Intelligence

Psychologist Raymond Cattell studied the idea of intelligence. He broke up general intelligence into two distinct counterparts:

Fluid Intelligence - This is basically the ability to reason quickly and to think abstractly. This peaks in our early adulthood, as the graph shows, and as we grow older, our fluid intelligence decreases. We tend to forget things more easily.

Crystallized Intelligence - This refers to the knowledge and skills that are accumulated over a lifetime. It involves learning, knowledge, and skills, and increases with age as we become more and more experienced.

On Mondays, I teach my oldest student. As I taught him today, I really started to notice how age affects one's ability to learn and acquire new skills. For example, we were clapping out rhythm sheets that I do with every student. I could see that in his mind, he knew how it was supposed to sound, but it was really a struggle for him to clap it out. Every time he made a mistake, he would stop, say, "That was wrong", and start over. I started to feel bad for him after a while. He was getting frustrated because his mind just doesn't work the way mine does. Not anymore, at least. His fluid intelligence has really decreased, and I can see that. It's not just that though. I have been blessed with musical talent. I know that. He, on the other hand, was blessed with the mind of an engineer. That was his life before he reached the age of retirement. He over-analyzes details and tends to look at the mechanics of playing the piano rather than just listening to the music he creates. This is pretty much how we work:

His mind

My mind

Music and the Mind

After discussing my independent study with one of my students, she lent me these cassette tapes entitled Music and the Mind. I was not intending on using these as part of my research, but I am so glad I got the opportunity to. They are made by Michael Ballam.

Michael Ballam

He talks about music and its effects on the human mind. He mostly shares stories, which helped me stay focused and interested in what he was talking about. Here are summaries of a few of the stories that stuck out to me:

The Paper Boy

The paper boy in some small town came from a family that had 10 kids. After dinner, they would all pick up whatever musical instrument was laying around (because there were a lot of them) and would just start playing. They would spend an hour playing music that had been written by somebody else, and then would just start "jamming". This jamming could go on for 10 minutes, or it could go on for hours. It all depended on how much they were feeling the music that night. Kids in the neighborhood were really intrigued by that family and would often go over for dinner, not knowing what went on afterwards. One boy in particular was inspired by the musical talent that this family had and went home and asked his father for a violin. Beforehand, this kid was a troublemaker, and was really challenged in school. Soon after he got that violin, he was on the honor roll. The teachers didn't know what was going on, so they called in his father. The father was used to being called in by teachers to discuss the disciplinary problems his son was having in class. But this time, the teachers said something had changed. The father said, "All I did was buy him a violin."

                Albert

When Albert was six years old, his mother signed him up for violin lessons. Like most other kids, he didn't like it. He liked building houses of cards. In school, Albert's teachers constantly called him stupid and told him that he should leave school to work. It's a good thing Albert stuck with his violin, because at the age of 13, that's where he found his refuge. Improvisation on the violin helped Albert overcome his geometric problems. Playing the violin enabled him to have such intense thoughts that he, Albert Einstein, became one of the smartest people who have ever lived. Looking back, people say he lived in the right side of his brain. The visionary, poetic side. His violin helped him merge the two sides, and for almost 70 years, Albert used the violin to relax when he became stuck in his thinking processes.

Music and Deviant Behavior

People say introducing music classes in schools is too expensive. Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah tried it out. The results showed that the children were more interested and focused in all subjects, even if they weren't particularly good at it. The teachers said there was a lot less disruption in their classrooms. Perhaps there is a link between music education and delinquent behavior. Still, the argument remains that state-funded music education is too expensive. Deviant behavior is also costly. A violin will cost roughly $150. How far will that go in a reform school? Just something to think about.

Go the Distance - Part 2

One week later, and we have this.
Practice can do amazing things, kids.

Go the Distance

Rachel has chosen a song for the recital! I think she's going to perform it fabulously in May. This was about 30 minutes after we had started looking at the song. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Katie Jeanne

This is my friend Katie. She's 14 years old, loves giving hugs, and really loves pizza. She truly is just a sweet spirit. 

When word got around that I was teaching piano for my senior project, Katie's mom asked me if I wanted to teach her. Of course I said yes! Why would I pass up an opportunity like that? My older sister, Dianna, taught Katie for a while before she got a job as a teacher in downtown Tucson. So no, Katie does not fit the same criteria as all of my other students. She does have a past with learning music. But that's okay! I knew it was going to be different teaching her, and that she would give me quite a bit of diversity in my teaching methods. 

Earlier, I read an article about teaching children with Down Syndrome how to play the piano. The author of the article, Rosie Cross, says this:

I believe very strongly that people with learning difficulties, however severe, have as much right to play a musical instrument as the rest of us. What is desperately needed is more teachers who are prepared to teach them, and who will persevere when progress seems elusive.

Patience is definitely an attribute that is needed by these teachers. I honestly don't know how my sister started with Katie from Square 1. My head would have just been filled with doubt. But now that Katie has some familiarity with the piano and with reading music, I feel that I can endure. 

Rosie Cross writes that children with Down Syndrome have a great aural memory, meaning that they have a really good way of remembering things they hear. She also said that they are good at mimicry. If I play a tune for Katie on the piano and tell her to play it, she has a better chance of copying what I just did rather than if I place a piece of music in front of her and tell her to play it. She won't get the satisfaction of playing it right because she doesn't know what that song is supposed to sound like! That's the main thing this article taught me: aural memory and mimicry. 

This article also talked a lot about illustration. At first, I didn't think she meant literal illustration, but she did. She actually draws a picture and tells her students with Down Syndrome to play on the keyboard the feeling they get from the picture. She tells a story about Ziekel, a student of hers. His father stands next to the piano telling a story while Ziekel plays along on the entire keyboard. I simply could not do that. I've never been good at improvising or composing. I think it's great that children with Down Syndrome are good at that! I'm sure Katie will teach me much more throughout this process than I'll teach her.