MENC began to prepare the music
education profession for the future during a time of change,
progress, and turmoil. It was against the backdrop of the change,
progress, and turmoil of the 1960s that the leadership of MENC
began to prepare the music education profession for the future.
The leadership recognized that a shallow attempt to cure symptoms
would not serve the organization for the long term. The first
step had to be nothing less than visionary, and it was. It was
the Tanglewood Symposium, held during two weeks in the summer
of 1967 at Tanglewood, Massachusetts, the summer home of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. MENC cosponsored the symposium with
the Berkshire Music Center, the Theodore Presser Foundation,
and the School of Fine and Applied Arts of Boston University.
Its purpose was to plan MENC’s future directions by defining
the role of music education in an evolving American society
that was dealing with the new realities of rapid social, economic,
and cultural change. The symposium brought together music educators
and representatives of business, industry, and government, and
it produced the Tanglewood Declaration, clearly the profession’s
most important vision statement of recent times. The declaration
made clear the imperative for the music education profession
to address itself to the musical needs of every constituency
in a nation that had only recently reached a fair degree of
consensus on civil rights, that was beginning to realize that
it would be more and more affected by rapidly developing technology,
and that had become painfully aware of the inadequacy of its
schools (see appendix
A, p.19).
The Goals and Objectives Project.
After the Tanglewood Symposium presented
its vision for the future, MENC had to find a way to realize
the vision. It did that with the Goals and Objectives (GO) Project
in 1969. The GO Project, led by Paul Lehman, identified two
critical responsibilities pertaining to future professional
needs: Those of MENC, and those of the profession in general.
The broad goal of MENC was to conduct programs and activities
to build a vital musical culture and an enlightened musical
public. The goals of the profession were to carry out comprehensive
music programs in all schools, to involve persons of all ages
in learning music, to support the quality preparation of teachers,
and to use the most effective music education techniques and
resources.
The GO Project identified thirty-five
objectives (see appendix B,
p. 20), from which the MENC National Executive Board selected
eight to receive priority treatment. These eight goals were
to:
1. lead in efforts to develop programs of music
instruction challenging to all students, whatever their socio-cultural
condition, and directed toward the needs of citizens in a
pluralistic society;
2. lead in the development of programs of study
that correlate performing, creating, and listening to music
and encompass a diversity of musical behavior;5
3. assist teachers in the identification of
musical behaviors relevant to the needs of their students;
4. advance the teaching of music of all periods,
styles, forms, and cultures through grade 6 and for a minimum
for two years beyond that level;
5. develop standards to ensure that all music
instruction is provided by teachers well prepared in music;
6. expand its programs to secure greater involvement
and commitment of student members;
7. assume leadership in the application of
significant new developments in curriculum, teaching-learning
patterns, evaluation, and related topics, to every area and
level of music teaching; and
8. lead in efforts to ensure that every school
system allocates sufficient staff, time, and funds to support
a comprehensive and excellent music program.6
The eight priority goals, along with other
of the thirty-five, were addressed by means of publications,
conference sessions, new committees and commissions, and administrative
actions, and by expanding MENC’s sphere of influence to
make it the umbrella organization for American music education.
MENC has seriously undertaken each of them. Some, however, are
not attainable because many factors are beyond the control of
MENC. When a solution to a problem looks promising, some condition
changes and the solution no longer fits the problem. This is
one of the difficulties of a dynamic organization as it plans
for the future.7 Nevertheless, the
ability of MENC to move forward dynamically and aggressively
at that particular time is remarkable. Mary Hoffman pointed
out in the Music Educators Journal in 1980, during her MENC
presidency, the particular difficulties the organization had
to deal with: several changes in MENC’s administrative
leadership; an ambitious, successful building fund drive; the
move to a new building in Reston, Virginia; and of particular
significance, the depressed world economy of the early 1970s
that resulted from the international oil crisis. The economy
had a profound effect on school music programs throughout the
country. Many were reduced and others completely discontinued.
The MENC leadership, undeterred by these roadblocks, forged
ahead with its ambitious and visionary plans.8
After the GO Project, MENC appointed
two commissions to begin implementing the recommendations. It
created the National Commission on Organizational Development
to recommend changes in the organization, structure, and function
of MENC, including all of its federated and affiliated units.
The second commission, the National Commission on Instruction,
was to plan, manage, and coordinate a wide variety of activities.
It published The School Music Program: Description and Standards,9
whose roots were in the earlier MENC source books of 1947 and
1955.10 The other objectives of
the GO Project were to be the responsibility of the Music Education
Research Council, the Publications Planning Committee, the public
relations program, and the Music Educators Journal.11
In fact, entire issues of MEJ were devoted to single topics
that originated in the Tanglewood Symposium and the GO Project.
They included youth music, electronic music, world musics, music
in urban education, and music in special education. National,
regional, and state conferences have offered numerous sessions
to suggest ideas and methods for practical approaches to fulfilling
the Tanglewood recommendations. The publications program expanded
significantly and offered many books and pamphlets in support
of the goals.
