Miss Miller explained why we carry the method across multiple grades. "Think of it as riding a bicycle. The movements involved in pedaling, steering and choosing a correct speed work best when they become automatic, but they can never be automatic when first learned. When Oaks students advance to traditional music notation-reading, their grounding in interval and rhythm will allow them to sight-read across multiple scales with a fraction of the effort they would have expended otherwise."

Method, Not Madness

Oaks staff across all subjects and grades employ (flexible) methods, intentionally, to instruct students consistent with their varied ages and maturities. Under Kent Young's leadership, Allegra Miller and Jennifer O'Bannon contribute their own passions and insights to improve the music curriculum.

Miss Miller wrote her senior thesis at New Saint Andrews college on the connections between the so-called Kodaly method and the Paideia approach to classical education.

Zoltan Kodaly  was an acclaimed 20th century Hungarian educator who integrated folk music into a curriculum designed to create a lifelong love and growing mastery of all forms of music within the nation's youth. Though different in approach, the Kodaly method, like the famous Suzuki method, enable young children to 'get' music directly, without infantilizing them.

While The Oaks does not follow the  Paideia model explicitly, we appreciate its contribution to the defense of classical education. In recent times, educators like Mortimer Adler have called for its recovery.

We encourage parents of these first-grade children (and any children) at our school to sit-in on the music classes led by Mr Young, Mrs O'Bannon and Ms Miller at any time. Just give the office a heads-up. It's great fun and you just might learn some Ti-Ti and Ta along the way.