Federal Research Funding for Arts Education

Earlier today, I sent the following email to Arne Duncan, the head of the US Department of Education.

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From: Jim Plamondon
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1:59 PM
To: 'Arne Duncan'
Cc: 'Jonathan Levy'; 'Ruth Clark'; 'Tom Rudolph'; 'Wendy Free'; 'Michael McCaul'; 'Kay Bailey Hutchison'; 'John Cornyn'
Subject: Research Funding for Arts Education

Dear Mr. Duncan,

Is it the official policy of the Department of Education to continue to exclude arts education from its research initiatives?
I have copied Dr. Jonathan Levy, Program Officer for the Institute for Educational Sciences’ research programs into Education Technology and Cognition and Student Learning, on this email. According to the IES’ website, these programs remain focused – as they were under the Bush Administration – exclusively on “reading, writing, mathematics, or science,” thereby implicitly excluding the arts from any research funding.

I have also taken the liberty of copying my federal representatives – Michael McCaul, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and John Cornyn – so that they can be advised of this issue and, hopefully, its resolution.

I raise this question because I am aware of an innovation which has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of music education in the K-12 environment, thereby reducing costs while maintaining quality. The potential impact of the ideas underlying the innovation may have application to the STEM domains (Science, Technology, Engineering, and mathematics) currently targeted by the Department of Education’s research efforts. However, the test-case for these ideas is arts-focused, and hence, apparently, barred from consideration for the Department’s relevant research programs, including the IES’ Education Technology Program and the IES’s Cognition and Student Learning programs, which I will now discuss individually.

IES: Education Technology
Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Education Technology research initiatives?

Please allow me to suggest that this would be a significant oversight, for five reasons:
1. The arts appear to be bearing the brunt of state and local school budget cutbacks resulting from the current, ongoing economic crisis.
2. This places at risk the growth of the USA’s Creative Economy, which has been shown to be an important source of GDP growth and export revenue in recent decades.
3. Whereas music educators might not previously been willing to consider any changes to the technology of music education, the current crisis – which is putting their very livelihoods at risk – could make them more amenable to change. If positive change is the objective, now is a moment of great opportunity.
4. There exists at least one arts education technology, here in the USA, that has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of music education (see this paper: www.igetitmusic.com/papers/JIMS.pdf). If the potential of “JIMS” is borne out by research, then it could reduce the cost of music education by half, or more. This is exactly the kind of dramatic efficiency improvement that cash-strapped American schools desperately need.
5. In addition to reducing the cost of music education, the development of efficiency-improving arts technologies here in the USA can also drive the emergence of a new high-tech American export industry, thereby saving and creating American jobs.

There is not yet any solid proof that JIMS (or other JIMS-like arts education technologies) can indeed deliver efficiency improvements of this magnitude. At present, JIMS is just a “thought experiment.” However, there is a strong possibility that such benefits are possible.

I have taken the liberty of copying two experts in arts education – TI:ME’s Tom Rudolph and the College Board’s Wendy Free – who can attest to the potential benefits of JIMS-like systems. Determining whether this potential can be borne out in practice will require research – exactly the kind of research that the IES exists to fund…if, that is, the IES’ guidelines did not prohibit its funding research into arts education technology.

However, the broader question is not about JIMS, but rather is whether or not the IES will continue, under the Obama Administration, to exclude arts education technology from its Education Technology research funding program. JIMS is just one example of the kind of arts education technology that is being excluded from funding as a result of this inherited policy decision.

IES: Cognition and Student Learning
Likewise, is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Cognition and Student Learning research initiatives?

Please allow me to suggest that this would be a significant oversight. As an expert in the field of educational cognition, you are doubtless familiar with Cognitive Load Theory, which divides cognitive load into intrinsic, extraneous, and germane categories. An American expert on cognitive load theory, Ruth Clark (copied), co-author of Efficiency in Learning, has agreed in principle that “notational load” may be an important component of a subject’s “extraneous load,” and that by reducing the notational load of a given subject, its educational efficiency could be improved. (See the brief discussion of notational load appended below.) JIMS provides one example, in principle only (given that its efficiency benefits have not yet been proven by research), of how the seemingly-intrinsic load of an apparently-complex subject can be exposed as actually being extraneous by reducing its notational load.

