(Music) Theory of Education Anonymous

If the English language were a playground, the word “education” would definitely be a bully. Big and scary sounding, education grabs unsuspecting pronouns by the collar and throws them up against the wall with their untied shoes kicking above the ground until they prove themselves worthy and education plops them down and lets them pass. This personification of the word seems ironic to me, seeing how education is actually a great, empowering and liberating thing. I suppose the connotations of rigid, impersonal instruction that go along with an institutionalized education give it that feeling, but there’s a much better way of educating than that. An individualized, flexible, and engaging education is really what I’m looking for, and there’s no better example of my ideal education than my music theory class.

Two swinging glass doors separate the bright, spacious, high-ceilinged lobby from the darker, shorter music wing, forming an almost invisible wall between the two. The lowering of light and headspace gives the corridor homey warmth, sort of like a comfortably safe cave. The music theory classroom seems like a completely different building accidentally included on the school’s blueprint; instead of desks and blackboards, there...