More on music... go fig

Today in my music education class we were discussing grading of a high school band/orchestra program. Sorry, no vocals, they do a separate class. Actually discussing is the wrong rule. More like the teacher imposing his tyrannical rule over us. Well, we also had a paper to turn in which I managed to disagree with him on a number of issues. So now I have to organize my thoughts a little better so I can defend what I say. Hence this post. Afterwards he read a few from the class and let us make comments about them(of course no comments on his thoughts). They all basically had some mixture of participation, attendance, and playing tests. This reinforces to me, the weakness that these programs have in teaching music.

First off, let me post the national standards of what students need to know about music...

1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
5. Reading and notating music.
6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
7. Evaluating music and music performances.
8. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture.

While I tend to agree it needs to be reformed to make it a little more clear and concise as Bennett Reimer has put it, since this is what is currently in use, I'll base my argument off that.

Take any typical orchestra, band, and chorus class. Relate which standards are mainly used by teachers in their full capacity. Standards 1 and 2. That's it. Yes there are parts of others that are used, but never to the extent that they should be learned. Some are lightly touched upon, or not at all. So the question remains, is it possible to teach all nine standards in a music class of these types. I would say it is possible, and would take an amazing teacher to be able to do that.

So how is it so restrictive, you ask? We are so focused as music educators on the performance. It is the easiest trap to fall into. This is the date of our performance, and we must know the music by that point like the back of our hands. The teacher then continues to teach everything those students need to know for the performance. What does this consist of? Usually the music is passed out, rehearsed and critiqued by the teacher. The teacher makes the necessary adjustments to get the students to sound the way she wants, do the performance, then start the process all over again. That's great, you've taught them how to play notes and listen to you telling them how to interpret it. Let's find out what has been left out. #3 Improvising... Well, no place in there did I see any improvising. Does this need to be left just to the jazz band, or soloist? Can it be taught in these classes though? How difficult would it be? #4 Composing and arranging... Students never get a chance to do this. Maybe the top music students will do this once in a while, but all students need to be able to do this. #5 Reading and notation... There is a reason I have put this in here. Do students learn to read music? Yes, they do. But to what extent? How many tuba players can read treble clef? How many flute players can read bass clef? How many vocalists memorize the music or follow the pitches around them and never actually learn to read a note? It's disappointing to me the number of music majors that enter college without a clue how to read music at a scale that I believe everyone should know, not just music majors. #6 Listening... This one may be used, depending on the teacher. Has your teacher ever told you to sit down with the music and find out for yourself what the composer has intended? Very few occasions in my case. Or can they just play what you tell them to? #7 Evaluating... This one too, may be used, again depending on the teacher. Our teacher did a little bit of this, but it was geared towards analyzing ourselves, never was it to go out and listen to different types of music and evaluate it. #8 Relation between arts, and outside of arts. I've only had the opportunity to really do this once, and that was at Governor's School for the Arts. A very selective setting, in which we can be exposed to this, yet again, it is rarely associated in the band orchestra setting. #9 Music in relation to history and culture. You may get a little of this, but certainly not in the music classroom. Maybe a humanities class.

So teachers end up falling into that trap of performances when so much more gets left out. Do we know why? It's easier. We've listened to music all our lives, we can critique music like it's nothing, especially a bunch of middle and high schoolers trying to learn how to play instruments. We know everything about the music, and instead of teaching about the music, we tell them how to play it. They get really good at imitating you and figuring out how to play what you want, and mindlessly blow through the song that they've repeated for the last 3 months. Another thing, can we tell them where that song came from, why the composer wrote it, what time period is it from, the style? We may actually have to research that stuff. Oh, no. All we know how to do is make music. What would happen in a band class if you told them to put up their instruments because we're going to study music? It frees us from the performance. The seven standards that are restricted by instruments can be taught. I wonder what a music educator would do if he had no performance to focus on... would they actually teach then... hmmm.

Man, I could go on for days about this. There's a lot of different views I wish I could explore, but there's so many of them and my day is already too full for me to sit here thinking about music when I should be practicing for my performance in March :P I guess I can fall into that trap as well.