Singing in the Forest

A Praise Chorus - Jimmy Eat World (mp3)
How Can I Keep from Singing? - Enya (mp3)

Nancy Flanagan taught music for 30 years. She’s a successful consultant to schools. Her opinion deserves to be in Education Week, and mine is on a silly little music blog. Based on her post, Ms. Flanagan and I have at least one thing in common: neither of us are very fond of American Idol. From there, unfortunately, our opinions begin to diverge.

She’s a music teacher; I’m a music listener. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.

Some of the things she writes in "Music Teacher Hates American Idol" are painfully misleading. Much of what she says is true without being honest, or honest without being real. Something is missing in there, and it's either because she wears earplugs or because she wants a different reality than the one in which the entirity of humanity has existed since the dawn of man- and womankind.

Everyone who can speak can sing. Really. Singing is just extended, rhythmic speech.

True statement. But what is not true -- and this is important to most people with ears -- is that not everyone can sing well.

Does this mean people should be discouraged from singing? Not necessarily. Bad singing is why God invented showers and hard-top automobiles, so that bad singers like myself, who love to sing and love to do it loudly, can express ourselves musically without causing irreparable harm to those we love.

Ms. Flanagan is like most idealists. They refuse to see the forest for their own super-special tree of expertise.

Speaking of, if a tone-deaf person sings in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a bad sound?

What bothers me, as a music teacher, is that children watch American Idol, and have now developed this idea that singing is something that should be attempted only by the "talented." Children see judging singers as an amusing spectator activity, and making fun of imperfect singers as perfectly OK. Hilarious and justified, in fact: anyone who dares to sing in front of a camera deserves our scrutiny and scorn.

Poppycock, I say. This program is 10 years old. It has become one of the most-viewed programs in the history of television. Anyone who waits in that line, puts their mug in front of those cameras and tries out has no real excuse. I’ve only watched four, maybe five episodes in a decade, but I still know the name William Hung.

American Idol is not a classroom or an obligation; it is a voluntary talent show. (Her classes, on the other hand, were probably required.) Further, not once in my life or in the experiences of my children has watching this show created in us a fear of singing anymore than listening to Barbara Streisand or The Three Tenors, or anymore than watching Heathers made me scared of high school.

Seriously, what’s her point? Does she even like recorded music, or does the very act of deciding that some musicians are worthy of recording while others are not risk giving our precious flowers the impression that one kind of expression is better than another? Does she hate Mozart and Beethoven for taking all the good gigs away from the rest of the composing world? Does she despise Frank Sinatra for suggesting that you had to have oily hair and a slick personality to make it as a singer? Just how far down this ridiculous and slippery slope does she want to go?

Further, if we're really looking for all the ways something on TV can be translated as unhealthy for our children, I would like to think we'd worry more about the abuse of issues like sexuality before we attacked the crime of Vocal Prejudice.

If there is someone in your past who suggested that your singing voice is substandard, that person has done you harm, making you self-conscious about your primary expressive instrument... Nobody can tell you that you can't sing.

Can't sing? Agreed. No one should say tell you that. Everyone should be entitled to express themselves in such a fashion. Can't sing well? Yeah, that one is fair game.

And Ms. Flanigan, if you think American Idol has ruined our humanity and our ability to know about the power of singing, please explain this video (I get misty every single time I watch it):



One day, when advocates and idealists grasp the unfortunate fact that life isn't a Disney movie and live with the rest of us in the real world, they might actually make a positive impact.

One Thing If You're Lucky

The One Thing - INXS (mp3)
Best Days - Graham Colton (mp3)

This summer I breezed my way through the latest Malcolm Gladwell infotainment, Outliers. If you haven't read a Gladwell book -- The Tipping Point, Blink, or this one -- I highly recommend you give one a try. Although I think they're overrated as tools of learning, they earn their keep on making what might otherwise be a little dry excessively readable and sticky.

Gladwell is the master of anecdote. He uses more person-specific stories than Reagan and Clinton used in their State Of The Union speeches. Once in a while he even throws a small grain of research at you.

