Music education: It's curricular, stupid!

The demise of music education in our country has been forecast at least as long as that of the modern day orchestra.  The exception is that this truly seems to be the case.  Starting with California's infamous Proposition 13 and continuing through the current economic crisis, school music programs are being slowly dismantled across the country.  And we (the music educators of our nation) are honestly doing little about it.  In fact, much of what we do in the name of music education is probably contributing to its current state.

In many schools, music is treated as an extracurricular or co-curricular component; worse yet, in others it is deemed an "activity," and stuffed into an "activity period" during which students engage in student council, yearbook and a plethora of other non-academic pursuits.  The simple fact is that music must be curricular and its teacher/mentors must insist that the subject be treated as such.  We must teach it as such, dispensing with many of our "activities" and get to the business of teaching an important part of the curriculum.  We must assess and evaluate it as such.  Without any of these aspects we do not deserve to be worthy of curricular status.

There are many reasons that the ranks of car salesmen, fund-raising companies and travel services are filled with former music "educators."  Of course it is because so many of them engaged in these activities when they should have been spending valuable time teaching!  But instead, we spend our busy hours selling fruit or planning trips to far-away climes with the reasoning that the students deserve a "reward" for all of their hard work.  To me, nothing can be farther from the truth:  the music and nothing but the music needs to be reward in itself!

Frank Battisti, Conductor Emeritus of the wind ensemble at the New England Conservatory of Music, has stated, "We have got to say that music is essential to the development of every child. Not just the ones in my band, so if I get the budget I want, and the space I want, I'm perfectly happy...I'm NOT happy. I'm not happy till every child has quality music education, because for the full development of that child that's essential. Now, it's not essential that they have activities, they've got plenty of them!  So, we have got to make band programs... music education programs."

"Because what happens, is we have band programs...I mean there are millions and millions and millions of kids who've sat for how many years in band programs...who graduate from high school, and they're not... they don't love music. They might love a spectrum of music, but they would have loved that without the band program.  The idea of education is taking what a kid loves and [can] do, and expanding it, not taking away anything, but expanding it to a larger world, so that they can appreciate more, they can love more, they can experience more."

"We gotta get serious people, about making band programs, music programs. That means the focus is on helping every single child grow to understand, appreciate, and love music. Now that's a big, big job. And it's easier to dangle prizes in front of kids, so we can say "we're better than everyone else" because we won the trophy.  The issue in art is not being better than anybody else, it's about finding who you are, and being creative. There's no trophies for that, but there's great enrichment and great fulfillment from it."

Carnegie:  Got enough money?  No practice necessary!

It's not about being better than anybody else; it's not about winning marching band competitions or traveling to Carnegie Hall (anybody can do that if they have the money, but that's another post altogether).  It is about being creative; it is about discovering a part of the student that he/she may not have known existed.  Great music is within itself a tremendous reward.

I am continually saddened when I meet someone who unequivocably states, "I don't know anything about music."  Nearly everyone in this country has had some form of music education, even if it is limited to grades K-8, and yet we have a large number of people who have not been involved in performance "activities" tell us that they know nothing about music. 

I was more struck at an interview/audition just last week when I was approached by a saxophone player in the ensemble who told me that she had never like the Holst E-flat Suite until that evening.  The magnificent E-flat Suite!  A hallmark of the repertoire and undeniably among the favorite works of any ensemble I have ever led!  Of course, one has to simply realize that no one had ever taken the effort to actually teach this great work to that player (and probably countless others who have played in groups with her).  It is so much more than just getting all the notes, rhythms, dynamics, phrasing, etc. to fall in the right places.  For within a perfect performance may exist no education at all because there has been no great enrichment or fulfillment.

We don't need to make excuses for the importance of our discipline within the curriculum.  We don't need to sponsor activities, win trophies, or take trips to "sell" our programs.  All we need to do is teach the music.  It all sounds extremely easy.  In fact, it's not that hard.