Sound Curriculum

Sonic Studies in Educational Theory, Method, & Practice

Walter S. Gershon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315533117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildungstheorie & -praxis

Part of a growing group of works that addresses the burgeoning field of sound studies, this book attends not only to theoretical and empirical examinations, but also to methodological and philosophical considerations at the intersection of sound and education. Gershon theoretically advances the rapidly expanding field of sound studies and simultaneously deepens conceptualizations and educational understandings across the fields of curriculum studies and foundations of education. A feature of this work is the novel use of audio files aligned with the arguments within the book as well as the discussion and application of cutting-edge qualitative research methods.

1 Sound Curriculum

Breaking Frames and Opening Ears

Introduction

This introductory chapter sits at the intersection of questions about curriculum, methodology, perception, and representation. As I argue below, understanding knowledge in, as, and through sound maintains current curricular ways of knowing while opening new doors for conceptualizing and interpreting curriculum. By doing so, I take seriously Stoller’s (1997) call for “sensuous scholarship” and Ellsworth’s (2005) notion that all understandings are a literal “making sense”—knowledge gained through one’s senses (for example, Feld and Basso, 1996; Gershon, in press a; Howes, 1991, 2005).

Listening brings to the fore not only the importance of hearing and the senses in schooling, but also the central nature of all sounds in educational contexts. Because my goal here is to articulate what might be gained through sonic inquiries and representations of educational contexts, this discussion is not intended to be an exhaustive review of either how sound inquiry is approached across disciplines or the myriad ways in which such uses might be applied to curriculum and related fields of study. Rather, my purpose here is twofold, to provide some criteria for recognizing and conceptualizing sound curriculum as it currently exists in the field and to present how the further conceptualization of sound curricular possibilities can contribute to advancement in the field of curriculum studies.

Understanding the existence and potential of sound curriculum is simultaneously a question of framing, a movement beyond the frame, and a critique of framing. After a brief discussion of framing that describes this trajectory, my argument here is comprised of three central components. It begins with an act of recognition, framing previously disparate examinations of music, sound, and meaning in curriculum studies as sound curriculum. I then draw from the burgeoning field of sound studies in order to complicate the sound curricular understandings presented in the first section, a breaking of the frame to note its boundaries. This then leads to questioning the meaning and limitations of the verb to frame. A final brief conclusion suggests some possible directions for sound curriculum and how it might contribute to the complicated conversations that are contemporary curriculum studies.

I have elected here to begin with Judith Butler’s (2009) discussion of framing, one of the more sophisticated, fluid discussions of frames and their applicability for attending to notions of equity, access, and life. When rewriting this piece so that it served as the introduction to this book, I elected to keep this discussion of Butler and framing for the following reasons. First, because it is a comparatively recent, deeply nuanced, and highly sophisticated discussion of framing, Butler’s arguments press at many previous constructions that address what framing is and how it can function. Second, as Butler’s talk about framing in this instance addresses her concerns with how people can be framed as less than human in order that they might be violently and aggressively attacked (murder, genocide), Butler’s presentation of framing is decidedly ethical in nature and, as such, attends to issues of social justice that are central to my project here. Finally, Butler’s scholarship here is masterful, articulating fluid frames that drop, are made, and again reframed in multiple layers that move away from the original framing in ways that are all the more meaningful in spite of their movement and mutation.

And yet, Butler, whose conceptualization of frames and framing encapsulates and pushes past many previous constructions in ways that are, as noted here, more ethical, fluid, and complex, is still limited by the ocular baggage of her argument. It is for these and other such reasons that I begin here with Judith Butler’s arguments about frame and framing as a springboard for discussions about the possibilities of sound and the power of the sonic in considering educational ways of being and knowing.

However, a central question remains: What is sound curriculum? One answer was provided at the end of the preface, the wide variety of attention to the sonic in educational scholarship and the resonances within, between, and outside of those understandings. From this perspective, a key purpose of this book is to provide an open, fluid foundation for what might be conceptualized as “sound curriculum.” Another answer also present throughout this book is less academically oriented: how anything that might be conceptualized as sonic contributes to our understandings and, in so doing, is sound knowledge, the topic of the following chapter. A third possible definition, and one that in many ways encapsulates the previous two, is sound ways of beingknowingdoing. By this I mean the myriad ways the sonic, sound metaphors, sound practices, sound ideas and ideals, and sound ways inform how we “is,” what we “be,” and that which we “know.”