His latest, which is yet again wildly successful, is perhaps his most ingenious. The Tipping Point was probably his most studious and, for me at least, the most compelling, but what it missed was a human connection. It missed the What does this mean for ME? vibe.

But Blink and Outliers are both crafted to serve as an excuse for the masses. Each book absolves us of particular weaknesses and shortcomings.

Blink explains why we're so judgmental and actually suggests that our snap judgments have evolutionary significance and are, more often than not, accurate. In other words, it tries to make us feel better about trusting our instincts, because who needs books and education and wisdom, and who has the time to ponder or consider or reflect? At its extreme, it also even provides us an unintended excuse for our own prejudices and biases. (No, Gladwell doesn't remotely condone this, but it doesn't matter, because when you write for the masses, you're writing for many people happy to draw conclusions you didn't intend.)

Outliers, on the other hand, basically lays out a soothing balm for the bungled and the botched, as Nietsche called us. We're not bungled and botched because we're losers, Gladwell asserts, but rather because we just weren't in the right place at the right time. His point has plenty of merit, but I wonder if the book is so popular because it helps let us off the hook a little.

One of Gladwell's key assertions is that, in order to gain mastery in something, one must have practiced or worked on it for more than 10,000 hours. Success requires more than just this investment of time, but without it, mastery at the highest levels is almost impossible.

So I asked myself, what talents or hobbies or gifts in my life can I even come close to saying, "I've spent 10,000 hours practicing/doing that"? The results are pretty darn limited.\

• Reading. I'm quite certain I've spent 10,000 hours of my life reading high-end articles, novels, books.
• Watching TV or movies. Hell, I might have piled up 10,000 hours of each by now. This... troubles me a little, although what's the point in letting it trouble me now? Might as well shoot for 20,000!
• Writing. Seven or eight journals filled front to back. Two very under-the-radar blogs before this one, each lasting well over a year, with things being posted three or four times a week. Creative writing classes throughout college. 
• Poker. I started playing poker online for money -- very small stakes, trust me -- after I read the book Positively Fifth Street back in early 2004. Although I'm nowhere close to 10,000 hours, I'm probably past the 2,000-hour mark. And, as most experts will tell you, playing poker online might have some flaws, but it also accellerates your learning curve.

I'm not aware of any kick-ass professions that center around just reading -- especially for readers who are as slow and plodding with it as I can be -- and critics of all sorts are losing their newspaper jobs left and right, so watching movies and TV shows ain't gonna rocket me into the Superior category.

As for writing, I'm workin' on it. I've found me this delectable little blog thing to feed my dependence. I keep plugging slowly but surely away on something that wants terribly to be a novel if I can nurture it properly. And I write a ton for my actual job, although I don't think anyone's ever going to refer to me as "The Tiger Woods of Independent School Marketing."

So that leaves poker.

I'm pretty good. In fact, when I'm around people who won't take it as penis-dangling bravado, I'll even admit to thinking I could be very good. As you read this, I'm taking the biggest and boldest step yet to find out whether I might be right or totally fooling myself. I'm in Tunica, playing in a series of tournaments known as the World Poker Open.

The rub -- and anyone who loves Shakespeare knows there's always a rub -- is that it's damned expensive to find out how good you are at poker. Yet I chafe at spending more than $15 on a nice meal. In fact, I picture sitting at a table with $300 in chips, hearing someone say "I'm all in," and vomiting all over everything at the thought that I could lose all of that money in mere seconds. ("$300 is, like, two years' worth of music purchases!! And it could all go away by calling!")

So wish me luck. Yes, poker is about skill AND luck, and great players need plenty of both. Either way, one mere weekend of winning or losing more money than I'm used to would only be the start if I wanted to be really really good. Either way, I have no illusions I'll be quitting my day job (or blog) anytime soon.

