A MOUNTAIN VIEW: Getting in tune

This is my Father’s world,
and to my listening ears,
All nature sings
and round me rings
the music of the spheres.

This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In rustling grass,
I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

—Maltbie Babcock

By LIZA FIELD/Columnist

Now before the Christian Right has a heart-attack over the pagan “music of the spheres” reference, let’s be clear that Babcock was not an earth-worshiping idolater, but a person who could hear the divine in creation, and wrote a beloved hymn about it.
Meanwhile, I’m a person writing a column about it. That’s because Sky Preece of Fincastle recently e-mailed me about a blip in Virginia’s SOL lessons on “sound.” His friend teaches fifth-grade science and was dismayed by some inaccurate SOL definitions of “sound.”
For instance, said Preece, the SOLs state that “All vibrating objects produce sound.” He adds, “This is not true. Pendulums, swings, electrons, tuning forks on the moon don’t produce sound.”
Elsewhere, the SOL lesson states, “The strengthening of a sound wave is called resonance.” Again, he says, “This is not true. Resonance is simply something oscillating at its natural frequency.”
He lists several other inaccuracies and concludes, “This SOL is a hodgepodge of confused facts and ideas. These students need accuracy, not only so they can understand the subject at hand, but also to construct further understanding of the subject in the future. The ability to think and reason is jeopardized when facts and concepts are randomly assembled, inaccurate, contradictory and, therefore, incoherent.”
“These kids are just trying out their new brains,” he adds. “What they are exposed to will influence both their present understanding of things and the way their brains develop.”
Preece wondered what I thought as a teacher (but of English and Philosophy, I protested).  Being ill-versed in sound technology, and having taken only one physics course (astronomy, whose formulae were as devoid of meaningful sound to me as intergalactic space), I could not help the man make a case for correcting these Standards of Learning. (If you can, write me, and I’ll connect you soundlessly through cyberspace.)
While Preece was outraged by the inaccuracies, I personally felt dismayed by the lifeless, dry language encasing them like stiffened old mummy-wrappers.
Yes, it was typical, dessicated SOL language, through which anything that once held life is freeze-dried, sterilized and compartmentalized into separate, labeled containers devoid of anything damp, mysterious, cheerful or life-giving, and then packed down the throats of incarcerated children who are told, “This is called ‘sound’.” And “Yes: this tedious, intolerable, sawdusty collection of factoids, that exist separately from any live root of meaning, is called ‘Education.‘ Enjoy!”
I told Preece that what I regretted in the lesson was the completely-missed opportunity to marvel over “sound,” the symbolic wisdom amazingly embedded in the phenomenon of hearing, and the ability to relate this lesson to the student’s actual, particular life.
There likewise seemed no opportunity for the student to “respond” (which ability is surely the point of hearing, whether a bird-call or one’s conscience).
What about “vocation,” from the Latin “to call,” and the chance to help students realize that each soul comes into this world bearing gifts for our time? And that it’s important to listen—both outwardly and inwardly—to recognize what one has come here to say, and to hear what the universe is asking of one?
How about the truth that all of creation is full of divine calling, if only one pauses long enough from human noise, and turns off enough iPods and leaf-blowers to listen?
When I read the dry “sound” lessons being served up on the SOL buffet, I knew that many teachers with ears-to-hear, with living hearts and viable blood-vessels across the commonwealth, would try to reconstitute the lesson as best they could—maybe bring music or go out to hear the birds—if there were even time in the rushed fact-factory to spend listening.
But what was missing in the SOLs themselves, I knew, was absent from our entire culture: any understanding of the “symbolic” (or “meaning”) embedded in our universe. As literalistic empiricists, we simply aren’t trained to see any link between “outer” phenomenon and “inner” meaning. And so, just as we’ve suffered hearing-loss from our own noise (a symbol in itself), we’ve also grown deaf to the call of wisdom all around and within us.
As Cherokee children were traditionally taught to refine their hearing skills, both inner and outer, ancient peoples everywhere learned to hear the language of symbol—wind as spirit, water as life, “the heavens telling the glory of God.” Even without books, they learned to read all of life symbolically, as a text of divine wisdom.
I believe this wisdom is constantly offering messages for us, in this fresh, vivid manner, and that we could look at events in our time—our widespread fires, droughts, collapsing bridges, bridges-to-nowhere, housing crises—as loud, clear messages. But I’ll holler about that next week.
Liza Field lives, teaches and plants trees in Wytheville. Contact her at .