Brent Batten: Classroom karaoke could teach kids lots of lessons

Why didn't someone think of this before?

Corkscrew Elementary second-grade teacher Joyce Cordell has proposed the idea under a grant program funded by the Collier County Education Foundation.

Cordell envisions using the karaoke machine to help students learn to speak to an audience, reading either pieces they've written or others' work. The karaoke machine would act as a teleprompter.

At just $100 for the machine, it is one of the more modest grant requests among the 100 or so listed at the Web site, http://www.educationforcollier.org/CWC/community/funds.

But the teacher doesn't go far enough.

Limiting the use of karaoke machine to reading and speaking fails to make use of its full potential.

For those unfamiliar with karaoke, it is the Japanese art of mangling perfectly good songs by subjecting them to the musical stylings of people who aren't musical and who have no style.

The karaoke machine is basically a microphone, speakers and a video screen. The words of a song appear on the screen, the music plays through the speakers and the singer, to use the term loosely, "sings" into the mike.

Karaoke is most often practiced in bars, where alcohol both inhibits the natural human aversion to humiliation and heightens one's capacity to sit idly by while strangers commit unspeakable acts of barbarism against songs that never did anything to hurt anyone.

But it can also be performed at parties, at home and now, perhaps, at school.

Valuable lessons are to be learned from karaoke.

First among them is that most people aren't meant to sing alone. Being in a chorus is fine. Singing the national anthem and "Happy Birthday" are harmless group activities that cover the individual's limitations while providing an outlet for the inner musician.

But children at an early age should learn that only a handful of them have any business singing to people, as opposed to singing with them.

If youngsters picked this up in the second grade, there would be far fewer people attempting "Unchained Melody" at Wednesday night "Drink-n-Drowns."

Also, a karaoke machine in the classroom would help bring an end to the age-old problem of lyric malaprops. Even at their worst, karaoke participants tend to get the lyrics right, because they're displayed right there on the screen for them.

Today's younger generation has a chance to discover early on that Jimi Hendrix did not ask to be excused so he could "kiss this guy."

Come the holidays, they won't think, "What fun it is to ride in a one horse soap and sleigh."

Nor will they grow up believing that The Beatles' Lady Madonna had "children ask her feet."

They'll know that although their country "'tis of thee," it is not "of the icing."

A world where people are taught not to sing solo in public and where those who do understand the words. It may be the best $100 a school ever spent.

Brent Batten is a columnist for the Naples Daily News. To contact Brent, e-mail him at bebatten@naplesnews.com.