Peter
Webster, professor of music
education at Northwestern University, presented five challenges
to music education by the year 2020:
1. Global
access to people, classroom, and information may mean that
someone has to assume the role of information broker. Will
MENC be the information broker for music education? Will textbook
and music series publishers be the brokers?
2. Who will
take music lessons from whom if virtual music lessons are
technologically feasible from anyone, any place?
3. How do
we prepare music teachers for the ultimate in diversity: global
access to any culture and any musics? (Will cultural differences
be threatened?)
4. New interests
in electronic ensembles (real and virtual) that may erode
the interest in bands, orchestras, and choruses.
5. There
will be continued redefinition of the role of music teachers
as mentors to anyone.16
Webster's five challenges give
emphasis to the issues and concerns discussed in the first section
of this paper. They underscore the fact that a multitude of
choices will be available to students and teachers in the coming
century. Given these challenges (combined with the increasing
number of well-elderly), music educators in the schools will
need to consider ways to make their curricula such that it and
they, as teachers, provide a meaningful transition to music
participation in adult life. In keeping with the trend toward
collaboration and team teaching and learning in music, we might
insure meaningful transition by having our students assume the
role of the teacher. In doing so, they might develop a deep
commitment to and investment in the subject matter of music
that will continue into adulthood. Judith Jellison says,
What would happen if, in order to teach for transition, we
engaged students on a regular basis in activities that were
either identical or parallel to those that we perform as adults?
Imagine that, as an ongoing part of our music programs, we
had our older students select and learn a repertoire of songs
appropriate for younger students in our school. Imagine that
the older students sang for the younger ones for short periods
of time, on many occasions, in nonperforming settings, and
either in small groups or one on one. Would our older students
have more positive attitudes about singing, sing better, and
serve as positive role models for the younger children? Why
are most adults afraid to sing? Can't we fix that?
Let's imagine some other hypothetical possibilities. What
would happen if students in middle school and secondary school
served as public liaisons and advocates for community performing
groups and collaborated, interacted or performed with the
adult members on a regular basis? Would this involvement serve
to increase participation in community performing organizations
or attendance at their concerns when these students became
adults?17
In addition, music educators will
need to reconsider certain barriers to music participation in
the schools that they have erected. These include (1) requirements
to participate in another ensemble in order to participate in
the ensemble of choice; for example, requiring participation
in marching band in order to participate in jazz ensemble; (2)
providing only one entry level to participation in instrumental
ensembles, that occurring in the fourth or fifth grade; (3)
providing only traditional ensemble (band, chorus, orchestra)
experiences in music after elementary school; and (4) failing
to teach for transfer of musical knowledge to adult life. In
an age characterized by an abundance of choices, we, as music
educators, must be mindful of the fact that our students will
make those choices whether we provide them or not. We should
open doors to music rather than shut them.
We need to examine and support
ways and materials for music instruction that encourage widespread
participation in music learning and that are easily adaptable
to multiple times, places, and environments. Music educators
must make the connection to "music in our lives."
We can do this by beginning early to show the role of music
in life through interdisciplinary approaches and by taking every
opportunity to show students how music of every genre impacts
daily living. This will require a thorough knowledge of the
communities in which we teach and a desire to make the connections
necessary between those communities and music.
