Making music together: a metaphor: rampant private practice can bring cacophony to our schools

Leadership, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Dennis R. Parker

There is a school of thought in the "new sciences" that suggests that metaphor is more important than mathematics and that the things you can count ultimately don't count. Whether or not you accept this "strong argument" for studying complex systems such as schools, there is something helpful -- even compelling -- about using metaphors to guide our work, indeed, our lives.

A metaphor I have recently found helpful in my work with underperforming schools is the school as a symphony orchestra. The principal might be considered the conductor. The staff would be the musicians, and the students and the parents, the audience. The musical performance, of course, is the daily educational experience.

If you arrive early enough at a concert, you will see the musicians trickle out onto the stage. Each begins tuning up and then warming up, first with scales and then by practicing passages from the fare of the day. Now, what strikes me about this scenario is the clash between two sets of facts.

On the one hand, the musicians on stage are extraordinarily talented and accomplished. They are playing some of the best instruments ever made. And the music they are practicing is some of the best ever written.

On the other hand, what do you hear during the warm-up? Right. Cacophony! If you listen selectively, you might be able to appreciate for a fleeting moment or two what a single musician is playing. But as a concert experience, you're anything but impressed. When the conductor enters, however, and taps on the podium with the baton, all players cease what they are doing. They attend to their individual parts and all begin on the same page at the same time.

What you don't find at a symphony concert is individual players who act out the following:

"Certainly not the Beethoven today! Perhaps an old favorite by Debussy, Mahler or even the Beatles. And the tempo ... no, no, let's not go that fast. I feel like a more leisurely pace. And who does that conductor think he is anyway? Why, I've been playing music much longer than he! Besides, half the audience doesn't know good music when they hear it. Might as well just play what I think is best."

One can imagine the disaster if just a few members of the orchestra one day decided to do their own thing. Yet, a version of this cacophony is what I often see in schools. For me, the term that captures the experience best is "rampant private practice."

For example, let's say -- for the sake of argument -- that the teachers in a given underperforming school are among the best in the profession, like the musicians in our orchestra. Let's further stipulate that the curriculum, textbooks and other materials and equipment are world-class quality, like the instruments and compositions at the symphony. However, unless everyone agrees to work together and subordinate at least some personal desires in order to achieve a synergy or an effect greater than the sum of all parts, we will get the status quo instead of accelerated learning, noise instead of music.

Many educators just do not realize how powerful they could be if they would hold hands and all agree to carry out a few powerful innovations each year. Whether it's fidelity to a name-brand research-based program or the implementation of a well-designed patchwork quilt of schoolwide reforms, teachers have the capacity to achieve two or more years growth per year for their students.

But a majority of the teachers at a school have to agree to give up at least some of their private practice for a greater good. And the conductor or principal must find a way to insist on everyone following the agreed-upon score.

Fortunately, a school does not have to function as tightly as a symphony orchestra to achieve great things; there is more latitude and interpretation possible. However, no great school has a principal who doesn't lead as well as monitor fidelity to a common set of can-do beliefs, a common motto and common teaching targets.

And like musicians, teachers in great schools have a kind of "third ear" to check for feedback on whether they are in tune, on the beat and contributing to an educational symphony in the life of each child ... or not.

Dennis R. Parker is a faculty member of the School of Management program at UCLA.