes subjects were informed before a trial that the reward would not be obtainable on that trial, even if they performed the memory recall correctly. In each trial the coin was shown either for 17 msecs, in which case its value could not be perceived consciously, or for 300 msecs, which was long enough to register consciously. So, across trials, the subjects had to integrate reward value with attainability and do so either under conscious or unconscious conditions.

Results showed that efficient memory recall resulted when the trial showed the reward long enough for conscious registration and when the high reward was attainable. And of course, performance was better for the 50 cent piece. Amazingly, even in the unconscious condition, high rewards improved performance even when they were designated in advance as unattainable. In other words, unconscious mind could not integrate reward value and attainability. Thus, it seems that consciousness uniquely controls the allocation of neural resources needed to integrate these two kinds of information. Oh, and by the way, don't experiments like this establish that consciousness really does something, that it is more than the mind's TV screen?

A third line of research has to do with psychotherapy. Here, the whole idea is to think about what you are thinking and feeling and substituting that with more mentally healthy thought. Being aware of memories is crucial to this process. Recalling bad memories causes a disturbing experience to fester, but also makes them accessible to revision. I have discussed in earlier columns some new approaches to treatment of PTSD based on the reconsolidation of memories that occurs when you recall a memory. The whole business about consolidation is explained in my recent book, Memory Power 101[4].

Here, I want to explore the value of being aware of the associations that are helpful and those that are not in terms of dealing such things as addictions, phobias, and even PTSD. For example, anybody in the throes of withdrawal from cigarette smoking knows how disturbing it can be to see or think about ashtrays or other reminders. A typical response is to try and inhibit the reminders of the former pleasure. But avoiding such reminders is often impractical.

In my book, Blame Game, I explore the importance of being more aware of what you are thinking and doing so that when change is needed you can reprogram your brain effectively. It is difficult to change bad habits or behavior because they derive from well-entrenched memory. The remedy is to replace this memory with a better new habit or behavior. And the way to do that is to make the substitute memory much stronger than one you want to replace. You can make such new memories stronger, the way you would any memory.[5] This is basically the idea of substituting a bad memory with a good one, wherein the good one has been made especially robust. My memory book shows multiple ways to strengthen any memory, and this approach can be especially helpful to make a good substitute memory that will substitute and displace a bad memory. In general, the approach is to:

1. Think often about the substitute memory and use traditional memory enhancement techniques to strengthen it.

2. Rehearse the substitute memory in different situations and places.

3. Space rehearsal of the substitute memory out over time, both within a therapy session or new learning situation and self-test for recall of the substitute memory several separated times.

So, hopefully the general point is made. Knowing what you know and don't know is really important. Such self-knowledge is necessary to make you more competent–even to make yourself a better person. And remember, self-knowledge resides in memory. As with all memory, it can be strong or weak, true or false, recalled or forgotten, useful or harmful. You decide.

---

[1] Klemm, W. R. 2014. Mental biology. The new science of how brain and mind relate. Prometheus. In press.

[2]Hampton, R. R. et al. 2004. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) discriminate between knowing and not knowing and collect information as needed before acting. Animal Cognition. Doi: 10.1007/s10071-004-0215-1

[3] Zedelisu, C. M. et al. 2012. When unconscious rewards boost cognitive task performance inefficiently: the role of consciousness in integrating value and attainability information. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00219

[4] Klemm, W. R. 2012. Memory Power 101. Skyhorse Publishing.

[5] Klemm, W. R. 2008. Blame Game. How To Win It. Benecton Press.

Getting Out of a Rut

Why is it so hard to change behavior, or attitudes, or personality? I’ll tell you why. These things are habits. Habits are well learned and they persist from mindlessness.

Our behavior, attitudes, and personality are predisposed by genetics but also ingrained by repeating and reinforcing them over long periods. Thus, the older you get the more inflexible you get. But I see teenagers stuck in ruts too, and they are less likely to have the fronto-parietal cortex executive control to impose changes on themselves.

Regardless of age, being in a rut comes from learning to the point of creating a habit. Habits are really hard to change. Wendy Wood, in her review of the recent book, The Power of Habit, points out that contextual cues trigger habitual behavior. In other words, when you are in a rut, you have mindlessly outsourced your brain’s executive control to these cues. You run on auto-pilot. It is easier to respond to such cues reflexively than think about it and do something else.