Furthermore, past examples of improvements to notation have not only increased educational efficiency, but also enabled new discoveries that were literally “inconceivable” without the new notation. JIMS exhibits this potential also, through its enabling of the recent discovery of Dynamic Tonality.

Should JIMS prove to be effective at increasing the efficiency of music education, then much of the credit will go to its reduction of notational load. This would be an important result, with potential impact not only on the arts, but also on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These domains might see similar educational efficiency gains and new discoveries – discoveries that can save and create American jobs, increase American exports, and improve America’s quality of life…but only if the impact of “notational load” can be proven, which will require research currently blocked by the Department’s funding policies.

Conclusion
As the originator of JIMS, I obviously have an interest in seeing if its benefits will prove to be as significant as I believe they might be. However, as I’ve mentioned, this email is not really about JIMS; it’s about the apparent exclusion of arts education research from the Department of Education’s research funding, no matter how significant and wide-ranging the potential benefits of such research might be.

In closing, I will re-state my initial two questions, and pose a third:
1. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Education Technology research initiatives?
2. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education from the IES’ Cognition and Student Learning research initiatives?
3. If the answer to either or both of the above questions is “yes,” then what change in circumstances would need to be effected in order to make those answers “yes,” and what chain of events would be required to bring about that ultimate change in circumstances?

Hoping that this email will be received in the constructive manner in which it is offered, I am

Respectfully Yours,

Jim Plamondon
Austin, Texas

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Appendix: Notational Load
I define notational load as the cognitive load imposed on a learner by the notation in which a concept is expressed, rather than by the concept itself.

As examples of notational load, consider:

• Roman numerals vs. Arabic numerals: Arithmetic operations such as long division are much easier to teach, learn, and apply using Arabic numerals than Roman numerals. Indeed, the Romans’ numeric notation is often given as the main reason why the Romans contributed almost nothing to mathematics per se, whereas the Arabs made great advances in mathematics.
• Chinese writing vs. Korean writing: The use of Chinese ideograms for Korean writing restricted literacy to Korean elites until the invention of the Korean-specific Hangul writing system, which made it possible for “a bright Korean-speaking student to become literate in one day, and a slow student in ten.” The Cherokee-specific writing system produced a similar jump in literacy rates.
• The musical staff vs. neumes: Guido d’Arrezo’s invention of “sight-singing,” including the musical staff and solmization, is credited with reducing the training time of Church singers from ten years to “one, or at most two” – thus reducing the cost of music education by between 80% and 90% without sacrificing quality.

The development of other notational systems, such as calculus, the Periodic Table, and Feynman diagrams, have similarly contributed to significant increases in the efficiency of education.

Perhaps of even greater importance, the development of new notations has often led to new discoveries that were literally “inconceivable” using the previous notations, because notations invariably constrain, in addition to reflecting, patterns of thought. Examples include the Arabs’ use of their numerals in developing algebra and algorithms (the names of which reflect their Arabic roots), Mendeleev’s prediction of new elements based on “holes” in his Periodic Table, and Feynman’s use of his own diagrams in making major contributions to quantum mechanics.

Intrinsic or Extraneous?
Notational load seems to me to be an entirely extraneous load. In opposition to this position, one could argue that the mastery of a given domain’s traditional notation is required for communication with other professionals within that domain, and that this “communication conformity requirement” makes mastery of a domain’s traditional notation intrinsic. For example, without the ability to read traditional music notation, musicians cannot read the works of other composers.
Or…can they? Using modern music notation software, musicians can convert any given piece of written music to alternative, non-traditional notations such as guitar tab. These programs often support a “plug-in” architecture that enables the developers of alternative notations to retroactively upgrade the software to support new notations The potential availability of such notation-translation software, in any given domain, and the ease of distributing it over the Internet, significantly reduces the communication conformity requirement, supporting the claim that notational load is extraneous.

Changes in notation are not easy to effect in any domain, especially among tightly inter-connected professionals. However, a dramatic increase in learning efficiency may make it possible for non-professionals to rapidly gain knowledge previously restricted to a domain’s professionals. For example, more people in the USA now read Guitar Hero’s scrolling tablature than read traditional music notation, and are, as a result, learning more about music than they otherwise would.