Expressiveness, flow, and emotion, make music charming, appealing, and moving. Those manifestations are what make music an art. They are what make music musical. When music is stripped of its musicality in order to study it, we can lose the very aesthetic that makes it worthy of listening, performing, and studying (Bennett, 2016). The same is true for nearly any other school subject. Passion for a subject and desire to share that passion are likely what motivated us to become teachers. It should be no surprise, then, that the quality of the subject matter in our classrooms can influence our vitality for teaching and students’ vitality for learning. Sometimes it is our quest to teach information about our subject that diminishes the very qualities that inspire our passion for it. What a paradox: the way we teach a subject can cause students to lose interest in learning it! How does this happen? Prioritizing expressiveness and curiosity can revitalize us. When we strip enjoyment and fascination from learning and focus only on mechanics or information, we may be strangling interest and aesthetic appeal for our students and for ourselves. What can we do? • Create lessons that capture students’ interest in learning. Find “hooks” that catch their curiosity. • Immerse students in a subject’s applicability to and connections with their daily lives. • Infuse lessons with quirky or humorous samples of ways the subject can be understood or used. Passion for any subject, the musicality of it, can be ignited or extinguished in schools. Teaching subjects in lifeless ways can wear on our spirits. Let’s give ourselves permission to highlight aspects of our subjects we enjoy and commit ourselves to teaching those subjects with integrity. When we teach what we love and love what we teach, we are vibrant . . . and so is learning.
The Reexamination of 'Form of Knowledge' as School Subject-Matter: From the Viewpoint of M. Oakeshott