Cures for reforming habits require attention to the triggering cues as the core of self-control strategies. When an unwanted response is activated from memory, it needs to be inhibited. Bad habits, unlike responses to temptations, are controlled most effectively through spontaneous introspective awareness and executive control (“Why am I doing this?”…“I don’t want to be doing this”… “don’t do it”… “am I backsliding?”) Vigilant self-awareness and monitoring apparently do not change the strength of the habit memory but are effective because they enhance executive control processes. Wood suggests that the most promising way to break a habit is to “disrupting habit cues so that the old response is not brought to mind and new habits can be learned.”

Some examples of cue awareness and disruption include:

1.    If you over-eat, use smaller plates or put smaller helpings on the plate.

2.    If you can’t focus and your mind wanders, notice distractions for what they are. Practice meditation.

3.    If you are hyper-critical or argumentative, recognize the instant you disagree.

4.    If you are lazy, be aware of your environment when you aren’t doing anything.

5.    If you are boastful, notice the situation that makes you want to boast.

If you want to get out of a rut, another important aid is to substitute a new and more desirable habit. I learned this years ago when I tried to quit smoking. I succeeded many times—in other words, I failed to really quit. Only when I decided to take up jogging and forced myself to do it persistently, was I able to substitute the positive reinforcement of nicotine with the positive reinforcement of the endorphins that are released during jogging.

To substitute a better habit, you must pick something that is likewise reinforcing and repeat it enough for it to become a habit. It also helps to simultaneously remove the cues that trigger the old bad habit. For example, when I finally quit smoking, I made myself go jog when I had a strong urge to smoke. Even though I had an urge to smoke many times a day yet only jogged once daily, this single substitution act seemed sufficiently helpful.

Some examples of habit substitution include:

1.    If you eat more meat than you want, find tasty vegetarian menus.

2.    If you gossip, restrict all gossip to praise talk.

3.    If you procrastinate, create a habit of doing the hard things first.

4.    If you whine, make yourself provide positive interpretations.

5.    If you associate with people who are dragging you down, spend more time with new associates who can lift you up.

Finally, we have to stop making excuses. Our usual attempts to blame things on “bad genes,” are misleading. In recent years, scientists have discovered that most of our DNA does not have a coding function. They used to call it “junk” DNA, presumably just carried along as useless sludge in the stream of evolution. Now they discover that “junk DNA” actually controls the expression of the coding genes. New discoveries in the field of “epigenetics” are showing that what we think and do influence if and when many of our coding genes are expressed.

Sources:

Klemm, W. R. (2008) Blame Game. How to Win It. Bryan, Tx: Benecton Press.

Quinn, J. M., Pascoe, A., Wood, Wendy, and Neal, D. T. (2010) Can’t control yourself? Monitor those bad habits. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 36(4); 499-511 doi: 10.1177/0146167209360665

Wood, Wendy (2013) On ruts and getting out of them. Science. 336: 980-981

What All Teachers Should Learn from Jazz-band Teachers

I just came back from a jazz festival at Katy High School in Texas that show-cased student stage bands from ten schools mostly near Houston, but some as far away as Beaumont and Brownsville (the latter band stole the show).

The festival was also a teaching event, with each band or ensemble performing for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of critique from six professional jazz musicians (two of whom were music professors at universities). The critiques were shared with the small audience consisting almost exclusively of family and friends, even though this festival was advertised for the general public. Performances were staggered so that if you didn’t want to hear a critique you could go hear a student combo and vice versa. The facilities were magnificent, highlighted by the presence of a natatorium, impressive athletic fields and stadium, and a Performing Arts Center where the festival took place. If Texas schools are hurting for funds, it certainly wasn’t evident at Katy High School.

I was astonished at how accomplished these students were. I asked myself, “How did those kids learn such complex music? The music played was mostly the big-band music of Goodman, Basie, Kenton, Ellington, and others from the eras of swing and “progressive/modern jazz of the 50s and 60s.” 

Jazz is sophisticated stuff. Yet these 16 to 24 kids in each band could do what a lot of adult musicians cannot do. One band was a middle-school band, and the professional musicians who critiqued each band’s performance were amazed that these 7^th and 8^th graders “played like adults!” Jazz fans everywhere lament that jazz seems like a dying art form overwhelmed by the simpler music of country, rap, hip-hop, and whatever it is that most kids listen to these days. But the professional “coaches” at the festival reassured the audience that “jazz is in good hands.” Fortunately, many school and university music programs teach jazz.

