Post 43.

Since I began teaching at Penn State Altoona in 2015, I have taught MUS 5: Intro to Western Music. The course description is focused on classical music. Though I've always had a good mind for classical music history, MUS 5 isn't the course I expected to teach. But this course has become popular, well-loved, and an important way I impact the lives of undergraduate students. Classical music has proved to be an unexpected blessing for me.

The Problem
In an International Journal of Music Education article, "Decolonizing Music Education," Juliet Hess warns of the colonialist function of classical music in schools. "Western classical music is constructed as 'natural,' and the curriculum tokenizes alternative practices by making them tangential to the main curriculum. In many respects, Western music in music education acts as a colonizer." This seems true in my experience. But where do we go from there? Hess's insights build on much scholarship, including that of Randall Everett Allsup and Christopher Small, which points out the many problems of classical music being central to music teaching and learning. And so, when I read Hess's insights, I did not in the least see them as out-of-line with what is becoming common knowledge for music education scholars; even though the schools still focus on classical music. Hess provides a logical conclusion to that previous scholarship. I began teaching classical music because it is the job that was available--not because of any desire to do so. It has been my only route into university faculty. MUS 5 is a course that Penn State offers to its undergrad non-music majors, to fulfill their arts requirements. I have taught two sections of it since 2015 (along with other courses).

Hess recommends that curriculum-building become a "ground up" process. Rather than beginning with a course such as "Intro to Western Music," we would begin with our students' experience. Then we'd construct an education experience around that. She uses a rhizome (roots, such as in cattails) metaphor. "As we reconceptualize school music rhizomatically, we must also strive for a deep recognition of student identities and the experiences they bring to class, as well as the musics they consider their own." My students, upon entering Intro to Western Music, by-and-large do not consider classical music their own. The structure of their experience prior to MUS 5 doesn't often include classical music. The structure of the university and the students' structure of experience seem at odds. At least on the surface.

And Yet ...
My Intro to Western Music class has become important for my students; popular among Penn State Altoona's undergrads. When I came to Altoona I reconstructed the syllabus extensively. I guide students as they work in groups, co-presenting presentations that make up a major part of their grade. Students often comment on these in course evaluations. E.g., "I really enjoyed the class wide group projects, they were enlightening and interesting." And I re-constructed the syllabus around critical social issues (classic, gender, race, place). "The topics in class (ex. gender in music) engaged me in a different form of thinking than I expected for a music class." The campus's missions statement includes four goals, the fourth of which reads, "Integrate sustainability and environmental stewardship into teaching, research, and outreach." Though I doubt many courses or administrators take this mission statement seriously (truly adopting its rhetoric), I have aimed to redesign my Intro to Western Music to be not just about classical music (the course description), but also about integrating sustainability and environmental stewardship. It has become what I am calling an ecological introduction to classical music.

I began reconstructing the syllabus by asking myself: does the classical music tradition provide insight into ecological issues (issues of sustainability of stewardship)? Do these ideas have connections to other critical social issues students should discuss during undergraduate coursework? Can classical music be a force for good, even with its colonialist roots? Early in this process, my mind was drawn to Hildegard of Bingen; she was an easy add. We analyze O Frondens Virga, which according to the Hildegard Society: "recalls the elemental association of the divine feminine with earthly fertility. Mary is addressed as 'O blooming branch,' and she is described as standing in her nobility." I then connect Hildegard's piece to a living composer, Libby Larsen, and her 2003 composition, "Womanly Song of God." Drawing these two songs together, separated by nearly a millennium, we consider Vandana Shiva's ecofeminism to analyze and critique the connections between women, nature, and musics. Though both O Frondens Virga and Womanly Song of God are classical music, colonizing music, they are also in some ways not. A complex picture arises, where women, often those damaged most by colonization ideologies, use the tools (classical music) of the colonizer to reclaim power, spiritual insight, sustainability, and stewardship.

