Hey everyone:

I'm baaaacccckkkk! Did you miss me?

True, I never really left, but after a six-week summer break and a nine-week video series (re), the blog is back! It is the longest break from writing I have taken in my seventeen years since leaving the classroom.

In preparing for this week's post, I went back to where I left off. Not this past June... I went all the way back to March 1st, 2020, and the last thing I wrote before the world turned upside down.

I had forgotten what I wrote in the twenty months since I penned that article, so I re-read it. And honestly, the message might be more important now than when I first wrote it.

The post is a simple reminder that there is so much going right despite all that is going wrong.

So as a way of beginning anew, I start with the old. I hope that given all that you have experienced, you find it even more meaningful now.

The pandemic has changed all of us in good ways and in bad. And I am no different. I am not the same speaker, teacher, or person I was twenty months ago. I hope you have noticed the change. One thing that has not changed is my belief in the power of music and my mission to serve you.

With that being said...

If you have feedback, thoughts, ideas, topics, questions. or suggestions on how I can do that better, I remain ready, willing, and able to change. Just hit me back.

In the meantime, join me as I begin anew with where we last left off.

Enjoy!

Scott

February's No Good Month and Our Factfulness

February is a no good, awful month. It's cold, dark, and everyone I know is sick and tired. SICK AND TIRED OF FEBRUARY, THAT IS!

What? You think February is the month of love and celebrating our past presidents? Well, my kids hijacked my Valentine's Day (since when did kids get gifts from Cupid?), and as for Presidents, without my wallet in front of me, I can't name more than a handful.

It's not just February I'm tired of, this whole year has been a stinkbomb. 2020 has underwhelmed my expectations while overwhelming my delicate sensibilities, and I say we get a do-over!

You beg to differ? Oh, how sweet, you are a Pollyanna and see the good in everything? Well, in just seven weeks we have had:

Toxic politics.
An Impeachment trial.
Uncontrolled Fires in the Australian Outback.
The passing Kobe Bryant and his eight passengers.
Massive melting glaciers.
Crop eating locust swarms.
And the creme-de-la-creme, the virus in Europe.

And don't even get me started on the whole Prince Harry and Princess Meghan Brexit! That's BANANAS!

All of this tragedy has me sitting in a corner, sucking my thumb, and mumbling to myself in a way that my wife calls "deeply concerning."

Yes, as far as I can see, 2020 stinks!

But not everyone agrees with me. It turns out there is a family of well-regarded Nordic researchers that believe the world is not going to heck in a handbasket but that it is actually getting better. And they have facts to back it up.

In the landmark book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, authors, and TED Talks phenomenon, Hans, Ola, and Anna Rosling offer a radical new explanation of why we forgo positively oriented data in favor of negatively biased opinions.

According to the New York Times, Factfullness, "...reveal[s] the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of them and us) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse)."

As the author Rosling put it, "Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases."

To prove their point, they gave a ten-question test to tens of thousands of people about the state of affairs in the world today compared to our recent past, and the results were alarming. What was so troubling was the average person's complete lack of understanding about the world around them. In fact, our ineptitude was so laughable that they gave the same test to a group of chimps, and the chimps scored higher! CHIMPS!

You can take the test here.

It turns out that we modern humans are a dark lot and are wanton to believe the worst in people and our world, even when evidence to the contrary is as abundant as it is obvious.

For instance, did you know that in our world:

Literacy is at an all-time high?
Female educational levels are at an all-time high
Childhood vaccinations are at an all-time high?
80% of our world now has a liveable income?
80% of our world population lives in a first or second-world country?
In the last 20 years, the number of people living in poverty has been halved?
The number of deaths due to natural disasters has been halved?
There are fewer deaths due to global conflict than ever before?

Despite what politicians and pundits would have us believe, our schools, country, and planet are doing better than we give it credit. And the evidence supports it. EVEN THE CHIMPS KNEW THAT.

Yes, there are still very real and pressing concerns that we as a people face, but let us not forget that our ability to innovate, communicate, and collaborate is limitless and has served us well in dark times before.

I think what happens in the world also happens in music. I think sometimes we tend to see the bad in our profession instead of the good. We focus on our feelings instead of our facts. We see our jobs and students with the filter of what's not right instead of what is. We look for what we want and not what we have.

It might be human nature, but it's not natural. Remember, the CHIMPS were able to figure this stuff out.

If Dr. Rosling were here, he would remind us to take a breath, turn off the news, and go hang out with some kids. That should cheer us both up.

But he passed away last... February.

UGH. I need my blankie.

Have a great Febru (er...) March everyone!