Decades of Rebellion
By
Louise A. Gray
Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School

 

Content of Curriculum Unit

Narrative
Communication Standards
Arts and Humanities Standards
Sample Lessons 1-20 for grade five
Notes
Attachment 1-Prominent Figures of the Twenties and the Fifties
Bibliography
Other Media

 

In the Rockefeller report of 1977, Coming to our Senses: The Significance of the Arts for American Education, the panel affirmed three principles which were essential to their recommendations. These were the following:

1. The fundamental goals of American education can be realized only when the arts
become central to the individual’s learning experience, in or out of school and at every stage of life.

2. Educators at all levels must adopt the arts as a basic component of the curriculum Deserving parity with all other elements.

3. School programs in the arts should draw heavily upon all available resources in the community; the artists, the materials, the media, and the total environment-both natural and man-made1

Nineteen years later in 2001, the arts are still upon the fringes of American education. In his book, Strong Arts, Strong Schools: The Promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling, author Charles Fowler states, "The public does not always value the arts in the same way that they do science, mathematics, even history."2 He further states the importance of arts education by comparing American schools to a conduit, "for inducting youth into the established civilization and the arts are a distinctive, profound, and pervasive part of that civilization."3

Relating the arts to one another seems to be an effective method for connecting to the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute. Fowler asserts that, "by relating the arts to and making them part of the basic curriculum, they become the motivating energy of learning."5

When considering my participation in the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute, I reflected upon the various seminars that were being offered and how I could tie in or connect my subject area of music. The seminar titled "The 20’s: The Lost Generation seemed to be a particularly promising area for study.

As a young student, history and geography passed me by. I remember virtually little of what was presented to me by my teachers about the 1920’s and World War I. What is the significance of this era to me and what should be the importance of it to my students?

Making sense of the past involves establishing relationships between people, places, and events. In fact understanding relationships is one of the National Standards for Music Education. Content standard number 8 states this correlation as the following: "Understanding relationships between music, the other arts and disciplines outside the arts"; while content standard number 9 expresses," Understanding music in relation to history and culture." As if these were not sufficient evidence for the need for an interdisciplinary approach, this extract from the Curriculum Standards for Social Studies states "Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in that culture." states this correlation as the following:

Knowing these connections is important to one’s existence and place in the world. As E.D. Hirsch, Jr. says in his book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, "His pupils (the teacher’s) are not ignorant. They know a great deal. . .. the trouble is from the standpoint of their literacy and their ability to communicate with others in our culture, what they know is ephemeral and narrowly confined to their own generation."6 In addition, he adds, "To miss the opportunity of teaching young (and older) children the traditional materials of literate culture is a tragically wasteful mistake that deprives them of information they would continue to find useful later in life."7

Support for interdisciplinary education comes from another source, as well. "An interdisciplinary approach to music education aligns students’ natural tendencies to make sense of their experiences and integrate what they know into a working model or "big picture" of the world", said Janet R. Barrett in her article "Interdisciplinary Work and Musical Integrity".8

I am a strong advocate of interdisciplinary learning. As a music educator, I realize that learning in my discipline is strengthened and enhanced by the connections made to other subject areas. As Arthur K. Ellis and Jeffrey T. Fouts explain in their article "Interdisciplinary Curriculum:The Research Base", "Progressive education philosophy, which is the main theoretical basis of interdisciplinary curriculum, is a child-centered approach to learning that places great emphasis on creativity, activities, ‘naturalistic’ learning , real world outcomes, and above all, experience."9

When I first began studying the subject of the 1920’s and the Lost Generation, I considered how elementary students, in particular, those at grade five, could relate to this time period that is so distant from them. I decided that a good introductory project for students would be to interview someone in their families or a neighbor who may have been alive during this time. But I realized that there are few people who may have been alive during World War I. That being the case, I would, instead, have the students draw up a series of questions that they might pose to someone of that generation. I will also provide the students with a list of prominent individuals from that decade and brief biographical sketches of them, which students will read.

