Post 14.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of the most popular and first of FDR's programs during the Great Depression. The depression was, after all, ecological as well as economic. These things almost always intersect. The Dust Bowl was perhaps the worse ecological crisis since the Year Without a Summer. After the Great Plow Up, an increase in wheat production during World War I, American farms were susceptible to drought. Farm lands need non-farm living ecologies nearby to survive. During the Great Depression, as a tree farmer, FDR recognized the ecological nature of the economic crisis in a way many economists might not. The CCC focused on three types of projects: alleviating soil erosion, creating and maintaining lakes, and  reforestation. Were these projects perfect with what we know today? No. Today we know that damming up rivers and creeks has an ecological cost as well as benefits (FDR overestimated how much free energy hydro plants would produce), and the nonnative tree species FDR used caused problems; but ultimately the CCC was an ecological success, leading to the U.S. economic boom of the 1950s. Fix the ecology, and the economy follows.

This week I read a short article about UConn's Climate Corps. Inspired by Roosevelt's CCC, University of Connecticut enlists students to help Connecticut communities prepare for and respond to climate change, today's most distinctive ecological challenge. Students learn how to conduct vulnerability assessments, how to develop community strategies, and how to navigate local political processes. This type of service learning parallels what happened with the CCC, but the CCC was open to all "men" (there were separate CCC groups for African Americans, and one of these corps built Penn Roosevelt State Park near where I live in Central, PA). The fact that UConn's program is university-based, and doesn't have the government support the depression era CCC had means the UConn program won't help our young adult unemployment rate of 9.2%. But what if we did have a truly new CCC. We'd have to have politicians that admit our role in climate change, and recognize that we needed to do something. This unemployed 9.2% could be put to work, learning 21st Century, employable skills while designing and implementing projects that helps communities prepare to survive the effects of climate change.

Of interest to music educators, The 20th Century History Songbook webpage includes a page of songs of the CCC. Songs include the 1938 song, CCC Blues, Boys in Green, and The C.C.C. The CCC had two goals, relieving unemployment, and helping the deteriorating natural environment. One important part of teaching music for ecological literacy, of course, can and should be teaching our environmental history through songs. The Library of Congress has further information about songs of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era, Zinn Education Project has information on Woody Guthrie, and PBS's page (on Ken Burns's documentary, The Dust Bowl) mentions many of Guthrie's dust bowl era songs like "Do Re Mi," "I Ain't Got No Home," and "Talking Dust Bowl."

DJS

Link: http://www.osagecountyonline.com/archives/30905
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
Link: https://today.uconn.edu/2018/10/climate-corps-making-impact-connecticuts-communities/#
Link: https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/african-americans-and-the-ccc/
Link: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217882/us-unemployment-rate-by-age/
Link: http://20thcenturyhistorysongbook.com/song-book/the-great-depression/the-civilian-conservation-corps-ccc/
Link: https://youtu.be/0jVA_T6EUro
Link: https://youtu.be/qb4DNepxXC4
Link: https://youtu.be/ItGEM1H8qD4
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Pedagogy-Routledge-Directions-Education/dp/0415792576/
Link: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197402/
Link: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/woody-guthrie-website
Link; http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/bios/woody-guthrie/
Link: https://youtu.be/4IJweR1d0dE
Link: https://youtu.be/nw7jQXTo_ls
Link: https://youtu.be/z8VV8YTKVaA

Post 13.

Capitalist patriarchy is bad for everyone involved.

This week I'm reading two news stories in concert with one another. Both represent a major challenge to the educator teaching for eco-literacy. In the first, published just over a year ago in The Guardian, a report found that a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the global carbon emissions, devastating our environment. The author, Tess Riley, writes, "ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988." These are also some of the biggest political donors in the U.S. and have clearly bought our government (as well as Canada's, since even Trudeau is making a mad rush to destroy our planet!)! And as a final piece of news, new SCOTUS (U.S. Supreme Court) Justice Kavanaugh demonstrated which issue is his top priority by moving to destroy the environment. "Then on Tuesday, the Supreme Court, at the request of the Trump administration, dismissed an appeal of a D.C. Circuit decision that prevented the EPA from regulating a powerful greenhouse gas." Well, it should be clear to educators that big capitalist governments and big corporations aren't on our side. They're not on the side of Mother Earth, nor on the side of our children, who will be lucky if they can live in the environment they're destroying. Trudeau and Trump may differ on identity politics, but they don't differ on the roots of those challenges, capitalism and its ecological destruction in the name of "development."

Terry Eagleton recognized the problem in his book on culture: "Today's cultural politics, by contrast, is not generally given to challenging [capitalist] priorities. It speaks the language of gender, identity, marginality, diversity and oppression, but not for the most part the idiom of state, property, class-struggle, ideology and exploitation." Similarly, much music education scholarship wants to address gender, identity, marginality, diversity and oppression without addressing the roots of injustice, that is the state, property, class-struggle, ideology and exploitation. Without addressing these roots, we can never address the fruits of our poisoned tree. E.g., if there weren't rich men wanting free labor in cotton fields and sugar plantations to fuel their factories in the U.S. North and England, American slavery wouldn't have happened. And so, Justice Kavanaugh hires all women law clerks, and is lauded even while the hierarchical horror show that he represents remains unchallenged. All we will have is more women who buy into his capitalist version of oppression; and when they find themselves in positions of power, will likely continue it.

