Richard Bell is the national executive
director of Young Audiences.
First I want to thank MENC and June Hinckley
for inviting me to join your deliberations this week. It has been
a very stimulating time. One of the great advantages of speaking
last is that you get to hear what everybody else has to say. It
also turns out to be the greatest disadvantage since you may find
that you do not have very much to say that has not already been
said. Fortunately, I have Dr. Yarbrough's paper to address, which
brings us an entirely new landscape to consider.
It is a truly visionary paper. This provocative,
thought-provoking survey of music education's future fulfills
its stated conviction, "that MENC's Vision 2020 should
be about dreaming, not substantiating an institutional relationship
between organizations and music makers, lovers and teachers"
(p. 207).
This clarion call, we are told, is intended
"to wake up our colleagues around the country"—to
let them know that the future reality will be "a placeless
society." (Do you remember when we used to talk about a
paperless society? I don't think it ever happened, but the challenges
and opportunities brought by technology have transformed our
lives.)
But a placeless society. Imagine that! Increasingly
driven and defined by technology, schools would be open round
the clock to all ages, teaching would focus on not only "the
acquisition of skills to work with a comprehensive repertoire
of music from the current popular and concert hall musics of
our own time, but also . . . the contemporary music practices
of the entire global village" (p. 197). Music would be
taught across the curriculum through "collaborations among
music teachers, their students, and experts worldwide"
(p. 198).
In this vision, the continually changing role
of the music educator will call on you to access, evaluate,
and interpret "massive amounts of information" that
will be created, often "without regard for quality or accuracy."
We are told that "the challenge for music educators will
be one of blending the social and academic aspects of music
learning toward the goals of both enjoyment and education,"
and one of "developing, monitoring, and facilitating the
private music experiences being produced via advances in technology"
(p. 195). Above all, music educators "must help students
and their parents understand and make the connection between
music and life," and become "accountable for making
music an important part of every person's life" (p. 199).
Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you today
to offer each and every one of you my congratulations—along
with this bottle of aspirin, which you may need in abundance
as you embark on this great adventure.
As I read Yarbrough's paper, I could not help
but recall a character in Tennessee Williams' play, Camino Real,
who set out across a vast, imponderable desert that Williams
called the "terra incognito." Knowing that he would
never return, he said, "Make voyages. Attempt them. There
is nothing else."
But whether the scenario envisioned by the
authors of this paper strikes you as prescient or preposterous
or just plain scary, there can be little doubt that if we fail
to anticipate the tidal wave of possibilities now bearing down
upon us, our role in shaping the aspirations and expectations
of our profession will surely be marginalized.
I want to reinforce and expand on two recurrent
themes contained in Yarbrough's paper. But first, let me remind
you that I am not a music educator. However, I have worked professionally
in the musical, theatrical, and educational arenas for most
of my life, beginning many years ago with Noah Greenberg's New
York Pro Musica, then passing though several university stints
and professional gigs. I finally settled down as the director
of the nation's leading provider of arts and education in-school
services, Young Audiences, which last year produced over 82,000
programs in music, dance, and theatre, and reached over seven
million students. So I speak to you today from the perspective
of the outsider looking in, albeit one whose nose has been pressed
firmly to the glass for the better part of a generation.
I should also share with you that I am not
a fence sitter regarding the philosophical debate referred to
early on in this paper where on the one hand "education
is seen as a private or personal good, with parents as consumers
of whatever public, private, or parochial education best suits
their needs. On the other side is the argument that public education
is provided for the common good, and that all children should
share some common experiences in common settings" (p. 194).
As a Queens, New York, boy in the 1950s and
'60s I was the beneficiary of an exceptionally fine public school
education. My experience in public schools along with my parents'
support is chiefly responsible for the professional life I enjoy
today, and so I admit to a passionate bias and commitment to
the egalitarian system of public education.
And in my view public education represents
one of the singular achievements in American society. I believe
its existence and success are worth striving and fighting for.
Among the many characteristics that justify saving and strengthening
the public education school system is its capacity to transform
failure into success. American public education is the only
system in the world that gives students multiple opportunities
to succeed even after repeated failures. In The Merchant of
Venice, William Shakespeare put it simply when he said, "the
quality of mercy is not strained."
Who can say how many lives have been turned
around, if not literally saved, because of this humane and pragmatic
characteristic? This is in contrast to countries throughout
the world where a single test or grade-point average can sometimes
determine a child's professional options for life. The opportunities
to succeed often turn on the efforts of a single teacher—one
who is just stubborn and caring enough to keep students from
falling between the cracks, which for many of our young people
have become chasms in urban and rural areas today. So, with
that as preamble, let me move on to the heart of the matter,
which as I see it centers on addressing the assertion that music
educators are teaching professionals whose command of the discipline
of music may no longer be sufficient to justify their presence
in schools.