In this particular seminar The 1920’s:The Lost Generation, parallels will be drawn to a later decade in which many similarities occur-the 1950’s. Students will have less difficulty in locating people who were active during the 1950’s in order to interview them. Thumbnail biographies of well-known individuals from the 1950’s will also be read.

Study in film is another method by which students might become familiar with a particular time period and viewpoint. Upon viewing a film, one comes away from the experience with a strong visual sense of the culture, the music, dance, clothing, architecture, and so on. To familiarize the students with the decades of the 1920’s and the 1950’s, I will show two films. Initially, I considered presenting either of Charlie Chaplin’s films City Lights or Modern Times, both of which are silent with sound effects. I settled upon Modern Times, which is the story of Charlie, as the little tramp, working in a factory. Charlie represents the individual who is over-whelmed by mass-production and is de-humanized.

Films of the 1950’s provide a marked contrast to those of the 1920’s, since many of the movies are in color and all have sound. Rebel without a Cause shows the beat generation’s frustration and alienation. It was the first mainstream film to clearly depict a generation gap. Students of today will be able to identify with many of the emotions in this film and for these reasons I have selected this film to represent the 1950’s.

Now I would like to discuss the structure of this curriculum unit. As I had previously mentioned, I am taking an interdisciplinary approach to my curriculum design. In order to maximize the educational benefits of this project, the curriculum unit will be presented to fifth grade students during the course of an entire school year (2001-2002) within the context of the general music class. Students at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School typically have music class for one 45-minute period each week for the entire school year.

I have assembled a series of 20 lessons, 10 for the 1920’s and 10 for the 1950’s, featuring specific themes. Each lesson will focus on a particular composer, performer, artists, and author with exact works for each discipline. I will also provide special activities to accompany each lesson, which will expand and reinforces the various themes and concepts.

Each student will develop and maintain a portfolio during the course of this curriculum unit. In this portfolio they will place all of their assignments from this class. In addition to assignments, the portfolio will also house a journal in which students will record written responses to the music, art, and literature which are presented during each lesson.

Since the assignments and activities in this curriculum unit are so varied, I developed a rubric for assessment purposes. I have attached a copy of the rubric.

The procedure to follow for the presentation of each lesson is as follows. The lessons consists of a major work form the disciplines of music, visual art, and literature. The teacher will present each of the art works as students record their personal reactions in their journals. Discussion should ensue after the culmination of the three works. In addition to the presentation of the three disciplines, a project for completion is included.

Completion of this project may involve two or more class periods. For this reason, the design of this curriculum project is meant to encompass the entire school year.

As preparation for immersion into this unit, the students will view the two films Modern Times and Rebel without a Cause, as was mentioned earlier. There are other accompanying activities, such as, reading thumbnail biographical sketches of prominent people from the 1920’s and the 1950’s. The teacher will document the varied student activities by conducting interviews with students, recording conversations and class work with tape cassette recordings, videotape, and photography. At the end of the year, a program will be held featuring the chorus, instrumental students and fifth grade volunteers who were participants in this curriculum unit. In 1989 I had previously developed a curriculum unit while working for the National Arts Education Research Center at New York University. The National Arts Education Research Center was founded in 1987 by the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Department of Education. The unit that I developed there focused on contemporary music and also involved listening lessons with accompanying activities, such as, keeping a music listening journal composing music, participating in lectures which were given by guest speakers, visiting Scaife Gallery, designing and constructing an original musical instrument. Although painting, sculpture, architecture, film, literature, and so on were touched upon in the various lessons, they were not part and parcel of the lessons as they have been integrated in the Decades of Rebellion curriculum unit.

 

The following objectives are set for students who follow this course of study.
The students will:
1. become familiar with famous persons of the 1920’s and the 1950’s.