But I want to say capitalism is patriarchy; at least one some level. Both are systems of UPS and DOWNS. And the system is itself UNJUST, whoever finds themselves to be the UP and whichever "other" is the DOWN. There is a vision that is women's equality, but equality within capitalism won't due; rather patriarchy, the system itself, is the core challenge feminists address. As bell hooks writes: "Males as a group have and do benefit the most from patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and should rule over us. But those benefits have come with a price. In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to dominate women, to exploit and oppress us, using violence if they must to keep patriarchy intact. Most men find it difficult to be patriarchs." If we instead switch the UPS and DOWNS, rather than ending capitalist patriarchy, we'll just find women as a group "benefiting" but also paying the price hooks discusses, being required to dominate, exploit, and oppress using violence to keep the patriarchy intact.

I recommend a fundamental rerooting of music education in place, where local ways of being (including our personal and cultural histories) can provide alternatives to global businesses and big governments, the two forces that keep capitalism intact. Cultural sustainability cannot occur without ecological sustainability. Cultures emerge in actual places, and our species-being (a Marxist term Eagleton uses) is that of a creative agent within the natural world. The fruits and roots, both, need to be addressed.

As an additional note: My book is 12.50 USD to rent on the Routledge website. Or better yet ask your librarian to interlibrary loan you a copy. There's no reason money should be a barrier in the 21st Century. It's in 125 libraries, so there should be a copy near enough to you for you to check it out. I was inspired by voices as divergent as Ivan Illich and Thomas Berry, Karen Warren and Vandana Shiva, Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, Arne Naess and Bill Devall; and music educators like Vincent Bates, June Boyce-Tillman, Roberta Lamb, Tom Regelski, and many others. There is enough information out there to begin fighting this globalizing, ecology-destroying trend. Marx was right that capitalism is destroying itself; but the problem is, we won't survive to find another way to live, a more sustainable and regenerative way, if we let capitalism destroy itself and our Mother Earth at the same time! We need to act locally. I don't think we should wait to receive salvation from above in the form of Trudeau or Trump. There's too much money in politics for either to ignore the 100 companies that are killing so many of us through their hurricanes, heat waves, and droughts; not to mention overt private wars against indigenous people, such as the ongoing murders in the Amazon rain-forest and Niger river delta.

Look at your neighbor. Talk to them. Listen to them; and make them listen to you. Musick in your community. Write songs. Perhaps revisit other ecological songs like Paradise, the Garden Song, S.O.S., or  God Bless the Grass. Every community, rural, urban and even our suburban deserts, need to work on this. Perform ecological informances in your town commons, or at the super market. Act.

DJS

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/17/stop-swooning-justin-trudeau-man-disaster-planet
Link: https://www.thedailybeast.com/kavanaugh-and-supreme-court-to-planet-drop-dead
Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218794/culture
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/us/politics/kavanaugh-women-law-clerks.html
Link: https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/feminism-is-for-everybody-bell-hooks/
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578

Post 12.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), released a new report this week. The IPCC is an international organization set up to assess the dangers of climate change by analyzing the science. It has been doing this since 1988, and is linked to the UN (UNEP specifically). In this their sixth report, urgent action is recommended, and dire consequences are warned by 2030 (when we're now expected to reach 1.5 degrees C). The earth has already warmed around 1 degree, which has already had a negative consequence our our environment (unprecedented droughts in Syria and California; increased hurricane's such as Katrina and Maria; permafrost melting). In the NPR report on the IPCC report, they point out, "with each additional unit of warming, the adverse consequences from that warming grow quite a bit." It becomes more difficult to grow crops because of drying and warming in some locations, and alternatively too much water in other areas. Heat waves have become more extreme and frequent, and more and more people are dying from these heat waves (especially the poor, disabled, and elderly). Suggestions are also made in how we can change to begin to reduce these negative consequences. One thing is clear: urgent action needs to be taken!

Looking at the same report, CNN highlights recommendations around transportation, buildings and diet. I will contextualize these within music education. Many of these, I've already recommended in the book, Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy.

