Language as a barrier to learning
Language is powerful - more powerful that the sword allegedly, but seriously, what we say and, perhaps more importantly what we don’t say, can have a longlasting impact on those around us, and, maybe less advertised, on ourselves.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about love and peace - although that’s good too, but more a post on the use of language as an inadvertant barrier to learning.
Why have I come to this today? I suppose because there is an element of my PhD research that is exploring this and it’s making me think hard about the language I use with students.
Many years ago as a young mum living in the states there were those in the ‘Good Job!’ camp and those firmly against it. I suspect this may be due to the binary nature of the word ‘good’. For a child who is ‘trying their best’ at something in a culture of ‘good job’, if they don’t get a good job, then supposedly their thoughts move to ‘I’m doing a bad job’. So we tried to steer clear of this phrase for our kids growing up, using language such as ‘I like how hard you’re trying’, ‘you’re getting there’.
Over the years I’ve thought less about it, until recently and thinking about the language we use to describe musicality.
‘Are you musical’?
What does that word mean?
What does it mean to be musical, more importantly, if you classify yourself as not being musical, is that ‘non-musical’?
So this binary classification has huge ramefications for young people as they are building internal frameworks based on what arbitrary boundaries surround the word ‘musical’.
To be musical - does that mean you have to play an instrument or having singing lessons? What happens if you don’t do either, or you self teach, or you can’t afford but love to listen to music? Where do we put the rhythm gymnast or incredible dancers - are they not musical?
I recently had a conversation with a neighbour of mine who is an absolute encyclopaedia on anything folk or rock music. But he calls himself non-musical. His knowledge of this genre of music far surpasses anyone I know and he talks about the music with such passion! He loves music, he listens to, collects, reads about, sings along with…but his framework in his own eyes, puts him in the ‘non-musical’ bracket? Why is this?
Is this because he ‘thinks’ he can’t sing?
Is this because he has a framework that says ‘classical music is music’
Is this because everything he’s learned is self taught and not ‘formal’?
So why am I telling you this? Because this language, these arbitrary boundaries are instilled in children from a ridiculously early age. They may not get chosen to be in the choir, they may be asked to stop tapping out rhythms, they may be given a violin when they want to play a guitar, they may have a friend, parent, teacher comment if they sing out of tune, they may feel they don’t have the skillset to take GCSE music or they might not want to do practical music exams, they may have someone suggest that music is not a stable or suitable career choice or they may see posters suggesting that ‘cyber’ is something to train in rather than performing arts (remember that one?)
Language is powerful. Life is not black and white. Musicality is within everyone but may manifest itself differently. We need to begin to embrace this within institutions, give ALL children EVERY opportunity to be heard and seen in the direction of music that speaks to them and that starts with us adults as parents, teachers, government ministers etc filtering down that music is within us all and that whichever path of music you wish to tread, is a valid and supported one.