2. identify several features of the 1920’s and the 1950’s.

3. be able to do research and present an oral report to fellow students on a famous person of the 1920’s.

4. become familiar with important masterworks of the 1920’s and the 1950’s in music, arts, and children’s literature.

5. meet the Communications and Arts and Humanities Standards.

 

Communication Standards

1) All students use effective research and information management skills including locating primary and secondary sources of information with traditional and emerging library technologies.

2) All students read and use a variety of methods to make sense of various kinds complex text.

 

3) All students respond orally and in writing to information and ideas gained by reading narrative and informational texts and use the information and ideas to make decisions and solve problems.

4) All students write for a variety of purposes, including to narrate, inform, and persuade in all subject areas.

5) All students analyze and make critical judgments about all forms of communications, separating fact from opinion, recognizing propaganda, stereotypes and statements of bias, recognizing inconsistencies and judging the validity of evidence.

6) All students exchange information orally including understanding and giving spoken instructions, asking and answering questions appropriately, and promoting effective group communications.

7) All students listen to and understand complex oral messages and identify their purpose, structure, and use.

8) All students compose and make oral presentations for each academic area of study that are designed to persuade, inform, or describe.

9) All students communicate appropriately in business, work, and other applied situations.

 

Arts and Humanities Content Standards

1) All students describe meanings they find in various works form the visual and performing arts and literature on the basis of aesthetic understanding of the art form.

2) All students evaluate and respond critically to works from the visual and performing arts and literature of various individuals and cultures, showing that they understand important features of the works.

3) All students relate various works from the visual and performing arts and literature to the historical and cultural context within which they were created.

4) All students produce, perform, or exhibit their work in the visual arts, music, dance or theater, and describe the meaning their work has for them.

 

Lesson One

L’Histoire du Soldat Igor Stravinsky
Guernica Pablo Picasso
Gay Neck: The Story of a Pigeon Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Theme: War

Project: Using crayons, chalk, markers, or paint, the students will make a picture depicting war.

 

Lesson Two

Potato Head Blues Louis Armstrong
Black Iris Georgia O’Keefe
A Book of Americans Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet

Theme: Discovery

Project: Working in pairs, the students will interview each other.

Lesson Three

Take the "A" Train Duke Ellington
The City Fernand Leger
Bill Peet: An Autobiography Bill Peet

Theme: The changing city

Project: The students will write autobiographies.

 

Lesson Four

One O’Clock Jump Count Basie
Dance Henri Matisse
War Boy: A Country Childhood Michael Foreman

Theme: Freedom

Project: The students will perform a dance-the Charleston.

Lesson Five

Rhapsody in Blue George Gershwin
White Line No. 232 Kandinsky
Tom’s Midnight Garden Phillipa Pearce

Theme: Jazz

Project: The students will sing "God Bless the Child."

Lesson Six

Ionisation Edgar Varese
Nude Descending a Staircase Marcel Duchamp
The Mantle of Whistler Dorothy Parker

Theme: Rhythm and Abstraction

Project: The students will perform a percussion composition.

 

Lesson Seven

Symphony No. 1 Dmitri Shostakovich
Fallingwater Frank Lloyd Wright
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway

Theme: The three stages of life

Project: The students will become familiar with prominent figures of the 1920’s and the 1950’s.

 

Lesson Eight

The Ballad of Mack the Knife Kurt Weill
The Steerage Alfred Stieglitz
Sirens and Spies Janet Taylor Lisle

Theme: A Picture Tells A Story

Project: The students will cut a picture from a magazine or a newspaper and write a story about it.

 

Lesson Nine

Six Bagatelles for string quartet, Opus 9 Anton Webern
Twittering Machine Paul Klee
Homer Price and the Doughnut Machine Robert McCloskey

Theme: The Mechanical Age

Project: The student will design and construct a musical instrument from "found" objects.

