New Dehli, India is home to the most crowded and treacherous streets in the world. A trip to the local market more closely resembles the movie Ford vs. Ferrari than it does Driving Miss Daisy. For many of the city's residents, the commute is as dangerous as it is maddening.
Picture it: Three-wheeled rickshaws whirl out of the roundabouts straight at you, packs of stray dogs dash into the road, and all the while you are merging with huge buses who feel no compunction to cede the right of way. To compound the problem, every side street has a slew of bicycle rickshaws, little taxis, fat Mercedes, and Uber drivers riveted to their screens.
So many people. So many cars. So many emotions and only ONE way to communicate. The ubiquitous car horn.
In a world such as this, the car horn is more than a courtesy reminder; it is a survival tool and a weapon. People use them regularly — to berate, to warn, and especially to get sluggish drivers to move. But it has all proved to be too much as decibel levels at certain high traveled intersections are routinely exceeding 120db's all day and night.
And then the Mumbai Police Department decided to do something about it.
Jeffery Gettlemen of the New York Times writes, "At certain vital intersections, they installed slightly sinister devices that detect horn noise. When people honked at red lights, which they often do to get other drivers ready to go, the lights stayed red. The police put up a few signs — 'Honk More, Wait More' — and while at first, not everyone understood what was happening, the signs had an impact."
Now, people on every corner of India are laughing about it,
while officials in other cities and countries are scrambling to replicate it.
Pretty clever, huh?
At first sight, the experiment seems ingenious. Reward the behavior you want and punish the ones you don't, a concept as old as time itself (and one my 10-year-old is still trying to master).
It's no different in schools. Whether you are looking at in-school suspension or AP Calc, the process is the same. Create a series of accolades and accountabilities to drive individual behavior. We see it in academics, discipline models, dress codes, attendance policies, etc...
But it's a little different in music classes. In music (education), there is an underlying set of principals that serve as both a motivator and accountability measure. It's called...
A sense of belonging.
This intrinsic sense of identity serves both as an accountability device and a personal incentive for excellence. It meets the child where they are at, embraces them and re-orients their academic compass to point towards a home rather than a series of numbers and coordinates (GPA's and class rankings).
It does all of this by instilling a personal pride that encourages students to:
Place a premium on the group identity while sacrificing their own individuality.
Seek group collaboration over personal success.
Raise their own (self) expectations while helping others to meet theirs.
Seek more significant challenges, not for personal gain but for personal growth.
See life through a wide-angle lens instead of a microscope.
Yes, our job as (music) educators is to prepare these young people for their life ahead. The unanswered and more critical question is, "Which life are we to prepare them for? The one they have, or the one they want?"
I would side for the latter.
Oh, as for the decibel meter in Mumbai? It turns out it doesn't work as well as they had hoped. After police removed the sign, the honking returned. What they learned was:
NO reward? NO change.
NO GOOD!
Have a great week!