Posted by Rick Denney on August 15, 2001 at 13:34:42:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: question from a non-tubist posted by Jay Bertolet on August 14, 2001 at 15:58:39:
Though I disagree with Joe Baker only with great apprehension, I'm with Jay on this one. Schools are too concerned about students being "well-rounded" and not nearly enough concerned about them being "competent." What do I care, as an employer, if a student is musical (at whatever level) if he can't write a coherent sentence?
Once basic skills are assured, then, yes, I prefer someone with a broad understanding of things. Unfortunately, I rarely get that choice.
So, even for average students, I want one whose math teachers have taught him math and whose English teachers have taught him English. So far, I'm sounding just like the folks who argue against any music education at all. But I'm not. There are two questions here. 1.) Does music education help a student with math and English? 2.) Or is music education just there to show a kid how to be part of a team (which is the usual apology for sports)?
I firmly believe that 1. is true. Even for an average student of little talent, learning how to read music is as useful to their mental development as learning any foreign language, and it requires high-quality discipline that helps in both math and English. But this only works if the musical training is directed at learning music, which is a different (and in some places profoundly different) objective than making a good score at contest. The band director's prestige (both internal and external) is often disproportionately skewed to those contest results. This will surely kill music programs if we let it.
It seems to me that 2. is the domain of the parents and family, not the school. I would direct Joe to any biography of C.S. Lewis (who, I suspect, is an author Joe admires), and his descriptions of compulsory team sports. In my own schooling, compulsory team anything was often an opportunity to be put down and in some cases terrorized by those who were bigger or more talented in said activity, but who were less brainy and therefore used the activity to establish superiority on the field that they could not establish in the classroom. Those are the folks who argue for it now, while those who hated it spend their time on other discussions. Whatever I know that is useful about working with people was provided to me by my parents, though the lessons didn't sink in until somewhat later than they hoped. I'm sure that delayed reaction to their good example was at least in part due to the poor example I saw in school, where hazing and other brutality was accepted and reporting such brutality considered a display of poor teamwork.
So, let the teacher teach, not mold. And let the parents (and their God) mold. Individual music education (even as part of a group) has a real value, even for average kids, in teaching all subjects. It's value solely as a team activity provides relatively little in later life compared to its value as an academic exercise that teaches both math and language from a different point of view.
If you have a musical prodigy with clearly the talent and drive to become a professional, then a different approach is needed. In the old days, many such students would be removed from general-purpose schools altogether and taught by private tutors. I'm not sure that we've really improved much since then.
Rick "thinking modern education is more about conformance than individuality" Denney