Learning to playing any musical instrument is hard, but playing jazz is the ultimate challenge. In jazz you not only have to know the tunes, you have to use the chord structure and complex rhythms to compose on the fly. A jazz professor from the University of North Texas counseled in one of his critiques, “I know you have sheet music you have to follow, but when you hear something in your head, play it. That’s what we (jazz musicians) do – improvise!”

Another jazz professor, during a critique session had two bands re-play a number from their performance. About one third of the way through, he silently and casually walked through the rhythm section (piano, guitar, bass, and drums) and picked up the sheet music. The kids went right on playing without skipping a beat, because they had already memorized the sheet music. His point was they were using the sheet music as a crutch and not engaging with each other. Musicians talk to each other with their instruments, and listening is a big part of jazz improvisation. Students needed to be engaged with what each member of the rhythm section was doing, and, moreover, the rhythmic section needed to interact with the saxes, trombones, and trumpets.

Hearing such wonderful music from children raised a nagging question. Why can’t kids master complicated science, math, language arts, or social studies? Why does everybody struggle so mightily to get kids to pass simple-minded government-mandated tests in academic subjects?

And then it hit me. Jazz-band teachers do the right things in teaching that other teachers need to learn how to do.Two things are essential in teaching, the professionalism of the teacher and the motivation of the students. 

Most school jazz programs provide both. Sad to say, this is not so true of traditional curriculum.

Consider professionalism. It was clear that these band directors really knew what they were doing. Some had professional playing experience. Most, I am certain, were music majors in college. Think about what they have to do. They take young kids who know little about music beyond humming a tune and teach them music theory, teach them to read music, and teach them to play the different instruments in a band. And then they have to teach students how to compose on the fly. You can’t do that without being a real professional.

As for motivation, teaching and learning jazz involves clearly identifiable motivating features. Jazz-band teachers can’t take credit for some of these features, but creative teachers in other subject areas can think of similar motivating things they could be doing, based on what is involved in jazz.

First, there is PASSION. Jazz stirs the emotions, from blues to ballads to hot swing. If Benny Goodman’s music doesn’t make you want to jump up and dance, you better check your pulse to see if you are still alive. That brings up this point: jazz is FUN! Learning chemistry, for example, is almost never considered by students to be fun —but teachers should be thinking of ways to make it fun.

Some academic subjects do have intrinsic emotional impact. If, for example, the emotions of history students are not stirred by the Federalist Papers, or the turmoil of the Civil War and the country’s other wars, then history is not being competently taught. If the beauty of the laws of physics and chemistry or the biology of life are not evident in the teaching of science, it is the teacher’s fault. 

Second is that jazz is PERSONAL. A jazz student intellectually owns his instrument. He or she owns the assigned space on the bandstand. One critiquing musician at the festival reminded students they own that space and if the sheet music stand or the audio at their station was not left just right from the previous band, they must fix it. It is now their space.

How well a student has learned jazz is public knowledge. They can’t hide. What you know and can do is on public display, all the time in practice sessions with fellow band members and, of course, in public performances. In marked contrast, it is against the law for teachers in other subject areas to reveal grades on individual performance, even within the more private area of the classroom. The belief system in education these days is that you should not allow an unprepared and under-performing student to be embarrassed. What dingbat policy maker came up with that? I know; it comes from the perverse politically correct movement that ignores the reality that self-esteem needs to be earned.

Third is that jazz is ultimate CONSTRUCTIVISM. All teachers know about constructivism, which is the idea that students have to do something to show they have mastered the learning task. Student jazz bands and combos demonstrate personal accomplishment all the time in rehearsals and stage performances. But in many traditional courses, the main constructive thing students do is fill in circles on a Scantron test answer sheet. In science, “science fairs” encourage constructivism, but these are usually one-time events. Students need to be doing something every day to demonstrate their learning. In English, how often to students write and re-write an essay, poem, or short story? Does anybody write book reports anymore? Do students  spend hours of writing and editing comparable to what a jazz student spends in practice? In social studies, how many students are required to explain and debate capitalism, socialism, fascism, democracy, and republican government? 

Fourth, jazz is SOCIAL Jazz students perform as a group, either in a big band or combo. Recall the earlier example from the festival where the professionals had to emphasize this point by taking away the sheet music. Students had to learn to talk and listen to each other through their instruments. In traditional education, there is a movement called collaborative learning,the idea of learning teams, but many teachers don’t use this approach or do it without regard to the proven formalisms needed for success. Regardless of academic subject, students benefit when they learn how to help each other learn.

