By NAT HENTOFF
August 21, 2008

At Harvard's Graduate School of Education, Howard Gardner has long taught his theory of multiple intelligences to enable his students, when they enter their own classrooms, to understand and nurture these various strengths in the youngsters they teach. As explained by a Gardner practitioner, second-grade teacher Christine Passarella, in last fall's Adelphi University newsletter: "In the past, if you had linguistic intelligence, if you could read and write, you were smart. If you had mathematical and logical intelligence, you still got credit for that. But what if you had musical intelligence or what if you had kinetic intelligence? You see that with musicians and athletes. So Howard Gardner says there are gifts in all of us and it's up to us to teach to those."

Teaching in the Holliswood School, P.S. 178 in Jamaica Estates, Queens, she says, "I have worked on wonderful projects on artful thinking with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Children studied paintings not just about the artist and his style but to look at the relationships between the characters in the painting, and the setting. It's a way of developing thoughtful dispositions."

Ms. Passarella told me that she teaches "in a looped classroom that gave me two years to develop my program with the same children, starting in the first grade. I began mixing great works of art with classical music; and over time I introduced rock, the blues and jazz."

A childhood friend, blues guitarist Joey Leone, had at first introduced her to the music of John Coltrane, and when she played his recordings "the children were drawn to the range of feelings in the songs as I gave them the backgrounds of the compositions.

"'Alabama,' for example, was about Martin Luther King and racial discrimination; and while 'My Own True Love' concerned a man and a woman, John Coltrane's 'Love Supreme' expressed a love for humanity."

This reminded me that in one of my conversations with Coltrane he said he was searching for the sounds of what Buddhists call "Om," which he described as the universal essence of all of us in the universe. He also told me regretfully, "I'll never know what the listeners feel from my music, and that's too bad."

Ms. Passarella's second-grade students, she says, would have told him how moved they were by not only the ballads "but the more avant-garde recordings, such as 'Interstellar Space.'" She notes that, through her teaching, "I have discovered that young children have open, welcoming minds, and the more pure and emotional the music, the more they connect. Soon they were hooked on John Coltrane's music."

The children learned that Coltrane lived in Dix Hills -- a hamlet on Long Island not all that far from their school -- from 1964 to his death in 1967 (his family sold the home in 1972). And they were saddened to discover that the house -- where he composed "A Love Supreme" and all his last works -- had been in danger of being demolished by the real-estate developer who now owned it. But they and their teacher soon were excited by the news that a resident of Dix Hills, Steve Fulgoni, a longtime jazz enthusiast, had come to the rescue of the Coltrane home.

Mr. Fulgoni, at the time the historian for the Half Hollow Historical Association in the Dix Hills area, contacted the developer, who didn't know much about Coltrane but was quickly and extensively informed. He told Mr. Fulgoni that he would be willing to sell the property.

Starting what he calls a "grass-roots effort" to save the house -- aided by news coverage in New York City and Long Island newspapers and on television -- Mr. Fulgoni eventually persuaded the Town of Huntington, of which Dix Hills is a part, to make the building a local landmark; in 2005, the town bought the home from the developer. It has since been listed on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places -- with the ownership transferred to "Friends of the Coltrane Home," whose board includes Coltrane's son, Ravi; Ravi's wife, Kathleen Hennessy; and Mr. Fulgoni. Before her death, John Coltrane's widow, Alice, was an enthusiastic proponent of restoring the house.

But the structure, left untended for years, requires much fund raising to become what the Coltranes would like it to be -- "a place of learning" where, for example, Coltrane's Meditation Room would change into a multimedia room for schoolchildren. Contributions can be sent to Friends of the Coltrane Home, P.O. Box 395, Deer Park, N.Y., 11729 (www.the coltranehome.org).

Among the more dedicated recent fund-raisers were Ms. Passarella's second-graders. They engaged in raffles, cake sales and a book fair. Then, their teacher tells me, on May 23 of this year -- at a special assembly program in Coltrane's honor -- "they sang their original songs and choreographed ballroom dances." One was named "Chasin' the Train" (Trane was his nickname).

The school's Principal Diane Hobbes and Assistant Principal Patrick Klocek, in their review of Ms. Passarella's -- and her class's -- performance, said: "During the past few months, you have given your students a wealth of prior knowledge they could not have received anywhere. Throughout the assembly program, every single one of your students smiled from ear to ear and walked with their chests pushed out and their heads held high. They will never forget this day when their teacher made them feel larger than life."

The teacher says, with pleasure, that her second-graders "are now being called Kids for Coltrane." With their moving into the third grade, she will no longer be their teacher. But she plans to start a Kids for Coltrane Club once a week during lunch. "We will invite these students already familiar with his music and also new members."

She also will continue to share with her future students "the work of other jazz musicians, and other genres of music -- as well as connecting music to visual art" in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"I hear in John's music a direct message to me as a teacher, and that is to go on teaching children in a way that respects their individuality. His music tells children to be who they want to be, that it is OK to be different, it is OK to feel, and that we all need to be able to express who we are in our own way to find what writer and philosopher Joseph Campbell called 'following your bliss.'"

Coltrane, trying to put into words the actual experience of playing jazz, once said: "When you're playing with someone who really has something to say, even though they may otherwise be quite different in style, there's one thing that remains constant. And that is the tension of the experience, that electricity, that kind of feeling that is a lift kind of feeling. No matter where it happens, you know when that feeling comes upon you, and it makes you feel happy."

That kind of happiness can lift listeners too -- listeners of any age, including second-graders.

Mr. Hentoff writes about jazz for the Journal.

Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Now, that's Kool!!!!

I wish we'd had a program like that when I was growing up!!!





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paligap said:

Me, too....

(Hi, pali long time no talk to...hope you and family are doing OK)

cubic61052 said:

Hey!!!


Hope you all are doing fine, too!!




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Great article

You see this should be extremely revelatory to folks.
The moral of the story is to keep your kids away from present day radio and break out your most avant garde material.

Sun Ra all around...



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

A-MEN!

NuPwr319 said:

Ndeed!!!!




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paligap said:

Got room on the train for one mo?