October 17, 2008

You Can't Sing with Your Mouth Shut

A year ago I started to study voice again after 35 years. In my teens and 20s I was a singer doing everything from jazz to musical comedy to opera. It was heady stuff and there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that I would do this as a career. Then came marriage and children and the need to abandon everything except how to help my daughter. She hated the sound of singing, anybody’s singing, because it hurt her ears. So 35 years ago I stopped all together. Every once in a while I’d try and sing a little, but it became harder and harder to do with strain in every part of my face, throat and neck. A year ago I realized how much singing had meant to me and how much I missed it. There is nothing to describe the sensation and other worldly experience of creating musical sounds from your body that express every emotion and thought you have but cannot find a way to say. I wanted to feel that again. So I found a voice teacher willing to tackle the carload of problems that 35 years of no singing caused. The biggest problem we found was that I locked my jaw and clenched my teeth. Last week she asked, “What in the world could have caused this? What did you do for the last 35 years?” Suddenly, I realized what it was. I’d been clenching my teeth and choking back fear and tears and desperation since the day my daughter was born. There was no time to cry. So you swallowed hard, gritted your teeth and did what had to be done. Then came special education and due process hearings. I began nonlawyer practice and have been a target ever since. Sitting in hearing rooms and courtrooms since 1978, judges and attorneys would heap insult and threat and innuendo on me like excrement, rubbing my face in feces so foul anybody else would choke to death. No matter what, no facial expression or reaction could be shown. For three decades I kept my mouth shut, tightening every muscle in my face and neck to remain calm and in control. The degree of abuse I took for 30 years has only one lasting remnant- I can’t sing with my mouth shut. But I’m working on it.

As we wait for the outcome of the presidential election, special education is on hold. Here are some summaries from the clipping file:

“It’s All About Teaching” (The New York Times, 9/21/08). The magazine section presented various opinions and case studies about teaching. One said that good teaching and good teachers will never be fashionable. “Good teachers perceive the world in alternative terms, and they push their students to test out these new, potentially enriching perspectives. Sometimes, they do so in ways that are, to say the least, peculiar.” My favorite line in the piece is “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you are uncool.” Many kinds of education are included- military, business, liberal arts, black colleges. Following orders, making money, learning how to think, connecting with your heritage, Each form creates a different result. No reference to colleges for the disabled is included.

Universal design (http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/classroom_scenarios.shtml) as first created in the IDEA reauthorization of 2004 is finally taking shape. It is supposed to be able to use technology and modified curriculum and assessments for “diverse” (read included special ed kids without the proper services) learners. Analogies are made between architecture for access and curriculum design to “enable all learners to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning.” Classroom scenarios show how the content and richness of the curriculum is watered down to the degree that there is no resemblance to the original. An initial goal for a high school history class was to” write an essay on the origins of the civil war.” Through universal design alterations, the goal becomes “All students will demonstrate an understanding of the origins of the civil war.” No writing is required. The subject content is diluted so that more children with fewer skills can be placed in general education classrooms. This is a sad commentary on where our education system is and where it is going.

Special Needs and a Long Commute (W. Hu,The New York Times, 10/13/08). More and more families are attempting to create special education boarding schools closer to where they live. Because of the cost of out-of-state placements, school districts and social service agencies are planning to add residential programs in their state in the next few years. In New York $200 million was spent on out-of-state placements in 2005.

Owning the Law (“Who Owns the Law? Arguments May Ensure”, N. Cohen, The New York Times, 9/29/08) Carl Malamud runs www.PublicResource.org. which provides the text of statutes and court decisions at no cost. These are not protected by copyright, which applies only when the law is contained within proprietary material.

It’s time to practice for the day and taking a while to clean up the crap left in my motor memory. The muscles still think they are on the front lines of battle and automatically brace for the onslaught when I ask them to perform. Little by little, though, they seem to understand that no missile has been launched, and that for the first time in a long time they are safe. Take a breath. Open your mouth. Drop your jaw. Sing!