America: The Tipless Iceberg

Best of You - Foo Fighters (mp3)
Welcome to the Factory - Backyard Tire Fire (mp3)

"They keep inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional..." These are the words of Mr. Incredible in one of the many scenes that make "The Incredibles" my favorite animated film of all time. If you want the entire marital spat, it can be found at the 5:00 mark of the clip below. If you don't wanna, and if you haven't seen the film, then just trust me that it's a great film about how our society doesn't particularly cotten very nicely to what is exceptional or special.



Oh, sure, America loves someone who is preternaturally gifted at throwing a round orange ball through a hoop. We love our athletes, with their gifts that serve to entertain us and earn them wild amounts of money, money they manage quite poorly (NPR). But when it comes to skills and talents that truly matter to our society as a whole, that could advance us or help us improve, we don't seem to give much of a shit about those folks.

When it comes to our children, America fights for mediocrity by calling it "equality."

The mother of two children, one autistic and one academically gifted, recently wrote a My Turn essay in Newsweek on the very subject. While her autistic son receives reams of additional assistance from taxpayer-funded initiatives and independent grants -- all so he is included with other children and provided "equal" exposure to the educational system -- her gifted daughter gets nothing. No arranging for advanced classes. No tutors to push her to what she is capable of if she surpasses her classmates. No funding for harder work, extra supervision, nada.

My wife and I had a similar experience with our oldest daughter in the fall. [Please note: This is not a "My daughter is the next Stephen Hawking" essay.]

All third-graders at her school took a test to determine where they fell on a series of academic skills. The test was to serve as a baseline. At the end of the school year, they would take the test again, allowing parents to see how far their child had progressed during the year. But here was the rub: on all but one of the criteria, our daughter rated at the top of the scale, and on that one she was a point away from it.

"So," I asked, "How will we be able to judge how much Carolyn has learned, since the only thing she can do with this test is go down?" The teacher kinda shrugged. She said there were a good half-dozen kids in Carolyn's class who had already exceeded expectations of this magnitude before the year began. For them, it was mostly about filling in some possible gaps, but otherwise, the end-of-year test would show us nothing.

We asked if she could be assigned harder work, or if additional work sheets could be offered, or if the teacher could suggest some books or other items. In no uncertain terms, the teachers answers were (1) No; (2) No; and (3) No. Not that the teacher didn't want to help, but rather, she was afraid for her job. Providing or encouraging additional work suggested that some students were more gifted than others, and someone in charge of her -- either from the county or the specific school -- had threatened people's jobs in matters such as these.

Part of me was suspicious of her honesty. Part of me suspected this teacher just didn't want to have to be responsible for arranging and doling out extra and different work for different kids. But either way, it's a damning moment for our public system of education. Either too many teachers are too lazy or uninterested in pushing all of their students to achieve at their highest levels, or the system itself aggressively discourages it. Either is shameful and without excuse.

Meanwhile, bigwigs in our local school system hold tremendous animosity toward schools like mine. We steal their smart kids. Public test scores suffer because so many of the smart kids go to the independent schools. While the Obamas were being excoriated for hypocrisy from pundits on the right for opposing vouchers, they were also being taken to task by pro-public school parents. How can Barack truly care about improving the public schools if he won't even entrust his daughters to it?

That's like suggesting I can't support regime change in Rwanda because I won't send my children there. Or maybe we can't truly support the military unless we make our children serve in it. That's some twisted, dangerous logic.

If you're below average, our society wants to help you get better. If you're above average, you're on your own. And if you won't feed your exceptional child to a system that has neither the time nor inclination to do right by them,then you're doubly damned.

In most ways, I consider myself a liberal. I believe we have a societal and, when necessary, governmental responsibility to those less fortunate or in need. However, when it comes to the nation's children, our obligation should be to all of them, to encourage and support all of them to go as far as they can reasonably go academically.

America doesn't want an iceberg. We want a long, flat, paved slab off ice that barely inches past the surface of the water and never goes much of anywhere.

"Best of You" is from In Your Honor, and "Welcome to the Factory" is from the exceptionally enjoyable album The Places We Lived. Both can be found online and purchased at a reasonable price.