Lesson Ten

Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16 Arnold Schoenberg
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow Piet Modrian
One Fat Summer Robert Lipsyte

Theme: Nature and Color

Project: The students will design a Mondrian-style grid by using construction paper.

Lesson Eleven

Blue Moon Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley 1&2 Andy Warhol
The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis

Theme: Elvis Presley as the essence of the 1950’s

Project: The students will sketch caricatures of famous people.

 

Lesson Twelve

West Side Story Leonard Bernstein
A Young Man and His Pregnant Wife Diane Arbus
The Outsiders S.E. Hinton

Theme: Life in the Streets

Project: The students will write a musical limerick.

 

Lesson Thirteen

Roll Over Beethoven Chuck Berry
Hush-a-Bye The Mystics
I Get Around The Beach Boys
Whaam Roy Lichtenstein
All of a Kind Family Sidney Taylor

Theme: 40’s + 50’s = 60’s

Project: Using newspaper and magazine photos, the students will make collages which express explosive emotions.

 

Lesson Fourteen

Free Jazz Ornette Coleman
One Jackson Pollock
Jazzonia Langston Hughes

Theme: Postwar explosions

Project: The students will do a painting in the style of Jackson Pollock.

Lesson Fifteen

Survivor from Warsaw Arnold Schoenberg
Siegfried Franz Kline
Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl Anne Frank

Theme: The Holocaust

Project: The students will keep a diary for a week.

Lesson Sixteen

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima K. Penderecki
Woman I W. DeKooning
Hiroshima No Pika Toshi Maruki

Theme: Innocent Victims

Project: The students will work in groups and write a narrative describing a natural outdoor scene, such as, a windy day, a thunderstorm, the first day of summer, etc. They will then choose and use various percussion instruments to add interest to the reading of the scene.

Lesson Seventeen

Hot Timbales Tito Puente
Figure with Meat Francis Bacon
The Gold Cadillac Mildred Taylor

Theme: Violence in Art

Project: The students will compose a simple eight measure percussion composition.

 

Lesson Eighteen


On the Corner Miles Davis
Estate Robert Rauschenberg
Poem #42 E.E. Cummings

Theme: From cool to funk

Project: The students will interview a person who was alive during the 1950’s.

Lesson Nineteen

Salt Peanuts Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie
Prevalence of Ritual Mysteries Romare Bearden
Returning Soldiers W.E.duBois

Theme: The spark of race

Project: The students will select a person either from the 1920’s or the 1950’s and write a two-page research report on that person and present it orally to their class.

Lesson Twenty

You Shook Me Muddy Waters
Killing Floor Howlin’ Wolf
Cubi Series David Smith
Thank You, Jackie Robinson Barbara Cohen

Theme: Blues and Steel

Project: The students will compose and perform lyrics for a simple blues progression.

 

Lists of Prominent People from the 1920’s and the 1950’s

1920’s                                                                                1950’s

Jane Addams                                                                          Allen Ginsberg

Andrew Carnegie                                                                  Martin Luther King

George Washington Carver                                                     Jack Kerouac

Charlie Chaplin                                                                      William Burroughs

Thomas A. Edison                                                                  Dwight Eisenhower

Helen Keller                                                                          Marilyn Monroe

Charles Lindberg                                                                    Joe Dimagio

Annie Oakley                                                                          James Dean

Babe Ruth                                                                          James Baldwin

Woodrow Wilson                                                                 W.E. du Bois

Wright Brothers                                                                  Woody Guthrie

Booker T. Washington                                                      Arthur Miller

Jim Thorpe                                                                      Joseph McCarthy

Randolph A Philip                                                              John F. Kennedy

Langston Hughes                                                                  Ralph Ellison

Zora Neale Hurston                                                          Paul Robeson

James Weldon Johnson                                                      Lucille Ball

Stephen Foster                                                                 Jonas Salk

Marie Curie                                                                  Lennie Bruce

W.E. duBois                                                                  Richard Nixon

 

 

Notes

1David Rockefeller, Coming to our senses: The Significance of the Arts for American Education, 248.

