By learn-ing to connect better with each otherand with others outside our profes-sion, we can spread the word of ourmost successful practices and reformmusic education.
Often people forget that music has always been a shared experience between people. The world doesn't need everyone to be the most talented as long as we are all able to do what we love as a group. Music doesn't need to be used to divide the talented from the less talented because the arts begin to suffer when that happens.
The program is part of an effort tomake opera relevant to elementaryand secondary students, accomplishedby showing students how to make themusic their own. As a result, thou-sands of young people across theUnited States have learned to createand produce their own operas.
This idea has spread since this article was written, and kids are taken to see operas as a field trip in order to grow their interest. In some cases, classes are given the opportunity to write stories in class and one lucky student will watch their work be transformed into an opera. While we are working on helping students find love for music again, once it stops being a required course students seem to stop taking it.
Perhaps an answer would be formusic educators to take a page fromcolleagues in history education, whoalso have a responsibility to preservethe past. They reformed the teachingof history away from names, dates,and places of historical events to anunderstanding of history’s subtexts,causes, and relevance to currentevents. Music educators, too, canuphold tradition while embracing thefuture.
When you split the class in two halves it seems as though you yield the best results, offer music history as a separate course. In doing so you're able to give students more of the music they love with less of the lessons teachers seem to struggle with when it comes to finding a balance between history and actual music; you also open the class to people who aren't necessarily music students but are interested in the different aspects of history even in topics they don't focus on. This way students are able to learn music they care about and recognize, and teachers are able to still teach about the value of older music and why it should still be appreciated.
Perhaps we must just admitthat music education did not ade-quately change with the changing cul-tures in music or in education.
People hate change, when you ask your parents for help with homework they often complain about how differently they were taught in comparison to how you were taught. The way music is taught has barely changed, and especially in classes like band and orchestra, you aren't allowed to start randomly one year without previous experience. When the class is viewed as much more exclusive than necessary it cuts even more students out of the loop because it's "how it's always been taught" and no one wants to make an adjustment to that.
Students perform music inschool that they rarely, if ever, hearoutside of school.
As a music student who has sung a variety of music, music classes get caught in an awkward limbo where pop music can be absolutely dreadful to sing in a choir setting, however often traditional choir pieces are often outdated and are being written less. I spent the past two years performing almost exclusively traditional madrigal singer music and while it was what I wanted, this happened entirely because it was one of the few programs my school's music program offered. Before I was singing more traditional music, I spent one miserable year singing showtunes, another medium of music that works well individually but can become painful when done by a large group. Often music teachers pick music that fits the group best because it helps show that music classes deserve to be taken and taught, but it comes at the expense of students singing music they don't recognize or have no interest in learning.
the arts in education isperceived as less valuable than other,more pragmatic subjects that provideskills directly related to the workforce.
As society becomes more and more just a way to get more people into the workforce without any room for passion. Once again, people don't view the arts as a valuable funding choice because the world of music is unnecessarily cutthroat. When the focus in the classroom is to pick your career path at such a young age students often miss out on the ability to explore classes they may have loved had they been not been pressured to only take academic or more "helpful" classes.
two root causes: the focus on readingand mathematics of the No Child Left BehindAct (NCLB) resulted in a shift of fundingaway from subjects such as music, andCalifornia’s budget crisis restricted funding topublic schools, leading to a reduction infunding for music education.
While both are important focuses are important, people are so fast to cut budgets for anything they don't deem as important. When you lose funding students start to lose the love of music they may have once had. What happens when music becomes a class issue because it can't be taught in public schools due to lack of funding, or the only way it gets taught is through private lessons?
There were 1,053 fewer music teachers,a decline of 26.7 percent
We don't view the arts as a reliable career choice. Whether your focus is musical or visual, people see it as risky and with no real payoff. With less music teachers comes less students taking music classes, and the cycle continues with people not realizing how valuable the arts are in curriculum.
student populationincreased by 5.8 percent, the percentage of allCalifornia public school students involved inmusic education courses fell by 50 percent.
As we as a society become more driven towards academic success, taking classes we enjoy tends to fall to the back burner. I've watched people who were in my music classes one year dropped them the next because they saw taking academic classes as more advantageous. With less students wanting to take these courses, funding falls, which leads to even less enrollment.
Formusic education to remain relevant and pro-vide value, it too must change with the times
I think that while often times music needs to continuously grow and change, people appreciate certain elements staying the same. People want to feel up to date and current but simultaneously love when someone plays a "classic" that they used to love. Music is relatively ageless, radio stations have channels dedicated to oldies for a reason, even if music feels the need to remain relevant, people gain brownie points by going back to old pieces.