Re: Re: After School...


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Posted by Stve Dedman on August 08, 2001 at 09:47:46:

In Reply to: Re: After School... posted by I don't understand on August 07, 2001 at 22:27:03:

You answered your own question: "I went to a small private college."

At many large state universities, the allocation of resources (namely, the applied instrument faculty) is stretched pretty thin already. The perf majors tend to take a bit larger of a bite from the teacher's time. So the music ed. students don't get the side gigs that come up, they don't always even get to study with the prof., often his grad assistant, and most often, they don't have the time to dedicate to the horn AND the ed. curriculum.

Also for the same reason of shortage of resources, perf. majors generally do not take the ed. curriculum that is usually administered through the dept./school/college of education, and must therefore abide by their policies like class size and availability. It's not that taking the extra classes is so painful; often the perf. majors aren't allowed to take them because as electives, the ed. dept. can (and often does) say no. Also the reverse of the time factor; to play at the level necessary as a professional, they need more time on the horn and less time learning about the history of the one-room schools of the 19th century.

Of course, any music ed. classes should be open to any music major, and they were at my university. But I personally found the strictly ed. courses to be a complete waste of time, because they had no bearing whatsoever on the job of being a band director in the elementary through secondary levels, and that is one of the primary reasons that I didn't get a mus. ed. degree.

So at "a small private college," where the level of attention given to individual students is higher, there is much more of a need for the ed. students to pick up the slack for a smaller perf. studio. It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to teach, most of the time the large state universities are great teacher mills. Of course there are always exceptions, both individually and institutionally.

Steve


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