Learning from the inside out
"More words count less."
Lao Tzu
Tao te Ching
Physical education is about learning, we can all agree on that. But what’s your style? How do you learn new things? Well, that probably depends on your genes, your personal history and your preferences. It also depends on your culture.
Consider my experience as a beginning African drummer: My teacher’s name is Ibrahima and he’s the real thing, a true master drummer. He played with Stevie Wonder for awhile and used to be the head choreographer for the Senegal National Ballet. Not only is he a master drummer, he’s a dancer and singer as well. He’s physically educated, happy and healthy.
Once a week we gather for our drum class, the Americans seated with Ibrahima in a circle. Ibrahima greets us and lays down a pattern of tones, bass notes and slaps. He expects us to play back his “call” but instead, before the vibrations even settle out of the air, we reach for our notebooks. Almost in unison, every last one of us grabs for paper and pen, desperate to capture the pattern before it fades from memory.
Ibrahima watches this spectacle and breaks out into hysterical laughter. “What are you doing?” he asks in his French-Senegalese accent. Someone offers an explanation, but it goes nowhere fast. We tell him that we need to capture the song so that we can remember it, but he rejects our reasoning outright. “Stop writing,” he instructs bluntly. “That’s not going to help you. Learn it with your body. Learn it with your muscles. Learn it with your flesh. Trust your body. That’s how you learn it.” He shakes his head, astonished at the magnitude of our ignorance.
Embarrassed, we reluctantly put down our notebooks, although some of us continue to scribble furiously, ink on palms and forearms, desperate to secure the fleeting rhythm. Ibrahima laughs again and lays down the riff once more, demanding that we play it whether we’re ready or not. “Start playing,” he instructs. “You can figure it out once you’re in motion.”
outside in v. inside out
Obviously, we Westerners are out of our element here. Our learning methods just don’t fit. Raised to be note-takers and abstractionists, we feel compelled to write it all down. We don’t trust our bodies or our memory. And so, we try to capture the music in symbols, hoping that we can sort it all out later.
What we’re attempting, of course, is to use our conscious, rational, cognitive brains to instruct our tissue. Learn by abstraction and then direct the body how to perform. Explain it first, then execute the act. We believe in a top-down system of command-and-control. Or, to put it another way, we try to learn from the outside-in.
Ibrahima on the other hand, believes in learning from the inside-out. Start with the action and explain it later, if you must. Learn by doing. Learn it with your tissue, your flesh. Your muscle has memory for movement, so why not start there? Get some motion going so you’ll have something to work with. This is how drum and dance has been taught in Africa for hundreds of generations. No instruction manuals, no abstract theories, just lots and lots of authentic experience.
Ibrahima doesn’t know it, but his philosophy is backed up by recent discoveries in neuroscience. We now know that learning is best accomplished by physical action and engagement; in other words, by doing. There is simply no better way. Sensory and motor circuits adapt to how they are used, not by some conceptual model imposed from above. We learn movement by moving; everything else is a side-show.
Just move it
This inside-out learning philosophy isn’t just a product of African culture by the way. We also see it coming from Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Nike has the right slogan in “Just do It,” but scarcely anyone knows why. It sounds catchy and somehow right, but we miss the deeper message. Like Ibrahima, Nike suggests that action is the basis for physical learning.
In a way, “Just do it” is profoundly counter-cultural. Westerners are used to learning from the outside in. Our motto would be "Explain it first, then attempt it." Or, "Don't do it, yet." Get the abstractions right, then try to apply them. Become a knowledgeable expert, then impose your knowledge on the body.
But Africans, and Nike, advise the opposite. That is, start with the doing. Start with action. If necessary, bluff. You don’t have to know all about what you’re doing; you don’t have to know the origins and insertions of all the muscles, you don’t have to know the details of glucose metabolism, protein synthesis or biomechanics. Get some motion, then adjust it later. Act first, then explain it if you need to. Action is primal. Action is fundamental.
the body is a musical instrument
Musicians everywhere are united on this score. Theoretical abstractions don’t carry much weight in music education; it’s time-on-task that make all the difference. Learn to play by playing. Learn to move by moving. Keep at it. Practice, practice. Abstract knowledge is nice if you can get it, but it’s action that makes the musician.
Oddly, we have yet to realize this common ground between music and athletics. In our institutions, we segregate athletics and music into two entirely different departments, often located at different ends of campus. And of course, we demand that athletic and music teachers undertake entirely different courses of study so as to earn entirely different credentials.
But this isolation and segregation reveals a complete misunderstanding of physical learning. In fact, the musician and the athlete are engaged in a learning process that is far more similar than it is different. Ultimately, the only difference between the musician and the athlete is that the athlete works with big muscles of the butt, thighs and core, while the musician works with smaller muscles of fingers and arms. Both artists are after the same thing: quality movement that’s smooth, powerful and lively. Both are working the nervous system. Both are working sensation and motor feedback loops to produce highly coordinated, orchestrated movement.
In fact, as a thought experiment, let’s try putting the music teachers in charge of physical education. And, while we’re at it, let’s take the physical educators and put them in charge of music instruction. Yes, there would be a transition and there’d be some noise and wasted effort in the process, but ultimately everything would work out very nicely indeed. Musicians and coaches are both physical performance teachers after all.
So let’s get back to the fundamentals. Leave the abstractions for another day, another culture. Get some movement going, then work with that. Play the music, play the body, play the drum. It’s all the same thing.