2Charles Fowler, Strong Arts, Strong Schools:The Promising Potiential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling,4.

3Ibid, 3.

4Ibid.,184.

5E.D.Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American needs to Know,7.

6Ibid., 113.

7Arthur K. Ellis and Jeffrey T. Fouts, Interdisiplinary Curriculum:The Research Base,22.

8Janet R. Barrett, "Interdisciplinary Work and Musical Integrity" ,27.

9Ellis, 22.

10Brent Wilson, The Quiet Evolution:Changing the Face of Arts Education,211.

 

 

Bibliography

Barrett, Janet R. "Interdisciplinary Work and Musical Integrity" Music Educators Journal, March 2001,.

Benet, Rosemary and Stephen Vincent. A Book of Americans, Holt, 1986.

Boggs, Joseph M. The Art of Watching Film 2nd edition . Mayfield Publishing Company, Palo Alto,1985.

Cahan, Susan and Kocur, Zoya, ed. Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education. New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York,1996.

Cohen, Barbara. Thank you, Jackie Robinson. Scholarship, 1974.

Cummings, E.E. 22 and 50 Poems. Liveright, New York, 2001.

Cowie, Peter. Seventy Years of Cinema. A.S.Barnes and Company, , New York,1969.

Cowie, Peter, ed. A Concise History of Cinema., Volume 1: Before 1940. A.S. Barnes and Company, New York,1971.

Cowie, Peter, ed. A Concise History of Cinema, Volume 2:Since 1940 A.S.Barnes and Company, New York,1971.

Eidvik, Charles. Cineliteracy:Film Among the Arts. Random House, New York,1978.

Ellis, K. Arthur and Fouts, Jeffrey. "Interdisciplinary Curriculum: The Research Base" Music Educators Journal, March 2001.

Ewen, David. All the Years of American Popular Music. Prentice-Hall, Englewood,1977. Cliffs.

Foreman, Michael. War Boy.ArcadePublishing Company, 1990.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl Hiding from the Nazis. Pocket Books, 1947.

Fowler, Charles. Strong Arts, Strong Schools:The Promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling Oxford University Press,New York,1996.

Giddens, Gary. Visions of Jazz:The First Century Oxford University Press,New York,1998.

Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz Oxford University Press, New York,1997.

Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles, 7th edition. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River,1999.

Haskell, Arnold L. The Wonderful World of Dance Doubleday and Company.,New York,1969.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. Scribner, New York, 1952.

Higonnet, R. Margaret, ed. Lines of Fire:Women Writers of World War I, Plume, 1999, New York.

Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders.Dell, 1967.

Hirsch, Jr. E.D. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Houghton Mifflin Company,Boston,1987.

Hughes, Robert. American Visions:The Epic History of Art in America. Alfred A. Knopf, New York,1997.

Lewis, Levering David, ed. Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Viking, New York, 1994.

Lewis, C.S. Chronicles of Narnia. Collier, 1950.

Lipson, Eden Ross. The New York Times Parent’s Guide to the Best Books for Children. Times Books, New York, 1991.

Lipsyte, Robert. One Fat Summer. Trophy, 1977.

Lisle, Janet Taylor, Sirens and Spies. Aladdin, 1985.

Linderman, Marlene, Gharbo. Art in the Elementary School, 6th edition.McGraw Hill, 1997, New York.

Maruki, Tashi. Hiroshima No Pika . Lee and Shepard, 1982

Mattil, Edward L. and Marzan, Betty. Meaning in Children’s Art Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliff, 1981.

McCloskey, Robert. Homer Price . Viking, New York, 1943.

Monaco, James. How to Read A Film Oxford University Press, 1977. New York.

Mukerji, Dhan Gopal. The Story of A Pigeon E.P. Dutton New York,1927.

