A Vision Teacher Asked ...
Thoughts on Including Braille Music in Elementary Public School Education

Recently, a dedicated vision teacher posted a note on the Braillem listserv.
She asked whether we thought it was part of the vision teacher's job to see
that students learned braille music in elementary school. The following grew
out of my thoughts on how to respond.

It may be the right and obvious thing that everybody should learn to read
music whether or not they use it seriously or in the church choir. Certainly,
blind people can do much better in studying music if they know braille music.
The general opinion tells us that there are a lot of complicated issues about
the learning of braille music. Probably the issues aren't really that
complicated, but since people have been thinking of them as such for a long
time, we should at least take the time to go over the issues. I have been
running our National Resource center for blind Musicians for a long time and
have also gotten to know many of the mainstreamed public school students who
have come to our past seven Summer Institutes for Blind College-bound
Musicians. These are high school aged, generally. I have not had much
experience working with elementary school students, though I know some people
who have, and also know people who started braille music early at schools for
the blind. My ideas will be based on my personal experience with the older
students. I will present them in a series of what you may find to be
contradictory statements.

1. Parents are often told that braille music is too hard. The child is
learning grade Two, Textbook format, Nemeth, abacus, computer or Braille Lite,
mobility, daily living skills, plus trying to keep up in school. Why thrust
another system on her/him? Then the parents are told that the note C is
written as D and B is J, and how, for piano music, you have to read with one
hand and play with the other, and then put both hand parts together. It
sounds extremely daunting. Most of the braille problems mentioned are not
problems if the teacher knows what he is doing. I never thought of Nemeth as
another code, it was just the way we did arithmetic. I think if people were
taught right, people wouldn't be excited about the proposed Unified English
Braille Code. The C=D thing can be easily resolved in several ways, either by
thinking of d as do, or starting, as some people do, by teaching quarter notes
first, or by simply telling people, that's the way it is.

2. Before we had cassette machines, it was very frustrating trying to learn a
piano piece without braille and remembering what the teacher said about
fingering. Now people seem to do pretty well cassettes and with oral
dictation, at least in the early years.

3. Students who learn by listening often are wonderful musicians by the time
they get to my program, but are not ready to learn braille music. They don't
know the various note values and can't figure out what to do if they are
presented with a measure with different values, particularly dotted or tied
notes. The braille signs can be learned quickly enough, but without the
knowledge of how to interpret them, the braille is meaningless. By the time
we get them to the point of being able to interpret the values, the program is
over. More often than not, they go home and forget all they have learned. If
they are in school bands, one summer program isn't enough to get them reading
braille music fast enough for it to be of any use in keeping up with the
performance schedule. So they don't change their way of learning music, but
may go back to braille when they get to college. There is no doubt in my
mind, though, that a taste of braille music, even if they don't use it
immediately after they come home, sets them on the path of being able to learn
it when they are ready to.

4. My students who know braille music very well tell me that there are many
times when learning by ear is faster and more efficient when there is a lot to
learn in a short time. So using aural methods is not a bad skill to have.
Students need to use all the tools available to them. Sometimes people will
do most of the learning aurally, but if they have the braille score too, will
use it for quick reference and to make sure they have things right.

5. The older student who has learned through listening needs to make a
conscious decision to learn braille music, otherwise it will be a negative
experience. They don't want to be slowed down from something which may be
really the only liberating thing they have in their lives, and they put up
resistance if we ask them to switch from Beethoven to "Twinkle Twinkle", just
so they can work with things simple enough for them to be able to read. One
of my colleagues found the following in the writings of the composer Chopin,
which seems appropriate to the work one must decide to do to learn braille
music: "but not even a genius can write music
without being a master of all the tributary rules and formulae, for, curiously
enough, the greater the talent for anything the greater the work necessary for
perfecting it."

6. People who do short braille music workshops for children report that
students can learn basic braille signs in a very short time, and it can be
fun. But again, if they haven't learned basic music concepts from a good
teacher, it may not be fun.

7. I have had highly reputable teachers, who prepare sighted students for
conservatory, tell me that their blind student is right up there, and in fact
is extremely gifted. We then discover that the student barely knows his
scales. For some reason, the teacher is just blown away or in awe of having
the privilege of having a blind student and forgets about the standards. The
teachers may be afraid to comment on posture and appearance, and be afraid to
touch the student's hands to illustrate proper technique. Some teachers
physically manipulate students a little too forcibly without meaning to, which
makes the students shy away. The teacher feel that this is something best
left alone, resulting in improper technique and bad habits.

8. Second to vision teachers, school music teachers are the busiest people in
the world. I am developing an online course for teachers, but seriously
wonder whether anybody so busy would make the time to take it just to help one
student in a school.

