There’s a great deal of talk about high expectations in education. But what happens when schools expect the impossible?
The first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring caused a riot. Audiences in 1913 were not prepared for music of such power, energy, and complexity, and reacted viscerally and loudly.
Stravinsky’s piece takes innocuous little folk-songs and transforms them into things elemental, dangerous, revolutionary. It’s one of the most difficult pieces in the orchestral repertoire, making huge demands on huge forces.
“The first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring caused a riot.”
An impossibly-high expectation, then, that any school orchestra could perform it. Perform it four times, once in one of the world’s great concert halls.
It’s what KES/KEHS Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra drawn from pupils of King Edward’s and King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham is doing this term. And it’s impossible.
Well actually, no. Quite possible, and sets an example every school could learn from.
How then? First culture, then time and space. There’s little children can’t do. As we get older, the watershed of impossibility is something which surrounds us, coming ever closer. Tell a child that they can, and very often they do. If you build a culture which supports and promotes this, then all things are possible.
The Rite ends with a “Sacrificial Dance”, fiendish in its rhythmic complexity. Break it down, however, into its component parts, then practise each; then slowly assemble them, one-by-one; and the orchestra could play it by the end of the first rehearsal.
“It’s too easy to overlook the potential of people around you.”
It’s a perfect model of teaching and learning. Balance this with feedback (the right kind) and encouragement (not too much) and there’s much we can all learn from music teachers.
The time and space continuum matters, too. Work like this needs a space, chairs, music stands, and instruments. We could not be more fortunate in our Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, but for 54 years rehearsed in our schools’ halls.
Time, too. Give staff time to prepare, and pupils time to rehearse. Our orchestra rehearses together for 90 minutes each week; in sections for a total of about three hours. There’s also a music residential trip, a three-day long rehearsal. Our co-curricular time is respected by the whole school — particularly by the brilliant directors of sport and drama, our deputy head, and their counterparts at KEHS.
“Tell a child that they can, and very often they do.”
We work together every day to make it possible for every pupil to do almost everything — look to their wellbeing and academic success, too. Time matters, and rehearsals are planned to the second. If there is a section of the orchestra not required in a rehearsal, or needed only briefly, then they are not required to be there, or do their work and are quickly sent away. In this we treat them as professionals. Expectations again.
There are resources beyond spaces and chairs. It’s too easy to overlook the potential of people around you, people you see every day. We have an excellent team of visiting teachers here. They knew about the project before anyone, have been there every step of the way.
There’s only so much any of us know, and to call on their experience, enthusiasm, and encouragement is a tremendous resource. They know the endpoint, are fully invested in its success, and are marvelling at what their pupils are now doing because of them. There are under-used people in every school. Perhaps our expectations should extend to them, too.
It’s wonderful to share, too, an education when you do it. The English and art department of both schools are busily creating away to the stimulus of the music, to the modernist aesthetic it represents, too. Eliot and Pound and Joyce are part of the work in English; cubism and abstract expressionism in art.
‘Ben in Year 13 said we should do the impossible, so we did’
We share beyond our gates, too. Six state primary schools are working with us. We’re training non-music-specialists in them to help their pupils to learn instrumental composition — composition based on the music of the Rite. A total of 180 of their pupils will come to us next month, perform their own Arrival of Spring to our orchestra; which will reciprocate with the Stravinsky. An illustrator, James Mayhew, is going be on stage with us, dancing brushes illustrating live the events of the ballet. We do this because we are lucky and we know how much we learn by sharing.
And whose impossible idea was all of this? This credit is due to Ben in year 13. He suggested it, told us how it might just be possible. The final lesson is this: listen to our pupils, they often have better ideas than do we.
So, because of our culture, time, and space; because we make the most of our people; because we share generously; and because of our impossibly high expectations, something truly remarkable is happening here. If you find yourself in Birmingham in March, come to Symphony Hall, hear our concert. Hear the truth that nothing is impossible for our pupils when the teachers get it right. Or should I say Rite.