PART TWO
ANALYSIS OF THE FILM
A Kindergarten Music Class in
Bethel
The class involves the same group of students as
were in Miss Kinderbelle’s
class, and the same room is used. The students are seen with a different
teacher, Mr. Music. He was a tall Anglo in his first year of teaching in Alaska
and
had responsibility for the music program of the school from kindergarten
through high school. His specialty was the high school band program and he
came to
the kindergarten class once a week (Collier, 1973: 88-89).
As in the beginning
of Miss Kinderbelle’s class, the students are seated
in two rows of chairs: boys in front and girls in back, but without the
intervening desk. As the film starts, the teacher is seated in front of the
group, but
soon he stands and remains standing for most of the remainder of the class.
Since he is tall, the boys in the front row have to tilt their heads far
back in order to follow him. Off to one side and moving around a great deal
is the
eighth boy mentioned as playing only a peripheral role in Miss Kinderbelle’s
class.
The teacher begins by asking what they would have
on a farm if they had a farm, leading up to the song, “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” This
analysis is not concerned directly with content or the verbal portion of
the classes,
but it might be noted that he gets no verbal reply to these questions,
a not surprising response considering the hundreds of miles of snowy tundra
surrounding
the school. The children are fidgety, twisting and turning in their seats.
Occasionally, some stand up and look around the room. None of these movements
are group-wide but rather represent individual behavior with no clear connection
to the actions of their classmates except in general character and pace.
There are brief occasions when they focus in on the teacher, who is quick
and linear
in his movements, though not as much as Mr. Principal in Kwethluk. The
peripheral eighth boy starts acting up for the camera at this point, making
faces and
going through contortions. The rest of the class does not pay any attention
to him, but Mr. Music comes over and firmly pushes him down in his seat
and admonishes him verbally and with hand gestures. The class starts to
sing “Old
MacDonald” and for a period focuses up at the teacher as he stands
with his hands in his pockets, singing and keeping time with nods of
his head (Illus.
95-96).
95 |
96 |
After a while, this unity begins to collapse as
the students again begin to look around the room and fidget in their seats.
At one point
the song changes
to one with a key line: “Little Peter Rabbit had a cold upon his
chest, and he rubbed it with camphorated oil” sung to the tune
of “John
Brown’s Body.” The teacher can be seen rubbing his chest
to emphasize this treatment.
Student attention continues to fluctuate,
and there is no synchronization of pace even though they are singing.
The boy who acted up for the camera
has been moved off to one side following more contortions. The scene
concludes shortly after he is moved.
While student attention toward
the teacher was sporadic compared to the Head Start class already described,
it was still more sustained
than in the earlier
session with Miss Kinderbelle. This may have been because there was
a more clearly defined group activity, singing. The improvement was only
relative,
however, and Mr. Music was unable to sustain the periods of attention
and involvement that he occasionally created.
The teacher followed “Little
Peter Rabbit” with a session of singing
the ABCs. The format changed somewhat as individual students were brought
forward to point out the letters on a chart and sing them. The coverage
starts with
the teacher and one of the boys standing by the alphabet chart, the
boy pointing and singing. Almost immediately the teacher grabs the
boy’s wrist and
moves it along the chart. There is no flow to this process, the teacher
and student being out of sync both in pace and style. The teacher
speeds up his
progress down the row of letters and introduces hand movements with
abrupt pauses at each letter which are so forceful that they bend
the chart back at
the point of impact. As in the earlier example of Miss Kinderbelle
manipulating the boy in the dancing scene, the student goes passive
and is dragged along
by the teacher. The boy’s shoulders and hips become discordant
in their relationship to his hand movements and his body is thrown
out of
balance. This
lack of balance and coordination is not altogether clear in the still
form of the film (Illus. 97-99).
A girl follows, and the teacher starts
her down the row and lets go of her arm to turn and encourage
the rest of the class. Her movements become
smoother
and more balanced: note, for example, in the still photo that her arm
and body are more closely linked than when the teacher was moving her (Illus.
100-106).
When she reaches “T” the teacher suddenly
grabs her wrist and brings her back one letter, the whole motion taking about
one
second,
and lets her
continue. In both this correcting movement and the earlier guidance
the
teacher’s
movements speeded up the girl’s movements, stretched her out
and threw her body off balance. Her movements and the teacher’s
are completely out of sync and there is very little flow in the interaction.
The teacher
interrupts her flow of movement but is not able to get her to match
his, or his to match
hers.
Throughout this lesson the rest of the class sings
along but with the
same irregular behavior described earlier: fidgeting, attention wandering,
rocking
back and forth but with no shared pattern to their actions.
The final
scene of the film shows the class first standing in front of their chairs
while the teacher starts to get them dancing and
then marching
in
a circle around the room to music from a record the teacher has
started to play.
The movement around the chairs is somewhat slower and there is
a bit more unison than in the similar activity with Miss Kinderbelle.
But the
film record
is
too brief to see whether or not this pattern is maintained and
what its characteristics are.
Both Mr. Music and Miss Kinderbelle consistently
cut across the flow of student movements, breaking up their involvement with
the
activities
they were engaged
in. These interruptions cannot have served to enhance the messages
that the two teachers were trying to convey when they attempted
these interactions
and most likely served to make all communications with the children
more difficult.
That the children were capable of developing flowing interactions
with each
other was demonstrated on two occasions by the girls, both times
with the teacher absent. With rare and momentary exceptions,
no such patterns
of flow
developed
during activities directed by the teachers and the general pattern
was one of chaotic, undirected non-verbal behavior which suggests
that the
general
process of education was far from what it might have been. It
is important that in neither case could the teachers be charged with
being lazy or
not trying, although they did not exhibit the intense effort
put forth by Mr.
Principal.
