Music for music's sake
Last night, I couldn't sleep, and so my mind thought about many different subjects last night. My thoughts went back to a girl I was talking to during the Orff class who just had finished an interview. She said that the interview went quite well, except for the last part. There were three people in the interview. A teacher, an involved parent, and the principal. The principal decided to ask about a scenario that was basically along the lines of what do you do with a student with bad math scores that doesn't want to do music. The girl gave her answer and the principal didn't like that answer and told her what she thought her answer should have been. Do you know what that answer was? You tell the student that if they do music your math scores will improve.
*Trueblat steps up on soapbox*
Come again?!? I find so many things wrong with this statement I don't know where to start. My first reaction being, so basically, you're telling me and the student that music is only important because it improves you're math skills. Gee, that's the reason I went through four years of college, practicing 3 hours a day, and learning everything I can about teaching music, so I can improve a kid's math scores?
Sorry, music is it's own subject, and should be treated as such. It should receive an equal amount of time as other subjects. To me, it's just as important to learn music as it is math and science. Teaching music for the sole purpose of supposedly improving scores in other areas is degrading to music and beyond that, is a farce. The correlation may be there, but there are other factors that are involved in that.
Sometimes I get sick of the way music has to be defended, providing all these petty little excuses about why we need to have music in our schools. We shouldn't need to use them. Do we provide reasons anymore about why we do math or science in our schools? No. We do them for math's or science's sake, not some lame petty excuse. Music should be the same way.
*steps off soapbox*
posted by Trueblat @ 10:16 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
It's so frustrating to have to defend and redefend music's value in the public schools. In other countries, music is only offered in community groups, but I really like the way the U.S. does it- free and in school. I especially like it because that's what I'm going to do. In many districts in Oregon, music programs face cuts and have to be defended almost every other year. How many people actually use calculus anyway? Compare that to how many people turn on their radios when they get in the car.
I (of course) have strong feelings about the importance of mathematics and about teaching mathematics. But isn't it just as valid to say that doing well in math could help you better appreciate music? It actually bothers me to think of math (and science) as the be-all-end-all. Sure, it's important in a technology-driven society, but that is not why I teach math. I teach math because (when taught well) it is beautiful and interesting, and because it helps us to think and reason in ways that can extend to other parts of our lives. The same attitude that makes someone suggest that the only reason music is important is to help someone learn mathematics, is also the attitude that turns mathematics classrooms into the drill-and-kill, pass the state test mathematics that ultimately drives most students to dislike, if not absolutely despise mathematics.
That's not what education is about. Yes, I think that my experience with music has probably contributed to my ability to do what I have done with my education. I think that what I have learned in years of music lessons and choirs and accompanying and classes has contributed to the way I pursue my studies in other areas. But that is not why I have pursued music on the side. I pursue music for its own merits, and am thrilled when it seeps into other areas of my life (in just the same way that I think math should be pursued for its own merits and then allowed to seep into other areas of life).
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