Hildegard and Larsen provide only two examples of composers who can expand what is accomplished in MUS 5. Students have already been music educated to expect something specific in a classical music course. When asked early in the semester, they choose to listen to Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. Though I don't give students the opportunity to choose the music we listen to early in the semester (this changes during group presentations), I choose musics with an opportunity to open space for critical conversations. Musics by composers they might not have listened to during high school appreciation courses. And then I step back to let students speak to their being, to their experience as people, through these musics. Though neither I nor the students choose the genre being studied, we do have some choices, and can make them well. A type of recycling can occur. We reclaim a bit of our humanity from colonizing powers in an anarchistic way, even while giving lip-service to the powers that be.

Who else might expand our introductions to classical music courses? Some underrepresented composers that pop to mind, whose musics include ecological themes (and the pieces I have included in MUS 5), include: Sofia Gubaidulina (Sonnengesang), Jenny McLeod (Earth and Sky), Emily Doolittle (Falling Still), Toru Takemitsu (Rain Spell), and Louis Ballard (Four American Indiana Piano Preludes). Problematic though it may be, classical music can be used to open space for conversations that matter. Perhaps this is because it is problematic. We begin by recognizing structures of power that negatively impact people. We awaken. We become conscious of these structures. And we recycle.

DJS

Post 42.

Of course, you might think I'm talking about Notre Dame. Truly, when a thousand year old structure is destroyed by fire, its a loss for humanity. But of course, we're destroying Nature's cathedrals daily, and it motivates little real change. Not that Notre Dame hasn't really inspired much action. Just mourning. Billionaires get way too much press for donating hundreds of millions of dollars, which of course is little money to them. If Jeff Bezos (who is a fine example, but all billionaires are at fault) would give $151 million of his $151 billion, that'd be 0.1% of his wealth. Since I make 18,000 a year for my labor at Penn State (yes, you're paying a lot for college; but its not going to those of us teaching the bulk of the courses to you ... 1K/credit here and no healthcare), it'd be the same as if I'd give $18. Not a real laudable feat for me. CNN and MSNBC wouldn't run segments on my $18 generosity. Not worth bringing up at all, except that for billionaires, giving such a pittance, 0.1%, from their theft (theft from their underpaid workers who do everything to make that wealth) gets them a ton of good press. But its not laudable at all. Since no human can earn or be worth billions of dollars, anybody who has billions is a thief. Pure and simple. This isn't a communist statement: one might be able to work hard and earn millions, but not billions. The quantitative difference is just too great.

One of my favorite Paul Winter Consort songs is Song for the Earth:

The sea is where all life begins
The ocean is our origin
If she dies, nothing survives,
No nothing can, nothing can
And who will look with awe upon the monuments of man?

I actually like the gender-neutral lyrics written later by the song's author, Jim Scott (here's a nice acoustic version of that song). This song makes an excellent centerpiece to an elementary general music or choir concert. I don't share this song because Notre Dame shouldn't be rebuilt. It is after all, one of the great "monuments of humankind." But we are destroying the sea, God's monument "where all life begins." The UN produced an insightful video, "Plastic Ocean." Plastic is "coating our oceans like a disease." Consider the plastic Bezos puts into the environment alone! While he doesn't work to earn any of the wealth from Amazon (he "hires" workers, forklift drivers, managers, accountants, etc.), he is responsible entirely for Amazon's pollution impact. Worker co-ops are never so polluting. You can read about the impact of Bezos here, and about the environmental cost of moving from cardboard to plastic containers here.

The earth is the cathedral we destroy every day, not only by allowing vampire-billionaires to exist, but by allowing them to set the norms for consumption. In my book I bring up the fact that Amish communities decide on purchases communally. (I read about this in one of Michael Pollan's books). If a community decides that a technological device is good for the community, they make it available for purchase. If we followed this wisdom, any given community doesn't have to make anything like the same choices any given Amish community has made. I truly respect this way of choosing technology. Purchases don't become about what devious billionaires can trick people (especially children) into "wanting" (the advertising and manufacturing of false needs); but what everybody in a community thinks is best. Together. A community could choose to be highly technologically advanced, and still make choices in a more ethical way that will help us to repair our shared cathedral, the earth.

DJS

Post 41.

With two weeks left in the semester, I am looking forward to my summer break! I plan on reading three ecologically oriented books during the summer, each of which is under $10 on Kindle. As I finish them, I'll post a short review of each.

