By Selwyn Duke
Occasionally I like to share with readers mostly forgotten gems of analysis and philosophical thought. Below is the beginning of just such a work: "Music and Morality," a chapter from William Kilpatrick's book Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong.
Kilpatrick is a great thinker, and this chapter offers much food for thought. Its message will, sadly, not be well received by many today, but is certainly something everyone should take to heart. I suggest you read it and drink deeply from his cup of wisdom.
No, this chapter is not about the latest dirty lyrics in the latest rap groups latest album (though some are included). Nor does it deal with rumors that the members of such and such a rock group are devil worshipers (though they might be). Rather, it attempts to get at an effect of music that is more basic than the lyrics or the singers persona. We can start our discussion of this effect with the common observation that we tend to learn something more easily and indelibly if its set to a rhyme or song. Advertisers know this and use it so effectively that we sometimes have difficulty getting their jingles out of our heads. But there are more positive educational uses. Most of us learned the alphabet this way and some of our history as well (Paul Reveres Ride, Concord Hymn ). Recently some foreign language courses have been developed which employ rhyme and song as the central teaching method. Similarly, one of the most successful new phonics programs teaches reading through singing.
This raises an interesting possibility. If Johnny can be taught to read through rhyme and song, might he also begin to learn right and wrong in the same way? It seems that something like this did happen in the distant past. As I noted earlier, the Iliad and the Odyssey played a vital role in the formation of Greek youth. But the ability of the Homeric bards to memorize these vast epics was due in large part to the rhythmic meter and repetitive structure of the poems. In turn, these epics were often sung to the audience to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. In short, the foundational cultural messages of the Greeks were conveyed by sung stories. Education in such cultures, writes Kieran Egan of Simon Fraser University, is largely a matter of constantly immersing the young into the enchanting patterns of sound until they resound to the patterns, until they become musically in tune with, harmonious with, the institutions of their culture.
Read the rest here.
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