Part of the social aspect off jazz is competition. In many schools, many students don’t have to compete to get into a music class. But once in, they have to display learning in order to advance into more prestigious classes (think the “One O'Clock Lab Band” band at the University of North Texas). In whatever music lab they are in, they have to compete for “first chair” in their instrument section. It is like competing to make the varsity and then the first team in sports. Where is the equivalent in science, social studies, or language arts?

Unlike traditional education, where the goal is to meet minimum standards on state-mandated tests, jazz band directors make very clear their HIGH EXPECTATIONS that everybody in each band class should become as proficient as they can. The whole point of their teaching is mastery and excellence. They expect excellence and they get it, as witnessed by festival performances such as I saw. Thanks to the unenlightened thinking of No Child Left Behind law, our public education has degenerated into “No Child Pushed Forward.”

And finally, consider the matter of REWARD. Somewhere in the college courses of teachers they learned about “positive reinforcement,” and most teachers try to use these ideas to shape the learning achievements of their students. But jazz performance provides public reward, in the form of public applause. Is there anything comparable in the teaching of science, social studies, or language arts? Is publishing (inflated) Honor Roll lists in the newspaper the best we can do?

So in a nutshell, the reason jazz students do so well is because their learning environment is built around:

• Passion
• Personal ownership and accountability
• Constructivism
• Social interaction
• High Expectations
• Reward

What I took home from this experience is a renewed feeling that outside of jazz music programs our schools are letting our children down. These young musicians prove that when motivated, challenged, and taught professionally, they can do astonishing things. The printed program for the festival concluded with the comment, “The future belongs to those who are able to capture their creative intelligence. Jazz music education and performance develop the ability to create and produce the ideas that are individually unique.” 

Why doesn’t the rest of education do that?


This festival experience leads me to suggest a "Ten Commandments for Better Teaching:"



Ten Commandments for Better Teaching


1.  Love your students as yourself.
2. Be professional. Know the stuff you teach.
3. Instill passion for the content - especially, make knowing fun.
4. Make learning personal. Show students how to own their learning.
5. Take away the hiding places of unprepared and under-performing students. Let them embarass themselves.
6. Show students they have to earn self-esteem. You can't give it to them. Praise success and do so publicly when it is earned.
7. Require students to do things that show they have mastered what you are trying to teach.
8. Give students opportunities to "strut their stuff" in public, in and out of the class.
9. Help students learn how to work with others as a team.
10. Expect excellence. Do not teach to the lowest common denominator.

Remembering the Bad Along With the Good

In my Sept. 15, blog I surveyed an experiment that showed people learning more from their successes than from their failures. In so doing, I raised the possibility that the learning gain was promoted by the release of the "reward transmitter," dopamine. Now I find a new research report on the effect of dopamine on the long-term storage of bad memories. The process studied was the long-term memory of fear and pain. Rats were trained to remember a strong foot shock, which lasted at least 14 days. Injecting a dopamine blocker into the hippocampus erased the long-term memory if given 12 hours after the original foot-shock experience. This suggests that the normal release of dopamine can promote memory, which is not surprising since dopamine promotes the formation of proteins used in synaptic junctions of neurons.

However, foot shock is certainly not rewarding and probably does not release dopamine. But the end of the foot shock pain is a rewarding relief. Also, rewarding things do happen even to rats after a nasty foot shock (like sex with mates, eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.). The ongoing release of dopamine in the course of just living may help rats form lasting memories, regardless of the nature of memory. This raises questions that scientists have not studied yet. But it may be that dopamine helps us remember both the good and the bad. And maybe is one reason why bad memories are hard to erase.

Source: Rossato, J. et al. 2009. Dopamine controls persistence of long-term memory storage. Science. 325: 1017-1020.

Training Working Memory May Be Rewarding

Biological reward comes from the release of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. Performing working memory tasks promotes dopamine release. In the study of human subjects by Fiona McNab and colleagues in Stockholm, human males (age 20-28) were trained on working memory tasks with a difficulty level close to their individual capacity limit for 35 minutes per day for 5 weeks. After such training, all subjects showed increased working memory capacity. Functional MRI scans also showed that the memory training increased the cerebral cortex density of dopamine D1 receptors, the receptor subtype that mediates feelings of euphoria and reward.

Students who make good grades feel good about their success. Likewise, people who are "life-long learners" have discovered that learning lots of new things makes them feel good. Though this present study did not rigorously test the idea, it is possible that learning how to improve your working memory capacity can also make you feel good.

Source: McNab, F. et al. 2009. Changes in cortical dopamine D1 receptor binding associated with cognitive training. Science. 323: 800-802.