The first is A Franciscan View of Creation: Learning to Live in a Sacramental World, written by Ilia Delio. As many of my readers know, I am particularly connected to Franciscan understandings of Christianity and ecology. In this book, Delio (a well known Chardin scholar) discusses the ecological implications of the writings of Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus; three primary thinkers in the Franciscan tradition. I've wanted to read something by Delio for a while, and this 2003 publication may provide an interesting entry into her writings. Her organization, the Omega Center, aims "to deepen Teilhard de Chardin’s integration of science and spirituality by providing insights and practices to enkindle awareness of love at the heart of reality." Delio's book has the opportunity to expand the spiritual dimensions of my philosophy on soil.

The second book, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime, was recommended to me on Facebook by Vincent Bates. In this 2018 monograph, Bruno Latour, a French philosopher, that the West's "victory of Communism" wasn't the end of history, but rather the start of a new history. As I understand it from the bit I read on Amazon "Look Inside," this new era is marked by deregulation (resulting in the horror of globalization), increased inequality, and a "systematic effort to deny the existence of climate change." Because this book (like my own) is rooted in the politics of Donald Trump as an exemplification of the challenge, Latour's book has the opportunity to expand the political dimensions of my philosophy on soil.

Finally, I am reading Catherine Grant's Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help. In this 2014 ethnomusicological monograph, Grant constructs the "Music Vitality and Endangerment Framework," which is aimed at helping anthropologists identify at-risk musical cultures, and help sustain them. I believe music educators have a role to play in this sort of project, and Grant's book may offer eco-literate music pedagogy some practical suggestions for the musics and places we hope to sustain and regenerate.

DJS

Post 40.

In an article I shared two years ago on Facebook, Yes! Magazine writes about seven ways we already live more locally. I love Yes! because the focus is on solutions. It is too easy to sink into a sad state considering the challenges we have been put in. Here are the 7 ways:

1.Community cooperative utilities
2. An electric bicycle commute
3. Perennial grains
4. In Alaska, its fish for lunch
5. Bringing young people back to the city
6. Linking affordability with access to transit
7. Putting down roots

These are all excellent solutions that people are already enacting. I'll focus on number seven, since my own work has been about uprootedness. As the Yes Staff writes: "Moving away from your hometown widens your carbon footprint—most notably by setting you and family members up for frequent travel. It also separates you from the support of friends and relatives." And here is the challenge for music education and many other professions. When we become music teachers, we have a good chance of becoming uprooted. After I became a music teacher, two of my brothers became music teachers. There was never a possibility, at the moment we chose our professions, that all three of us would attain employment in our hometowns, and keep those roots--those intergenerational, place-infused, webs of meaning.

"Staying put is an easy decision if you’re from a thriving city where employers and amenities abound. But what if your hometown isn’t thriving?" Here is the challenge of living in rural America. Our rural economies have been decimated by each president since FDR. Rural Democrats know this instinctively, and both Democrats and Republicans pretend to be FDR (or at least JFK, who put forth more left-ward, class-based programs than other Democrats) when campaigning here. At the national level, our focus has been on urban renewal, and even while that has failed due to lack of vision (but not lack of throwing money toward urban neighborhoods--almost always through devious billionaires) small-towns have been robbed of their material resources and people with no major renewal policy. Since FDR we've seen the removal of mass transit (trolleys and light rail) that linked up most of the small towns here in Central PA (including people in need to services in bigger towns), the removal of manufacturing jobs through free trade agreements, and new economic rhetoric of college-for-all instead of good wages and working conditions. Well, until we fix rural economies, college-for-all tears rural places apart. It is a privilege to be able to earn a college degree and make the low wages degrees garner in rural places; a privilege many poor, rural people don't have after going into debt for a college education. Many towns have put their hope in tourism (if they have a State Park like Patton) or Natural Gas industry (which imports laborers so it doesn't actually hire rural Pennsylvanians). But these hopes are fruitless without fixing the underlying problem. Many people stereotype rural people as hicks, hillbillies, and red necks and then suggest that their poverty is their own fault. They even laud the authors who suggest it, even while they'd recognize the same arguments as severely problematic if they were about other oppressed groups. Often ex-rural people living in their suburban utopias are the strongest voices of blame, but those neoliberlists don't lack for solidarity in soft-left Academia, which is far too quick to throw poor, rural people in the trash with their bottled water.

