Minds On Music – The Kindermusik Blog

Tomorrow, May 22, is the International Day for Biological Diversity. You may be thinking – okay, now there’s officially a holiday for everything! True – this holiday is little known. But with such an overarching, unanimously critical concept like biodiversity, it’s important we give it mention. And celebrate!
In 1992, in Nairobi, Kenya, the United Nations adopted the text for the international Convention on Biological Diversity. Since then, non-governmental organizations, national goverments, and the U.N. Environmental Program have dedicated themselves to communicating the important of bio diversity to the global community by translating and distributing educational texts into local languages, offering public seminars, rallying around endangered species or habitats, planting trees and other plants that help prevent erosion, and more.
So – what is biodiversity? Biodiversity is the variety of life. It can be studied on small and large scales; it can be the study of species across the earth or an analysis of the microbial life in your cup of tea. Today, scientists have identified 1.7 million species, but researchers have estimated that there are between 3 – 30 million species on Earth, with a few studies predicting that there may be over 100 million species.
Why is biodiversity important? Complexity serves us well in many ways. It provides ecological services that make earth livable (the minerals in our soil that produce healthy food, water, our oxygen supply), it allows us to recover quicker from natural disturbances like fires, floods, and hurricanes, and it prevents disease and allows for greater medical discoveries.
How can we protect biodiversity? To answer this question, we’ll heed the advice of Edward O. Wilson, renowned biologist, theorist, and author. When asked that question in an interview with Discover magazine in 2001, Wilson replied:

More and larger reserves are the answer, carefully selected by location and biological content and maintained thereafter in such a way as to attract subsidies and other non-invasive sources of income. These include eco-tourism, non-invasive harvesting of medicinals and other wild products, and carefully selective and minimally invasive logging. Above all, we need to ensure that the local governments and people affected would benefit more by conservation than by destructive exploitation.

Celebrate this International Day for Biological Diversity by taking action on a local level. Attend a seminar, visit a national park, write a conservation petition to your local government or read a relevant book (we recommend Wilson’s book, “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth”). Tell us how you’re taking action below!

This morning, Education Week published an article affirming spatial skills as a key to math learning. Movement and “task” activities (cutting paper shapes, building blocks, coloring in lines, clapping, stomping, singing) not only improve a child’s discipline ability to write neatly, they improve his or her capacity for abstract reasoning. The article quotes Claire E. Cameron, research scientist at the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, on this point:

“We think of early-childhood classrooms as being really high in executive-function demands, but what children are being asked to exercise [executive function] on end up being visual-motor and fine-motor tasks.”

Here’s how it works. As you listen to music or make music, certain neuronsin the cortex of your brain start firing. The pathways created are the same pathwaysthat are used when you complete complex spatial reasoning tasks. The more of these pathways that are forged and the more they are in use, the stronger the connections become. Strong connections lead to easier access, which translatesinto better skills.
Although listening to music does give the neural network a workout, the gains in spatial
reasoning skills have been shown to be very short-term—15 minutes or less. This “Mozart
effect” is much longer-lasting when you engage in making music, however. Studies are showing that the attendant spatial reasoning gains can extend over months or even years (Rauscher et al, 1997; Gardiner, 2000; Hetland, 2000b). Studies focused on music for young children are also suggesting that math gains increase according to the number of years that students engage in active music learning (Gardiner, 2000), with some indication that the younger children are when they begin music instruction, the greater the gains will be.
Read more from Kindermusik about the benefits of music and math here, and comment below with questions or feedback!

Is music literally capable of saving lives? According to Dr. José Antonio Abreu, it definitely is. His story is a reason to celebrate this Monday morning, and a powerful reminder of the power of music for children.

In 1975, Dr. Abreu, a Venezuelan economist and musician, founded El Sistema, “The System,” a classical music youth training program for children in some of the poorest Venezuelan communities. Now publicly funded with branches in the United States, United Kingdom, and Portugal, El Sistema helps Venezuela’s 125th youth orchestras with training, funding, and the ability to travel worldwide to perform some of the highest level youth classical music in the world.
Why use music as the mechanism for social change? When asked about his vision for El Sistema, Dr. Abreu said:

“Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development, in the highest sense because it transmits the highest values – solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community, and to express sublime feelings.”

Seventy to ninety percent of the children who participate in the program come from the poorest neighborhoods in Venezuela– like Sevilla, a slum in Caracas. Abreu’s success in navigating the program through thirty-eight years of political turmoil is testament to his determination and conviction about the power of music for children. Watch the 60 seconds video here, or watch the clip below!

Monday mornings are best begun with a poem. We think this E.E. Cummings poem, "in Just-" celebrates spring, children, and music in a refreshingly dissonant way. What do you think?

in Just–
E.E. Cummings

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and

the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

Rhythm is central to this poem. It is typographical – the disjointed spacing, repetition of verses, and vertical arrangement makes movement tangible: moving children, wind, and the whistle thread the poem together in evolving combinations. It is also lyrical – the refrain, the balloonMan’s whistle "far and wee," is contrasted with the huffing breaths of young children running, slurring names "eddieandbill" and "bettyandisabel" together. The whistle has the effect of an ice cream truck’s song, calling children to chase after it. To the adult (the reader?), the whistle is the belittled sound of a, "lame," "little," "goat footed" man. But to the children, the whistle is a mysterious a-harmonic tune. It is a mysterious sound. It implores them to break away from their games and explore an even more magical realm of the imagination.

What does this poem mean to you? Share your thoughts below, or share another poem that reminds you of spring, play, rhythm, or the imagination below!

Bill McKibben’s new climate change movie, “Do the Math,” airs April 21st across the United States. We’ve always loved Bill McKibben for his scientific integrity – his ability inspire people through his careful articulation of the evolving data behind climate change. In a world where science has largely eroded from the pop culture “green movement,” Bill McKibben is a crusader for a movement based on pure science. Watch the trailer below:

Science and math tend to scare people. We think we encounter numbers in a limited scope: as prices, hours, pounds, or grocery items. The irony, of course, is that numbers are ubiquitous; numbers describe the very atoms that make you you, and me me. And science is just a way of interpreting and predicting them.
The psychological impact of numbers is why we think the name of McKibben’s campaign, 350.org, is so powerful. 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. If we can internalize this number, we can internalize behaviors which, on the individual level, can stop the global catastrophe that Bill McKibben foretells. Numbers are not opinions, they are iterations of truth. Truth alone inspires people.
We are proud of our passionate, adaptive, curious Kindermusik community of educators and leaders. You all would make tremendous advocates for the 350.0rg campaign – and we just recently learned how you can join! 350.org hosts workshops where you can learn how to achieve climate change goals specific to your community’s environmental issues, policies, and economic development.

Find out more about becoming a 350.org workshop leader here, an opportunity which will teach you how to:

• Understand recent climate science and policy.
• Be able to present your own stories through the lens of Public Narrative.
• Know how to communicate effectively about climate change and local organizing.
• Be able to identify strategic targets and goals.
• Understand campaign nuts and bolts.
• Develop a campaign plan.

We’ll leave you with 350.org’s definition of leaders. Leaders are those who do the work of helping others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.