In Defense Of (Gulp) Packets. Worksheets, Too.
When my son was in high school, his band teacher used "theory packets" as fill-in work for days when he was absent from the classroom or had something other than whole-group instruction on his personal agenda. These packets were the absolute worst kind of make-work: poor copies reproduced (without permission) from an old college-level music theory workbook, disconnected from the learning goals of regular class lessons, pretty much incomprehensible without prior knowledge and excruciatingly dull.
The best thing you could say about them was that they were--sort of--about music. The worst thing? That they soured students on deeper examination of the intriguingly complex natural and mathematical structures lying under the songs that were so fun to play. I'm not saying that high school students shouldn't learn musical theory--they absolutely should, in ways that would let them use theory as a tool in creating their own tunes, harmonies and rhythms. Mention "theory" to any one of my son's classmates, however--and they envision sitting around in small groups, furtively copying each others' meaningless answers just to be done.
The packets, however, were not the problem. It was the lack of instructional purpose behind them, and the rote, fill-in-the-blank/check-the-papers pedagogical approach. Any teenage garage band with a dozen music lessons between them, combined, conducts far more effective auto-didactic theory sessions every time they get together to play. It goes like this: Hey, dude--listen to this chord! Awesome!
I've been thinking about packets (and their progenitor, worksheets) and why educators speak of them in the
The best thing you could say about them was that they were--sort of--about music. The worst thing? That they soured students on deeper examination of the intriguingly complex natural and mathematical structures lying under the songs that were so fun to play. I'm not saying that high school students shouldn't learn musical theory--they absolutely should, in ways that would let them use theory as a tool in creating their own tunes, harmonies and rhythms. Mention "theory" to any one of my son's classmates, however--and they envision sitting around in small groups, furtively copying each others' meaningless answers just to be done.
The packets, however, were not the problem. It was the lack of instructional purpose behind them, and the rote, fill-in-the-blank/check-the-papers pedagogical approach. Any teenage garage band with a dozen music lessons between them, combined, conducts far more effective auto-didactic theory sessions every time they get together to play. It goes like this: Hey, dude--listen to this chord! Awesome!
I've been thinking about packets (and their progenitor, worksheets) and why educators speak of them in the
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