My resistance to landing on any one definition is that the sonic has so many possible interpretations and pathways that emphasizing any singular direction feels as misguided as trying to pin a sound down with a stapler. And, oxymoronically, not providing some sort of definition feels at once irresponsible to a project about something as central to experience as the sonic and runs the risk of being misunderstood or misconstrued. Given that this conundrum lies at the base of many attempts to graphically express the sonic (e.g., Sauer, 2009), this book is to sound curriculum as all forms of musical notation are to the expression of music: representations that are not to be mistaken as sounds, how those sounds affect things and ecologies, or the ways in which the sonic is expressed or interpreted, all of which are fluid, omnidirectional, and ever-present, a messy, interwoven complexity that in no way removes its sensation, signification, or significance.

Of Butler and Frames

Judith Butler (2009) contends the frames that one utilizes to conceptualize another person’s life as being of value are socially constructed, predicated on existing norms of recognizability and “schemas of intelligibility [that] condition and produce norms of recognizability” (p. 7). For Butler, these frames derive their power as they move through successive iterations of framing and reframing towards intents and purposes different than those conceptualized by the original frame(rs). While such framing often serves to propagate dominant norms and values, it is in their reframing that such ideas and ideals can be subverted or interrupted. In short, frames demarcate how life is recognizable and what can be valued, structures that gain their power and meaning as they break from themselves.

As a consequence, the frames that, in effect, decide which lives will be recognizable as lives and which will not, must circulate in order to establish their hegemony. This circulation brings out or, rather is the iterable structure of the frame.

(Butler, 2009, p. 12, emphasis in original)

On one hand, Butler’s notions of framing can be understood as moving beyond many previous notions of framing that, while certainly useful in considering how people categorize their understandings, are nevertheless often structuralist and universalist in construction. Gregory Bateson’s (1972) often-cited framing of play is but one example of this tendency. He argues that play is universally understood and exists as a space within clear boundaries between the imaginary and reality, lines that clearly indicate what is play and what is not, similar to the way a frame delineates the artwork it contains from the non-art outside its boundaries. Both Vygotsky (1976) and Piaget (1962) similarly envisioned play as a universally applicable, non-serious space for children to try on roles, interactions, and ideas as well as a space to explore the imaginary. These understandings of play are germane to the points I wish to make because they speak to issues of frames and framing, as does more recent scholarship that challenges the kinds of static, universally understood frames of play that Bateson (and by extension Vygotsky and Piaget) propose.

Scholarship critical of universal claims of play often note that there are ethical implications in this kind of static, universal framing—what one person in a given interaction considers play can be threatening to another player (for example, Houseman, 2001; Lindquist, 2001). In lieu of framing play, where Borges (1998) posits that different kinds of play interactions reside alongside one another like a garden, Handelman (2001) suggests that the ethical, socially constructed nature of play is more akin to a Möbius strip, constantly folding in on itself, making and remaking itself as it moves. The advantages each of these constructions of play have over Bateson, Piaget, and Vygotksy’s non-dynamic, universally applicable, and binary-creating frames—play as interactions that are universally understood, constant, and that reside outside of “seriousness” of the “real world”—is in how metaphors of gardens and Möbius strips expressly note the complex relationship between ethics, sociocultural norms and values, and epistemological categorization.

Although Butler (2009) retains the frame as a central construct, her discussion of the ways a frame breaks on each iterative framing and links the ability to frame anything to those who are entitled to make such decisions through their sociocultural/economic/historical capital, does indeed seem to represent a philosophical evolution in the consideration of frames as an epistemological, ontological construction. Although she does not make her argument in reference to their work, through this complexifying of previously static notions of framing, Butler has managed to capture both the iteratively recursive nature of Handelman’s Möbius strip and the parallel motion in Borges’ garden metaphor.

On the other hand, Butler’s discussion of framing retains some ironically Western and structuralist metaphorical assumptions. This can be seen in the duality of her insistence that non-visual framings are as important as visual framing (texted, seen). While her inclusion of non-visual ways of knowing is certainly to be applauded as it is a step that is still often overlooked, this position nevertheless carries the following assumptions about the nature of visual metaphors, constructions that seem to imply a continuing Western, structuralist understanding of sense-making.

