Theodore Sizer (1932-2009)

CMW mourns the death of Ted Sizer, who, back in 1995, advised Sebastian (then a sophomore at Brown) that he should not be afraid to pursue such an outlandish idea as a neighborhood string quartet residency that combines music and music education with community building and social justice.

Dr. Sizer served as a member of CMW's advisory council, and was the featured speaker (along with Deborah Meier) at Education, Art, and Freedom: An Exploration of Philosophy and Pedagogy, the two-day symposium that CMW presented in May 2004.

"You need an adult community. You need friends, probably teachers who know the same kids, and you have to have a lot of time for “kid talk” because your impression through teaching the subject that you teach may be different than your colleague’s perception in the subject she teaches or the way the kid acts.

Good schools have multiple communities: there’s you, the teacher and your kids, and then there’s you, the teacher and the other teachers who teach the same class of kids. But there also has to be an adult culture. An adult culture should be full of critique. Not only of the adults’ work but also judgments about what’s going on with kids. Very few schools give time for that. That’s supposed to happen by osmosis. [laughter]"

Here is a link to a pdf containing his complete remarks from the 2004 symposium's Public Forum.

More about Ted Sizer's life and work here and here.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff