A Drop of Golden Sun

There's a nifty YouTube video making the rounds among teacher types. I have a pretty high threshold for  being charmed, but this infectious little bit of fun made me stop obsessing about the stimulus money for education, Arne Duncan, and all the rest of my worldly cares. If you haven't seen it yet (hint: Julie Andrews pays a visit to Centraal Station in Antwerp, Belgium), take four minutes and treat yourself, here.

If there were ever a right time to have faith about the innate goodness of man, demonstrated by his willingness to drop self-consciousness and prance around in train stations, it's now. Don't want to get all Anne Frank here, but there's a lot of free-floating anxiety out there (justified free-floating anxiety)--and it's refreshing to see people of all ages having a blast, singing and dancing in public. Gives me hope.

As a music teacher, I seriously wonder about bloggers who engage in verbal death brawls over the question of whether creativity can be taught. Even without a randomized trial evaluating the precise measurable impact of strategies designed to expand thinking-- isn't it worth the attempt to create an environment where the hatching of new ideas is nurtured, and kids' brains get to go out and play?  Somebody with a creative idea got to live out their fantasy in the Do-Re-Mi video. Just watching it made me confident that we--the teaching profession--can make a convincing case that life is no good without imagination. Even for investment bankers.

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Bill Black, the former regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. It's a sobering piece. Black makes it clear that the economic crisis was data-driven, that data being the precise measurable results of loosening constraints against excess risk, and permitting more creativity in leverage strategies and compensation packages.

Moyers: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we're going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?

Black: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.

I keep thinking:  the most intelligent guys on the planet just led us into global economic collapse by inventing a clutch of economic and financial parlor tricks that made them very rich. Smart bankers who hustled 1580s on their SATs and came out of our best, most competitive universities went straight for the nation's fiduciary jugular. Experienced policy lions convinced colleagues to scrap commonsense regulations that had been protecting Americans for decades. Their sleight of hand maneuvers sucked money away from millions of ordinary, hard-working Americans, the ones who got unimpressive scores on their college boards--if they took them at all--and went to trade school, Regional State U or straight into the workforce. Boring folks in boring towns, who believed that paying down their ranch house mortgage was like tucking money into a sock for their kids' future. 

I also keep wondering what those financial-market whiz kids were like in first grade. Did they ever have to wait their turn in line for the merry-go-round? Were they ever in the Sparrows reading group, not yet proficient enough to be a Bluebird? Were they ever humbled by a math problem they couldn't understand? Did anyone ever explain the concept of "to whom much is given, much is expected?"

And--did they ever joyfully pretend to be a needle pulling thread?

That will bring us back to Nietzsche, who said: "Without music, life would be a mistake."

Image: jfrancis/flickr creative commons

Comments

[Claus]

Thanks for the train station clip! What a wonderful release--It's also a nice metaphor for teaching people to play well with others. That sort of cooperation and harmony seems in short supply, especially in the blogosphere.

[Jolynn]

What joy that clip brings. Maybe we should have our music and theater students performing in public places a couple times a month to spread a little joy...and give them some performance experience! What a nice "real-world" application!

[Melissa B.]

I just watched the video on another site. Absolutely charming! I especially love the way they start mashing at the end...

[Sarah Ebner]

Hi Nancy,
I absolutely loved the video and your post, which I found through the Carnival today. I've written about it on my blog now too....http://timesonline.typepad.com/schoolgate/2009/04/why-the-sound-of-music-made-it-to-antwerp-and-the-rest-of-this-weeks-carnival-of-education.html
I'll keep checking back - good to have found you!

[Nancy Flanagan]

Thanks for sharing the magic, everyone. There was a kind of universality in the appeal of the video--everyone needs imagination, fun and community. Taking the creative energy out of our schools and lives is a mistake, too.

[Melissa B.]

And PS: Please pop over to participate in Sx3 today. We're in serious Donald Trump Mode!

[Anthony Cody]

Nancy,
Thanks for the inspired words. See where they led me here: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2009/04/sharing_some_beauty_1.html