First, there is the notion of a frame, a visual metaphor. How does a frame smell? Or, more germane to the discussion in this chapter, what does a frame sound like? Second, Butler’s suggestion that frames can be applied to other sensory ways of knowing implies that visual metaphors are equally applicable to non-visual senses. Not only has this been demonstrated not to be the case in both Western and non-Western constructions of sense-making (e.g., Erlmann, 2010; Stoller, 1989) it is also an indication of the primacy of the eye (Aoki, 1991; Ihde, 2007; O’Callaghan, 2007). Finally, when placed in combination, such understandings appear to note a rather Western construction of meaning that retains a Cartesian separation between the senses and their limitation to five discreet senses, an understanding that often serves to blur embodied knowing inasmuch as it helps explicate sensory knowledge and expressions of being (Howes, 2003; Stoller, 1997).

This does not mean, however, that Butler’s construction of framing is not useful, nor do I mean to incidentally imply that more static conceptualizations or uses of frames are somehow passé. Rather, I seek to enunciate these differences as I travel through them for the remainder of this chapter. First using a static notion of framing to underscore the presence of sound curriculum in the field, then breaking that frame in order to expand the notion of sound curriculum beyond its expression as talk and music, and then finally suggesting the possible merits of further exploration of sound curriculum that exceeds notions of framing as an apt metaphor for sound understandings.

Framing Sound Curriculum: Understanding Curriculum as Sound Texts

Although it has not been recognized in this fashion, there is history of scholarship in the field of curriculum studies that can be framed as “sound curriculum.” Sound curriculum is evident not only in aesthetic and artistic discussions of knowledge and meaning-making but also in relatively commonplace examinations that regard both the daily life of schools and the norms and values that contextualize those daily interactions. Specifically, sound curriculum is most often evident as talk and, in decreasing frequency, as music and sound.

Sound Curriculum, Organized and Texted

In curriculum studies, sound is nearly always organized and texted. There is a continuing debate over the definitions of how the organization of sounds is most clearly enunciated and the ramifications of those definitional categorizations. I use the terms “organized” and “sound” here to refer to the intentional ordering of pitches, tones, and rhythms that are most often manifest as what is more conventionally referred to as “music” and “talk.” By texted I am referring to both the action and the idea that aurally perceived events can be represented notationally as some form of text, from the written word to graphic notations of musical ideas (for example, Oliveros, 2013; Sauer, 2009).

This tendency is due in no small part to the ways in which curriculum is often conceptualized. Practically, there are difficulties in representing the kinaesthetic and aural aspects of dance and music as text, be they virtual or physical. However, conversely, there is an emphasis on curriculum-as-text (e.g., Morris, 1999; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995) that also often surfaces in studies at the intersection of the arts and curriculum (e.g., Dimitriadis, 2009; Springgay, 2002). Such framing is not surprising as it reflects the “literary turn” in the social sciences (e.g., post-colonial, post-modern, and post-structural discourses) that construct contexts and human interactions as “big T” Texts and little “t” texts. This allows ideas and actions to be deconstructed and otherwise critically examined the same way in which one approaches literal texts, a possibility as common in aesthetic and artistic curriculum as it is in the rest of the field.

Marla Morris’ (1999) Curriculum as Musical Text is a case in point. Morris writes eloquently of the interwoven layers of her musical past, curriculum present and future, and the modes that serve as the structures she negotiates as she makes explicit the notes she sounds through her improvising lines of connectivity. She does so by writing about music as curriculum as text: music as Western art music and constructions of musicianship within a comparatively static Western art music context. This combination invokes structuralist understandings of music that can be understood as antithetical to the rich narrative she weaves throughout the piece and the kinds of fluid postmodern constructions of meaning she evokes in her work (e.g., Dell’Antonio, 2004).

As with all the points central to my argument throughout this chapter, I am not arguing against constructing ideas and interactions as Text, as this allows the scholarly space for many powerful literary tools that can make oft-hidden habits of mind and practice explicit for examination and critique (e.g., Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995; Malewski, 2009; Tarc, 2015). However, privileging the visual can serve to miss important sensory knowledge and sound understandings (check, for example, Appelbaum, 2007, and Pinar & Irwin [Aoki], 2005). In addition, and somewhat ironically, post-modern, post-structural discourses...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Sound Curriculum: Breaking Frames and Opening Ears
• 2 Sounds as Educational Systems of Meaning
• 3 Resonance, Reverberation, and Scale: Towards a Sound Philosophy of Education
• 4 Policing Deafness: Everyday Sonic Oppression in Schools
• 5 Students as Improvisers: The Extra-ordinary Negotiations of Daily Life in Schools
• 6 Qualitative Sound Methods
• 7 Songs to Nowhere: When Critically Creative Processes Meet Impotent Curricular Products
• 8 Sound Art, Social Justice: Black Lives Matter
• 9 Becoming Attuned: Educational Deep Listening
• Index