Vincent Bates tells us, "teacher educators have a responsibility to encourage and guide critical thinking and to deconstruct deficit ideologies." But do they want to? And why is Bates the only voice with a tenure-line in our field (in the U.S.) that recognizes this need for poor, White "trash"? If you grew up in poor, urban communities, especially those that are more ethically or racially diverse, critical teacher educators help you to recognize the failing of your poor relatives even while raising up their dignity--recognizing how sexism, racism, ableism and other intersections don't invalidate their real experience of oppression. That they grow by recognizing their own oppression. A pedagogy OF the oppressed. But with poor, rural communities, especially those seen as less diverse than the big city (even while there's diversity in many rural places), many professors who laud themselves as critical teacher educators fail. They fail often as they're the oppressors, and the pedagogy they try to teach is OF the oppressed. They tell poor student to recognize how their poor uncle (who's trying to make bills while borrow a car to make the drive to pay for his insurance while dealing with undiagnosed mental illness) is actually the real oppressor. These teacher educators transfer their experiences in suburbs, with sexist, racist, ableist privileged Whites, onto poor rural Whites who don't have the (academic) language to express their actual, lived oppression; when middle class Whites experience of race has few links to that of poor Whites. They commute to work further decimating rural places around the globe; and live in solidarity with the global suburban middle class--and join them in destruction. Place matters when considering race, gender, ability, and class. And very often, with our society's neglect of rural places during the last 70 years, rural peoples suffer more than they need to.

I've never been surprised by President Trump's voters who were poor White people. These people have been failed by policy after policy since their grandparents were children. Of course, they made up only 25% of his voters. But I'm also not surprised by the rich suburbanite Whites who make up Trump's majority and made him president. I hear their Marcellus Shale, Texas accents in Waffle Shop every week; and they throw their MAGA hats on as soon as they see my family of color. Their well-off children are the few people still getting tenure lines at Penn State. They know how to talk WASP and seem enough not-racist. What surprises me, though, is that push from the same rich suburbanite Whites to always blame their poor, rural White people they exploit and mock, all the while tapping themselves on the backs for being more "woke." They read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and didn't see that it IS an indictment of themselves! They've chosen to forget that Freire couldn't stand his time in the U.S. He hated being around the rich, White suburbanite class of teacher educators. Lets try to accomplish Yes! Magazine's suggestion number five, and help the rich White suburbanites return to their cities, where they might work to make their own homes better rather than decimating mine.

DJS

Post 39.

Conservatives, anarchists, some liberals (esp. 1970s back-to-the-earth liberals) and many other groups have long said that government needs to be more local. Smaller. The principle is that if more government control is held at closer (smaller/localler) levels, more people will have the ability to change and improve government policy. As a Catholic I use two principles of Catholic social teaching, solidarity and subsidiarity, as guideposts for my action and beliefs. These principles lead me to the same insight made elsewhere by some conservatives, anarchists and back-to-the-earth liberals. Both, solidarity and subsidiarity, work together. One without the other is problematic.

Pope Benedict explains these two virtues: "Solidarity refers to the virtue enabling the human family to share fully the treasure of material and spiritual goods, and subsidiarity is the coordination of society’s activities in a way that supports the internal life of the local communities."

And now onto today; to the problem of President Trump, who seems to reject both virtues, solidarity and subsidiarity. Pennsylvania, and in particular Central PA, has a pipeline problem. Every month, often multiple times a month, our local news shares the story of a pipeline project leaking waste (or exploding!) into our actual soils and waterways. The farms where our food is grown suffer. Our waterways (where we have major limits on the number of fish we can safely consume) suffer! And this president (like those preceding him who were overt in their aims at increased globalism) works for international corporations; not the people (not the farmers, fishermen, and other rural people who voted for him!). In news this week, the president intends to use his executive order power to override our State power to control the Constitution Pipeline. He intends to reveal his plan at a meeting of the International Union of Operating Engineers International Training and Education Center in Crosby, Texas. Its bad enough our Pennsylvania natural gas wealth only benefits international billionaires who send their Texan workers up here to Central PA to live in shacks and work these jobs, even as rural Pennsylvanians suffer high unemployment. Trump, like other globalists, will override State authority for National! State authority is too big as it is! We need federal and state governments to give up, not take on, more power. Trump's faux localism is an offense to the virtue of subsidiarity, which with solidarity can create ever widening circles of virtuous action. We need, whatever your political persuasion, to push for more solidarity and subsidiarity. It is the only way forward.