Yarbrough and her colleagues quite rightly
assert that in the future the role of music educators must be
augmented to embrace the realities envisioned in this paper.
In my view, two areas among the many cited here offer the greatest
opportunities for ensuring a permanent and self-sustaining role
for music educators in the schools of the future.
The first area involves teaching across disciplines,
especially in elementary schools. The second involves using
music as a means of engendering greater understanding and tolerance
for the cultures that make up current and projected student
populations. Now if this use of music as a means to an end appears
overly pragmatic or causes concern about the intrinsic value
of music let me recall how music first found its way into public
education.
As many of you know, this occurred early in
the last century in Boston, where it was the general consensus
that the quality of singing in churches was so poor that only
the regular systematic study of music in schools could remedy
the situation. The evolution of the visual arts as a regular
part of public education fifty years later followed a similar
pattern, in order to prepare students to work in the factories
that designed and manufactured hats and shoes throughout New
England. Today, years after the hat and shoe factories have
closed, and choirs have long since supplanted the need for singing
congregations, music and art remain firmly ensconced in the
public schools.
As previous authors have noted so eloquently,
music is a language that is basic to the human condition, and
once having gained entrance, by whatever means and for whatever
reasons, music will inevitably be established for its intrinsic
value. I love listening to Sam Hope. Only a composer could construct
thoughts like that. One may not always understand or even agree
with his assertions, but I still love to listen and absorb them,
as one might reflect on a fine piece of music. His cautionary
note about the importance of teaching the distinctive characteristics
of Western European art music led me to recall one of my earliest
experiences in the theatre.
The first time I came to Florida, I was a
young actor. I played the title role in a play called Cross
and Sword in St. Augustine. The play was about the founding
of St. Augustine. Does anybody know who founded St. Augustine,
the first settlement in the New World? It was Pedro Menendez
de Alvilez. I played Pedro and I was a dedicated Method actor
at that time. For those of you who do not know what the Method
is, a simplistic definition is that as an actor you work from
the inside out, rather than from the outside in. In other words,
you have to find your motivation in order to say a line.
Well, as part of my research, I visited the
local wax museum where they actually had a statue of Pedro.
And to my shock and dismay, and after months of preparation,
I found that Pedro Menendez was about five feet tall. And I
could not get that thought out of my mind. I had prepared for
the past two months, and in my mind, he was tall— probably
very tall, just like me.
So on opening night in an outdoor amphitheater
filled with two thousand people, I entered my first scene of
the play as Pedro Menendez having just come ashore, and there
waiting angrily are literally a hundred natives and their leader,
Chief Oriba, who has a long speech that goes on for two pages.
And any of you who know Paul Green's plays know that his work
does go on. I had an even longer speech in response that began,
"I am Pedro Menendez de Avilez, king of the western seas"
etc., etc., for another two pages. And so, the Chief finished
his part and he said, "Now, who are you?" and I said,
"I am . . ." and I thought of that little man in the
museum and for the life of me I could not think of my name.
And you should have seen the Chief's eyes. They bugged out!
He couldn't help me. What could he do, tell me my name?
So, in desperation after what to me seemed
like hours but what I understand was only about fifteen seconds,
but that's hours on stage, I stammered "I am . . . I am
. . . " And I turned to my right and there was my trusted
lieutenant, Lt. Alvarez, and so I said, "Lt. Alvarez."
It was the only name I could think of. Now the fact that he
was blonde and had just finished a scene with his lover and
therefore was firmly planted in the audience's mind, meant nothing
to me. I had to have a name.
Now, what could the audience have thought
of Pedro? Either they were dealing with a schizophrenic who
has lost all sense of reality or this is a very clever ploy
by a general who is destined to rule all of Florida. The end
of this story (and the point of it) is that after the performance,
some friends came backstage and, of course, I was really despondent.
And they said, "It was terrific. It was great." You
know how people always do. And I said, "But what about
the part when I couldn't come up with my own name?"
And, you know, they did not even notice. They
had not even realized what had occurred. It was the first scene
of the play. The audience was shuffling their programs, they
were looking after the kids, eating popcorn. They were doing
all the things that audiences do, so that excruciating moment
just passed them by.
You see, the play is the thing, music is the
thing. We will never lose that no matter what other subjects
we focus on. Never be afraid of that. We will never forget our
name.