Parker, Dorothy. Complete Stories. Penguin Books, New York. 1995

Patton, Sharon F. African-American Art. Oxford University Press, New York, 1998..

Pearce, Philippa. Tom’s Midnight Garden. Dell Yearling. 1958.

Peet, Bill. An Autobiography by Bill Peet. Houghton Mifflin. 1989.

Rockefeller, David, Coming to our Senses:The Significance of the Arts for American Education. McGraw-Hill, New York,1977.

Snyder, Sue. "Connection , Correlation and Integration" Music Educators Journal , March 2001.

Taylor, Mildred. The Gold Cadillac Bantam, 1987.

Taylor, Sidney. All of a kind Family. Dell Yearling. 1951.

Wachowiak, frank and Clements, Robert D. Emphasizing Art:A Qualitative Art Program for Elementary and Middle Schools, 6th edition, Addison Wesley, New York,1997.

World Book Millenium 2000 Edition, Volume 18, World Book, Inc. , Chicago, 2000.

Watson, Steven, The Birth of the Beat Generation:visionaries, rebels, and hipsters, 1944-1960. Pantheon Books, New York,1995.

Wiggins, Robert A. "Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Music Educators Concerns" Music Educators Journal, March 2001.

Wilson, Brent. The Quiet Evolution:Changing the Face of Arts Education. The Getty Education Institute for the Arts, Los Angeles,1997.

 

Web Sites

 

"The 1920’s" 4/25/01. Yahoo Internet.
http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.htm/

"Battlefields" 4/24/01. Yahoo Internet.
http:/www.hinchbk.cambs.sch.uk/btl/bt/moreresearch.html

"The Literature and Culture of the American 1950" 4/27/01. Yahoo Internet.
http://dept.english.upenn.edu~afilreis/50s/home.html

"TeAch-nology.com-The Web Portal for Educators."
www.teach-nology.com

 

 

 

Other Media

"Modern Times" CBS Box Videos, 1936.

"Rebel without a Cause" Warner Brothers, Los Angeles, CA., 1955.

"The Great Twenty-eight:Chuck Berry."

Universal City, CA.: MCA Records, 1984.

"Berg,Webern, Schoenberg:Orchestral Pieces."

Hamburg, Germany:Polydor International, 1987.

"Lotte Lenya/Kurt Weill:Berlin and American Theater Songs."

Germany:Polydor International, 1987.

"Pierre Boulez: Varese."

"Gershwin."

Los Angeles, CA.:CBS Records, 1985.

"Count Basie: The Complete Decca Recordings."

New York, New York:Decca Records, 1992.

"Duke Ellington."

New York, New York:RCA, 1986.

"Louis Armstrong:The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens."

New York, New York: Columbia, 1988.

"Howlin’ Wolf."

Universal City, CA: Chess/MCA, 1991.

"Muddy Waters."Universal City, CA.:Chess/MCA, 1989.

"Groovin’ High with Dizzy Gillespie."

Japan:Nippon Columbia Co., 1992

"Miles Davis on the Corner."

New York, New York:Columbia Records, 2000.

"Tito Puente:Top Percussion, Dance Mania."

Hambergen, Germany:Bear Family Records, 1957.

"Matrix 5." (Penderecki)

Poland:EMI Classics, 1994.

"Ornette Coleman:The Complete Atlantic Recordings."

Santa monica, CA.: Rhino Records, 1993.

"The Doo Wop Box."

Santa Monica, CA: Rhino Records, 1993.

"The Beach Boys:Good Vibrations."

Hollywood, CA: 1993.

"Symphonies, No. 1, op. 10:Dmitri Shostakovich."

Hamburg, Germany:Deutsche Grammophon, 1988.

"Kronos Quartet:Webern."

"Selections by Arnold Schoenberg."

"Leonard Bernstein Conducts West Side Story."

Hamburg, Germany:Deutsche Grammophon, 1985.