Big solutions = big problem. This is because untouchable international billionaires and national presidents haven't stood with bare feet on our soil. They don't drink our water. They haven't made bills working the few low-paying jobs that are available in rural PA. They haven't raised children here, or sang songs in our churches. Top down government, like big business, only benefits international billionaires because our actual to act power is removed. We are made powerless in the face of big government and international corporations. Powerless in the face of globalism. The problem of globalists like Trump can't ever be solved by increased power to "good" globalists. In global policy, we, actual people living and dying here, can either submit or weep. Some here have chosen to submit to Democrats, hoping for good global government. Others have chosen to submit to Republicans, hoping for good global industrialists. But in local policy, we can show up at our neighbor, the mayor or council member's, doorstep and demand accountability. Wrest local control from all nationalists and globalists. This is what I call a philosophy on soil in my book. We need more policy on soil.

DJS

Link: https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080503_social-sciences.html
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-said-seek-limits-state-080000880.html
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578

Post 38.

Methodologically, my book is environmental philosophy in music education. Environmental philosophy is often connected to a type of reflective writing (consider Thoreau's, Susan Fenimore Cooper's Aldo Leopold's, John Muir's, Mary Oliver's, Gary Snyder's, Edward Abbey's, Robin Wall Kimmerer's, and Annie Dilliard's essays; Rachel Carson's writing stands out for its less-subjective, scientific voice). This led me to write Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy in a subjective, self-reflective voice.

Thoreau begins his groundbreaking essay Walking with the following sentence:

"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that."

And Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours (which influenced Thoreau's writing) begins with a reflection on Spring:

"SATURDAY, March 4th.–Everything about us looks thoroughly wintry still, and fresh snow lies on the ground to the depth of a foot. One quite enjoys the sleighing, however, as there was very little last month. Drove several miles down the valley, this morning, in the teeth of a sharp wind and flurries of snow, but after facing the cold bravely, one brings home a sort of virtuous glow which is not to be picked up by cowering over the fireside; it is with this as with more important matters, the effort brings its own reward."

It is interesting that schools are already recognized by Thoreau as champions of civilization in that 1851 essay. Certainly some of my work has pointed to this challenge. Schools teach rooted children in poor rural and urban neighborhoods to become mobile, unsustainable moderns. This becomes an ecological catastrophe. Thoreau's is a type of philosophy that begins with "I."
I wish.
I wish to speak.
I wish to speak a word for Nature. And what follows is a philosophical exposition rooted in the what Carolyn Ellis called the "Autoethnographic I." Ellis writes:

"Might the researcher also be a subject? Might the 'I' refer to the researcher who looks inward as well as outward?"

Ellis's autoethnography pushes the borders of the artistic presentation of data, but doesn't seem to make theoretical ideas explicit. Autoethnographers seem to prefer to let readers theorize. Much of my research has been either autoethnography or philosophy. Because of the enjoyment I've had reading environmental writings, I want to float between self-reflection and theory, like the great environmental writers do. I want to push theory with my own lived experiences. I want to live philosophy.

And, even way back in Plato's writings, if we're 100% honest with ourselves as philosophers, rather than the objective voice of many 20th Century essays, we find the subjective voice of the self, artistically represented (in his case, in the form of drama). Knowing a little of the editorial and revision process that went into bringing Plato's writings to readers today, it is pretty amazing that any of his voice remains. Much environmental philosophy, then, probably represents (methodologically) a close cousin to ancient Western philosophy.

DJS

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Pedagogy-Routledge-Directions-Education/dp/0415792576/
Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1022
Link: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/cooper/hours/hours.html
Link: https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0759100519