1. The IPCC recommends less travel. For those of us doing music education scholarship, maybe this means cultivating more of a regional, and less of an international presence at conferences. I have already begun to do this by driving, rather than flying, to conferences. Even when I presented at Colorado this past summer, for the Modern Band Colloquium, I turned that conference into a family vacation. We drove, and stopped at two national parks and two national monuments, a practice aimed at increasing my son's ecological literacy, while reducing our family's carbon footprint. Driving produces a smaller carbon footprint than flying. For instance, flying from Boston to San Francisco produces 1,300 kilograms of carbon per passenger, while the same trip is 930 kilograms of carbon per vehicle (so, for my wife, my son and I: the numbers are 3,900 vs. 930 kilograms of carbon). If we choose to cultivate a stronger regional (even bioregional) professional presence, we can do a lot for our environment, though this may go against a lot of how universities currently value modern mobile individuals. This will have to change. Those values are cultivated by specific faculties and specific administrators: so consciousness-raising is still our, as eco-literate music pedagogues, biggest job.
2. According to CNN< people need to use smart thermostats, and efficient air conditioning. For many, solar panels and wind energy generators may further lessen our carbon impact. Not mentioned by CNN (which as a corporation is bought into the sales model of environmentalism) is gardening. One of my favorite podcasts, World Organic News, uses as their motto: Decarbonize the air, Recarbonize the soil! When we grow plants, and then compost those plants (in State College borough we have a town composting program), we're turning carbon into soil. We do this on the small scale. But small actions can become big if everybody does them! Everybody should garden, if even just a little, in a pot in your apartment window. And the school music teacher can do a lot to support school gardens as well. We don't just teach music, but are integral parts of school communities. Make trips to the school garden, listening and composing with the soundscape, a part of your music curriculum! If your school doesn't have a garden, start one.
3. Finally diet: CNN recommends we eat less meat (but not necessarily none). If our food is shipped around the globe, this is also a problem. Buy local foods where possible, and at farmers markets. You get to support your local economy, your local farmers, while lessening your carbon imprint. Similarly, music teachers can rely more on local resources in our music classrooms, including making instruments instead of buying manufactured products.

DJS

Link: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/
Link: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/08/655550543/disastrous-effects-of-climate-change-are-happening-now-report-says
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/world/ipcc-climate-change-consumer-actions-intl/index.html
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
Link: https://www.thoughtco.com/flying-driving-which-better-for-environment-1203936
Link: http://www.worldorganicnews.com/

Post 11.

In trying to "fix" schooling, more and more, it becomes apparent that the only tool the federal government has is standardized testing. However, since children, by their very nature, should spend lots of time outdoors, our current system that forces children to sit indoors for long periods of time, filling out bubble sheets for government and Pearson agents, is against children's nature (that is, as playful, experimenting under the sunshine, joyful beings). Middle School student suicides have increased rapidly with the U.S. increase in standardized testing. So, not only is standardized testing an ineffective scam (the bell curve used in standardized testing CANNOT measure full-system growth as a simple logical fact: there will always be 50% in the bottom half of the curve when its re-normed) but standardized testing is IMMORAL.

Today, every elementary teacher faces this moral crisis. I struggled with this crisis for many years, eventually becoming disillusioned with schooling. It has pushed many caring teachers to leave the profession. Still more stay and suffer silently, and with each new testing season, a bit of our heart dies as we are forced to torture children. But neither our silent suffering, nor our departure benefits those students who we care for, because this crisis of standardized testing won’t go away through tears or absence. Though I was taught many ends for my pedagogy, standardized testing has replaced the educational and moral ends of school. I began teaching in 1997, before the institution of mass standardized testing; and over those years of teaching I have come to understand that standardized testing is immoral, at least for the elementary aged children who were in my care (in loco parentis).

The father of American education, John Dewey, gave us the great insight that all education, every subject, every minute, is moral education. In his 1909 book, Moral Principles in Education, Dewey called this “indirect moral education.” Everything we do in schools, whether or not it has anything to do with morals, teaches a moral lesson. But what moral lessons do our standardized testing regimes teach children?
What are we teaching when we know standardized tests aren’t authentic assessments?
What do we teach when we force children to passively sit in room filling out these forms for the government, though we know they shouldn’t?
When we who have taken a basic statistics course know every child doesn’t need to take the test, what are we teaching?
When we know the tests don’t need to be that long, and that high school aged students can take them, and statistical measures can measure (to the extent that they ever can) the quality of elementary schools, what are we teaching?
When these unnecessary tests have doubled the suicide rate of middle school aged children, and we still institute the tests, what are we teaching?
What hatred for learning, and passivity in the face of governmental abuses are we teaching?

I shudder to think!

In eco-literate music pedagogy, I recommend education on soil, and one aspect of that is more local control over education. I cannot imagine a local district instituting two months of standardized testing without there being an uproar. The fact is, the amount of testing that happens in schools today steps way beyond the bounds of the purpose of school in communities. Through standardized testing, schools have broken their contract with the citizens. If we want better education, we will return more to nature. In The American Scholar, an 1837 speech at Harvard, America's first major philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson connected Nature to thinking: "The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of Nature."

Because the federal government has shown ineptitude at solving education crises except through more and more bubble sheets, more and more time spent under the same fluorescent lighting that pervades both schools and government offices, and within dead cement soundscapes, it is the duty of citizens to resist. Standardized testing is unnatural! Between soul crushing silent suffering, and impotent leaving, all teachers (and all adults for that matter) need to stand up against government, and for our children's well-being. There's an age at which standardized testing may be appropriate (e.g., high school). At a minimum, it is time to end standardized testing that occurs in elementary school.
 

Link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/middle-school-suicides-double-as-common-core-testing_us_59822d3de4b03d0624b0abb9?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003
Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25172/25172-h/25172-h.htm
Link: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
Link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#THE_AMERICAN_SCHOLAR