Today and in the future, music specialists
will be expected to use technology and hands-on professional
development to connect students, classroom teachers, and the
cultural community to the study of music, and to improve teaching
and learning across the curriculum. Of course, this will create
a conundrum of time and budgetary constraints, but these challenges
can and will be addressed school by school, district by district,
and teacher by teacher.
Unfortunately, the commitment of parents and
communities in general to the study of music in schools is fragile.
For the most part, the public perceives instruction as a necessary
component of young people's education only if a student is talented
and therefore potentially able to earn a living by pursuing
music as a vocation. Yet music should be taught to all students
for the same reason we teach math to all students. Not in the
expectation that every student will become a mathematician,
but rather because all students need basic math skills in their
daily lives to balance their checkbooks.
The same case is now being made for the arts,
but as Yarbrough notes, music educators will have to become
researchers and facilitators in order to meet the needs of students
and generalist teachers of the future. Classroom teachers, especially
in elementary schools, have long been aware of the value of
the arts, but they are often unsure how music can be used to
improve student performance in other subjects. Through the use
of new technologies and intensive professional development we
now have the means to begin to address this challenge. We must
provide generalist teachers with the skills and resources they
need to create thematic units of study that connect the core
subjects.
At this point, I am always asked, "Well,
give us an example of what you're talking about." It is
so hard to embrace interdisciplinary teaching, especially when
we know what we are doing inside the discipline. But there are
numerous examples.
Wynton Marsalis is an obvious choice. Every
one of his music education programs is a model of interdisciplinary
teaching. The last one I saw was about the life and music of
Dizzy Gillespie. It was a lesson in music; it was a lesson in
American history. It was a lesson in English, it was a lesson
in the life of an individual and of a culture, and it all happened
within about forty minutes.
Another example is a project called the Civil
War Tapestry, developed by Kathleen Gaffney of Arts Genesis.
Kathleen worked with a group of teachers and students in Wichita,
Kansas. Each student assumed the character of a person who lived
through the time of the Civil War, someone who was not famous,
but a person for whom he or she felt a special affinity. The
characters included farmers, slaves, and slave owners. And students
learned about the context of each of those people's lives. And
on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, each student wrote a
letter home, in character. They could just as easily have written
a song. Now that is interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
But the truth is, we have very little experience in doing it,
and it is very difficult to do well, and another truth is that
most of us are not going to be very good at it, especially the
first time.
I remember when I was in a production of Julius
Caesar, and I played a little-known character. I do not think
any of you would know this character. His name was Trebonius.
Trebonius had one line in Julius Caesar. It was not a distinguished
line. It was a line something like, "And so will I, thus
and so." It was one of those lines. Not even, "Hark,
the cannons roar."
Cassius had the lean and hungry look. Brutus,
the noble Brutus. Casca was the first one to stab Caesar. Trebonius—nothing.
But he was present, he was there. And so what did I do as the
actor who was given the part of Trebonius? I made up a new play
called Trebonius Unbound. And in this play, which ran parallel
to Julius Caesar, Trebonius was the center of everything. And
I constructed an entire life for him
Then, two weeks before the opening, the director
came to me, obviously not in the best of spirits and said, "Richard,
I'm sorry to let you know that you're no longer playing Trebonius."
And of course, I was shattered, and asked "Why?" Because
I had really worked on this role.
And he said, "You're too tall. You're
getting in the way of Caesar and Brutus and Cassius in the stabbing
scene. You're a little too tall for it." So instead, he
gave me another part. Metellus Cimber. Now Metellus Cimber has
no lines. He is an absolute zero. In fact, Hamlet is to Trebonius
what Trebonius is to Metellus Cimber.
Now, I am sure some of you know that Shakespeare's
theatre was an open stage with no curtains. So if you are on
stage at the end of a scene, your job as an actor is to clear
the bench or whatever scenery is on the stage so the next scene
can begin, and whoever is the lowest actor gets this job. Needless
to say, this task fell to me. Metellus Cimber is clearly the
least-defined character in the plav. And so out of that came
the new play, "Metellus Cimber, Thief of Rome." And
I can assure you, that at the end of that scene, I swooped down
and took off that bench with a flourish of my cloak that would
have put Count Dracula to shame.
The point is, we must not be afraid of what
we do not know. We must simply make it up. If you don't know
where you're going, every road will get you there. So be of
good cheer, do not be afraid of these challenges. They are doable.
