Re: new thread - old topic ( NOT BBb vs. CC)


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Posted by Rick Denney on March 03, 2003 at 14:04:05:

In Reply to: new thread - old topic ( NOT BBb vs. CC) posted by JoeS on March 02, 2003 at 23:24:15:

There once was an expectation that any educated person would have had to learn musical skills at some level. This expectation was linked to the expectation that they would have to learn languages other than their own, history, literature, and other topics not needed in their future employments. Being educated did not mean being trained, but rather meant being embued with the knowledge and culture of society as a means of preserving it. If you were educated yourself, you understood the need for that preservation, and it didn't have to be explained or sold to you.

The Educational Establishment has succeeded in destroying this concept of education, by making it a tool of achieving social equality and leveling it to the least common denominator. Many people are not concerned with knowledge and culture for its own sake, but with making ends meet. They measure their own performance and the performance of their kids by their ability to make money and acquire the things that money brings. True, sometimes these things are food, but more often in this country they are not necessities. School, for them, is not education but job training. The Educational Establishment has learned to manipulate this general objective, to turn everything they want to do into "what makes us competitive globally."

When I was a kid, we had little expectation that the schools would teach us music at the primary level. That's why I had guitar lessons one year and piano lessons for several years, at home, after school, paid for by my parents and not by taxpayers. Furthermore, my mother also took the piano lessons to provide a good example and because of the emotional benefits she received from the skills she gained. (I have to add that my mother and sister gained much more from the piano lessons than did I, but for me it planted a seed that grew in a different climate.)

Our exposure to music in elementary school was singing in the chorus, which most of us did, because it was fun, but there was very little actual musical training. The songs were taught by rote, which, in fact, is probably good enough.

The problem with education is that we have made it a public trust, and to justify that trust it has to perform measurably. How do you measure the emotional even keel and commitment to a disciplined approach to life that music (or other art) brings to students? You can't, and that's why music so frequently has to fight for its survival. The sports guys have succeeded here. They don't talk about sport improving math scores, they talk about sports improving socialization skills, teamwork, self-discipline, and self-reliance. Parents and politicans believe it because they participated and gained those benefits themselves. But sports in schools is built on a foundation of soccer leagues, baseball leagues, playing catch with Dad, and a history of participation outside school and at a younger age.

Only when parents embrace the concept of education as a family obligation rather than a public obligation will parents start again to think of nurturing in other than economic terms. I'm afraid music education may be a casualty along the way, but I think the problem is much larger than music.

Serious music in a concert-hall setting has always been the venue of the educated classes (which are different than economic classes and utterly unrelated to ethnic and racial classes). These are the same classes that promote the funding of art museums and the like. Not everyone wants to be a member of these classes, nor should they be required to be. But we design the education system around those who don't, not around those who do, because the design is motivated (under the surface) by social equality and (out in the open) by job training and measureable performance. The only recourse for parents wanting their children to be truly educated is to take responsibility for doing it themselves. This means sending their kids to after-school music lessons when they are little. The kid who has had five years of piano lessons will run to the band room when the invitation comes, and will insist that his parents become involved and supportive of it.

Too often, the parents aren't thinking about this. They are thinking about how they can work another ten hours this week so they can afford to pay the after-school day-care facility, from which they will drive their kids home in their Mercedes SUV.

So, if musicians want to do something about it, instead of being the tail trying to wag the Educational Establishment dog, they should try a direct sell to parents to teach music to their children when they are really small. Think in terms of Little League and soccer clubs, instead of in terms of politicians and test scores. A movement of simple ensembles and signing clubs for kids aged 5 or 6, that would provide a once-per-week alternative to day care, would build cultural support with parents instead of persuading them based on the metrics of job training.

Rick "who thinks schools reflect culture not instill it" Denney


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