Richard Zellner says it this way:
Now that we have convincing
research establishing that music is fundamental to the way we
learn, the way we feel and the way we develop as human beings,
why is music being systematically eliminated from the school
curriculum? Music education has not successfully made the connection
to "music in our lives." We must expand the definition
of music education, looking beyond schools for music learning,
and affirm that everyone is a musician. Until music educators
validate the music in the lives of our opinion leaders and political
leaders, music education will remain a fringe activity for a
chosen few.18
The music heard by most nonprofessional
musicians includes jazz, pop (Latino, rock, soul, rap), religious
music representing all sects, folk music of all countries, Broadway,
and Western European classical music. Perhaps our foremost question
should be: How might a music educator help a student make the
transitionfi4om music in the schools to music in life? First,
the music that we study must be the music that we will be able
to access now and throughout the rest of our lives. Randall
DeWitt, educational director at MARS
the Musician's Planet, says:
A common message I hear from
those who are taught by and/or associated with the music education
community is that they want to make more music and to make their
music. Often these are reasons given by students when they drop
music classes. It is not until a music learner leaves "school"
that he or she has the opportunity to make their music, and
to make more music, more often. Our challenge must be to outline
the structure of music learning beyond K-12 and, where possible,
explore relationships that can exist between schools and other
opportunities for music learning. 19
While it is important to recognize
that students value and want to play "their music,"
we must teach our students how to find out about unfamiliar
music. For example, the teacher's preparation for a music appreciation
course must include a thoughtful analysis of the students to
be taught. What musics will they be able to access after they
finish the course? If students live in a small town, they might
not be able to hear a symphony or attend an opera. However,
they will be able to listen to the radio, watch TV, and buy
CDs. Therefore, teaching them where and how to find the music
you have taught them is of primary importance. Teachers cannot
neglect their most important role, that of opening doors to
a musical heritage left to us by great musicians of the past,
but they must assume a new role, that of a bridge connecting
students to music of all genres.
Involving future teachers and
children in the public schools in program development using
educational technologies will teach them both the technologies
and the subject matter of the programs they are developing.
The success of such a venture must involve the cooperation and
expertise of the university faculty, teachers in the public
schools, children, parents, music merchants, and administrators.
The ideas will come from those in the trenches (teachers and
children) and those in the towers (professors and future teachers).
Support for the production phase of the development procession
must come from music merchants and national arts organizations.
Evaluation of the software and other program products must come
from consumers of them including teachers and children.20
While it is recognized that the goals of the music industry
and the goals of music educators are sometimes at odds with
one another, both can make a commitment to the realization of
the National Standards that may help us to unite for a greater
cause, the music education of our children.
Professional music educators must
realize that most of the students they teach will be future
consumers of music. A very few of these will be professional
musicians and teachers. A retired, highly successful choral
director commented that in his thirty years of teaching, only
one student had become a professional musician. However, he
proudly stated that many, many of his former students were continuing
to make music in their communities. Making music an integral
part of the lives of our students when they leave us must be
our first priority.
Jeffrey
Kimpton says:
While we all recognize the accomplishments
of MENC over the past 30 years since the first Tanglewood
document, the next 20 years represent change that will make
the previous 30 seem insignificant. The problem is that it
will challenge or change the institutional hierarchies that
MENC, school systems, and all organizations have created to
deal with issues and problems. The whole notion of place based
learning rather than "education" is the driving
force for new kinds of development in human capacity, collaborations
and the unlimited ability of millions of great minds to be
allowed to further new learning (knowledge). It changes the
concept of place, requires us to think about how we shape
content in new ways for new learners in radically different
contexts.
Yes, music learning will probably take
place in some schools. But we have to recognize that it will
also take place - in a host of other places, by "teachers"
who won't or can't be certified, by processes that are not
researched or analyzed, in ways increasingly more individual,
and challenging the notion of aesthetic experience. Even given
the use of technology, there are major issues facing those
without access to technology that further stratifies music
learning.
MENC's Vision 2020 should be about
dreaming, not substantiating an institutional relationship
between organizations and music makers, lovers and teachers.
If we are to invent the future, we can respect the past but
need to wake up our colleagues around the country that the
future will be largely what they choose to make of it. Hopefully
this document will make them think about that in bold, real
ways.21
Thus, our goals as music educators
should be to prepare students for a lifetime of music, to reach
more people by expanding our music curricula, to encourage intergenerational
music participation in the schools or in community centers,
and to meet the musical needs and preferences of the communities
that support us by celebrating the diversity of music making
in America. In so doing, music educators must be concerned with
music of the past (acculturation), music of the present (the
transition period between acculturation and innovation), and
music of the future (innovation).
The unifying tie that can bind
music in the schools with other sources of music learning must
be the National Standards for Arts Education. Somehow we must
work together to make music learning both educational and entertaining.
Teachers in the schools can learn from people in the music industry
about how to make music learning fun. Those in the music industry
can learn from teachers about how to insure that music learning
occurs. We must unite with the common goal of lifelong learning
in music.
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