The key to achieving this goal of interdisciplinary
teaching is to create peer-to-peer communication and resource
networks using the interactive capacities of the Internet and
the handson expertise of arts specialists. This approach offers
a new role for music educators and may also help restore instruction
in music because experience has taught us that interdisciplinary
teaching and learning through the arts will not occur in the
absence of serious arts study.
No other discipline lends itself to the use
of technology and the concept of making connections across the
curriculum so well as music and the arts. This is especially
so in a multicultural context. The proliferation of musical
genres and the explosion of languages and cultures in our schools
are circumstances that even the most confident and experienced
music teacher will find daunting. But high-speed transmission
of video and audio via the Internet and CD-ROM provide access
to a vast storehouse of musical experience that no one teacher
or artist can provide alone.
Of course there is no substitute for the human
touch, but technology and the live teaching experience are not
antithetical. Quite the contrary, technology gives us the means
to extend and transform teaching across cultures and the core
curriculum. But we cannot accomplish this alone, and we will
not succeed without the appropriate training or the necessary
resources, which brings me to one of the few caveats I have
with Yarbrough's paper. Although it provides many examples drawn
from the nearly three hundred music organizations listed on
the Internet search engine Yahoo.com, there is virtually no
mention as to how these organizations might help meet the challenges
and opportunities presented in this paper.
A cursory examination of programs offered
by arts providers in most areas of the country reveals a mix
of field trips to major museums and performing arts institutions;
in-school programs by opera, dance, and theatre companies; countless
offerings by emerging arts organizations; and a wide array of
programs presented by individual artists. These include introductory
and career-centered programs, short- and-long-term residencies,
broad-based curriculum integration, and comprehensive collaborations.
There are numerous examples of cities, including
New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, with robust arts-in-education
services but few full-time arts specialists. But there are also
many examples of cities and districts that have maintained and
strengthened instructional programs in the arts while simultaneously
building a value-added component with the cultural community.
Examples of these cities include Miami, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis
among large urban centers, and Columbus, Ohio, and Wichita,
Kansas, among mid-sized cities.
The role of artists and arts organizations
in the schools has evolved over the past fifty years. Today
these service providers represent a major resource to students
and teachers in schools throughout the country. Although there
are no reliable statistics to confirm the overall growth of
these programs, and there is virtually no formal assessment
of their value to student learning, clearly these programs are
increasing dramatically. Unfortunately, most of the arts community
is unaware of your deliberations concerning issues addressed
in this paper. They often do not perceive the vital stake they
have in the realization of your aspirations, nor do they understand
their own responsibility to support your efforts to strengthen
arts instruction. And for some of you I know the question arises
regarding the possibility that these programs may be perceived
as an adequate substitute for instruction in the arts. In my
experience, this concern, though understandable, is groundless.
It also represents the single greatest obstacle to developing
more productive working relationships among teachers and artists.
My second caveat also concerns an area of
omission. We are all familiar with the "chicken and egg"
cycles that invariably accompany substantial change in schools
(i.e., if we are given the resources, the desired outcomes can
be accomplished, but in order to receive the necessary resources,
we must first meet these outcomes). The cadre of music educators
teaching today at first may not be willing or able to embrace
the vision presented in this paper. And our authors do not suggest
how or where to begin. Quite rightly, they focus their powers
of prognostication on the why and what of the matters at hand.
It would be tempting for this reviewer to
sally forth at this point and call for a thorough examination
of the way in which we prepare prospective teachers and artists.
And clearly, there is much that could be said about the need
to establish closer working relationships among our preservice
schools of arts and schools of education where there is virtually
no interaction at present. But as our time is limited and since
I believe that "discretion is the better part of valor,"
I will simply note this area as one that sorely needs your further
consideration.
In closing, let me say that the development
of national standards in the arts, and the day-to-day efforts
of music educators in schools has given new impetus to the need
to define optimal working associations among educators and artists.
The public-private sector partnerships that are a natural outgrowth
of these collaborations may offer new opportunities to address
many of the issues raised in Yarbrough's paper.
The arts community looks to the leadership
of MENC and to music educators and your counterparts in the
visual arts, dance, and theatre, to help us define ways in which
we can support one another beyond advocacy for the value of
arts education for all students. And so I invite each of you
to work with your colleagues in the arts community, to help
make your vision of the future as inclusive as possible. And
as you proceed to the practical business of making these dreams
a reality, I urge you to bring those who reside just outside
your core constituency into the inner circle of your deliberations
so that eventually we can harness these resources to help achieve
a common vision of the future on behalf of the generations of
students and teachers to come.
"Make voyages.... Attempt them.
. . . There is nothing else."
