aboutlearning

Several weeks ago, I watched the Soloist and it had a profound effect on me.
A newspaper columnist, Steve Lopez, discovers Nathaniel Ayers playing his old cello in an LA park and is struck by the beauty of his musical brilliance. He writes one column about Nathaniel and the response is overwhelming. Ayers is a schizophrenic music prodigy homeless on the streets of L.A. Lopez discovers that Nathaniel has attended Juilliard as a child musical prodigy before suffering a mental breakdown.  Music is the key to his sanity. Lopez, who never intended a prolonged involvement with Nathaniel, talks a music company into giving Nathaniel a cello to play in front of their store. In a scene, that for me was worth the price of the movie, Lopez gives the new cello to Nathaniel and sits on his haunches in an LA highway underpass and listens to Nathaniel try the beautiful instrument.
Lopez becomes a mentor and friend to Nathaniel, something he never intended. Now, he says, he can't imagine life without him. Through years of friendship and help, Lopez becomes an advocate for mental health and an expert on homelessness.

This is the kind of caring we need now in education reform. Where is the compassion for the uniqueness of each student in the plethora of current answers on how to fix education, Instead of more time, more skills and drills, more tests, more practice? Where and how are teachers trained to find the key to each child? Watching the interactions between Lopez and Nathaniel, Elliot Eisner’s  long ago words ring in my ears. “Each high school graduate, a idiosyncratic gourmet!” (Emeritus professor of Art and Education at Stamford University)
How can it be that people of good heart believe all teachers need to know is content; ignoring the deeper knowledge of how to engage students in the excitement of rigorous content as it impacts their lives? We must spend the majority of our efforts on teacher development and drop the insane notion that content knowledge and a wide-eyed belief that telling people what is important to know is all it takes. Educational change is not for the feint of heart. Besides explaining and organizing practice,  teachers must engage, conceptualize, image and expand learning, helping them transfer the learning into their  lives.

A line at the end of the movie as Lopez and Nathaniel sit at a performance of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “Sometimes the love of a friend can change the brain’s chemistry.” I would add to that, learning that not only informs but also makes meaning changes the brain.
 
The Soloist stars Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0821642/