I’m supposed to be writing a book chapter, but I got distracted by a quotation, sorry editors! The quotation in question is from Daniel Willingham, and it is this:
“Factual knowledge precedes skill”
Now I know I should provide a full reference, but I’ve moved away from my main computer, and I’m sitting in a comfy chair at my laptop at the moment, so if you want to look it up, please do! But my tangential thinking that stopped me writing a book chapter (where I would have had to reference it, sorry!) was “hold on, is that true in music education?”. And thus this blog…
So is it true in music education? Well, let me do some thinking out loud, as it were, in this blog, please.
When I taught KS3 music, I would often do something using keyboards (or guitars, same principle applies, only the chords are harder!), that we would learn, on the keyboard, chords, C, F, G, and Am (diff on guitar, obviously!); not all at once, but over time – we’d work up to all four of these chords.
Now, these are clearly chords I IV V VI in C major, and the triads in root position (keyboards now) involve the same shape, although VI is obviously a minor chord, but the same ‘play a note, miss a note, play a note…’ hand shape works. I see this as a skill. We’d learn the names of the chords, C, F, G, and A minor, and we’d play all sorts of music with them, and the pupils would have a go at composing their own music with them.
Now, where I am getting hung up is I don’t think ‘factual knowledge’ preceded that skill, unless the factual knowledge is ‘play a note, miss a note, play a note…’ etc to get the triad shapes. I certainly didn’t teach major scale theory, or the circle of 5ths, or notation other than guitar chord symbols to go with them, but all sorts of music was learned, and all sorts of music was composed.
So is this bad? Should ‘theory’ have been taught first? Am I equating ‘factual knowledge’ with ‘theory’? I’ve chosen the chord example as I think it fits with what a lot of KS3 teaching involves still today. Had I chosen singing, I feel that even less factual knowledge would have preceded the skills, maybe?
Even having written this, I’m still thinking about it. As in so many things, I am reminded of Mrs Curwen’s piano teaching maxims of 1886, particularly “Teach the thing before the sign”.
Here’s another bit of a Mrs Curwen book, which is apposite here. (Those aren’t my underlinings by the way, I was sent this.) *

I do like “every musical fact should reach the mind though the ear”. Nice! And no, that doesn’t mean JUST TELL ‘EM, or whatever that shouty meme was a few years ago, it’s about music being musical.
However, as with so many things, I need to think some more about it. And I also need to get back to that book chapter…
Sorry!
(*Gender specificity in the original)