9. Braille music must be practiced and worked with on a daily basis. Just as
you won't become a fluent speaker of a foreign language if someone introduces
you to vocabulary, working with a braille music specialist once every couple
of months isn't going to work either. It might work if the student is very
motivated. Motivation means practice and something to be motivated about, and
something that is fun. "We learn what we practice with meaning and
satisfaction."

10. The regular music teacher has to know what he is doing. He doesn't have
to know braille, because there are print books he can follow, but he has to
know the concepts and the difference between the print layout and the braille
format. It is important for the student eventually to learn about lines and
spaces on a staff and where C is on each clef, but if the teacher tries to
explain this first, before the student has had the experience of reading music
in braille, the concept won't make any sense at all.

11. It has been pointed out that knowing about clefs and which lines
represent C in each octave is actually a lot more complicated than braille,
with its linear format and octave marks--probably why people in the middle
ages liked tablature. The sighted student does seem to get it, though.

12. A student who understands the value of braille music can learn it at any
age and not be at a disadvantage. However, he has to have been taught the
other things--the meaning of values, the importance of posture and technique,
and why it is helpful to be able to read music in the first place.

So I guess my conclusions are basically that students should start when they
are ready and as circumstances permit. All people develop at a different
pace. We shouldn't deny people braille music because we think they would be
overwhelmed. But if we know that the other things going on in the students'
lives or school, or after-school activities, or transportation problems would
make the introduction of braille music overwhelming, there is not much harm in
waiting. While they wait, we can be sure they are getting good musical
basics. As far as I know, reading music is not considered as crucial as
language arts and arithmetic. Let them work at the pace that suits them.
In a perfect world, a music teacher would have information about braille music
and would have an awareness of resources and the do's and don'ts. In private
lessons, the teacher would have the materials, and would introduce the student
to the braille notes in almost the first lesson. The student would see the
teacher at least once a week. The student would also have all the materials
used in public school music classes, so he could work at the same pace as his
peers. I am not sure how realistic it is to think that such situations can be
arranged, or that every student would flourish in such an environment. Aside
from giving the teachers the awareness and materials, I would be thinking
about factors like these: that if music lessons start around the time of
first grade, that a first grader may not be able to read literary braille, or
not have developed enough tracking skills, until maybe the end of the school
year. Yes, maybe Tack-Tiles can be used to help students become familiar with
the notes early on, but Tack-tiles, and the electronic learning aids they
could be attached to, are not cheap. Usually the music teacher and the
braille teacher don't have time to communicate with each other, and the
braille teacher is really stretched as it is trying to get in enough time for
literary braille and the other skills, plus locating materials and being the
liaison between the child and the regular teachers so that the child can keep
up with anything in school. Plus, with all the progress made in computerized
braille translation, music materials are still not easily had, and it's hard
to find people who have time to prepare them. It will be interesting to see
what will happen if the proposed Instructional Materials act mandates that
music textbooks be put into braille. As an aside, I can't tell you how many
of the students we have trained to use braille music and to print their theory
assignments on the computer go to college without the music books they need
and Cannot afford the software we have taught them to use.

It would be great if all of you could get braille music into the other things
you do, and the student can handle it if it is not too overwhelming. But it
needs to be done in a systematic and consistent way, and the student needs to
view it as a fun an necessary part of the music process. To me, the best
thing you could do as vision teachers would be to establish a rapport with the
school music teacher and the student's private music teacher. Make sure the
teachers and parents understand that students must be expected to work,
practice, and perform by the same standards as the rest of the class. Make
sure the student learns about rhythm from clapping exercises and other
activities, learns simple theory concepts, and gets good habits of playing his
instrument, proper posture, and deportment. Understanding pitches doesn't
seem to be as much of a problem. Richard Taesch recommends that students
learn the note by their letter names, their solfedge names, and also by their
number in the scale (to help with learning intervals later.) But the rhythmic
values can't be emphasized enough. knowing how to turn explanations of simple
and complex rhythmic patterns into beats students can play themselves should
be mastered before braille. (When the patterns get complex enough, the
student will get so frustrated not seeing them written down that he will beg
for a system. There may be value in teaching students drum patterns from
braille first before introducing all the notes in the scale.

Then, sometime during the student's school life, someone can come in and do a
workshop for students and teachers. Those who have all the good foundations
in music would have fun, and then could decide how far they wanted to go with
music reading.

It is the duty of the teacher to make sure the student knows about, and is
equipped to use, any tools and resources available to deal with the present
situation most efficiently. Carpenters use hammers to drive in nails and
screwdrivers to tighten screws. It is possible in a pinch to drive in a nail
with the handle of a screwdriver, but it is not the safest or most efficient
way. Show the student what is out there, and give him or her the time to
practice using different tools so as not to get in the habit of automatically
deciding that one way is too hard. In the end, the student will be the one
determining what is best. Make sure the door is wide open to all the options.

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