I have to say that today I really enjoyed Marie McCarthy's presentation on a fifty year perspective of education and its effects of music education. We all know that times have changed, and with that, so have ideals, morals and ways of teaching. We have shifted from the sense of music as pasttime or family unity to music for individual growth and such. It would be great to check out the facets revolving around this shift and how it gradually changed.

I found it extremely interesting to track this change through observing the titles of the MEJ this morning. I had an article from 1954 entitled, "Music Education in a Democracy." I have to think that the themes and ideas in this '54 article would be TOTALLY different than themes and ideas that would be in a 2005 article about Music Education and Democracy (which I'm sure we'll find once we start reading that democracy book!), based on the thoughts going on in politics, society and education 50 years ago. I would really enjoy researching actual titles from past journals and seeing how they changed over the decades--becoming much more targeted to individual fields, and addressing key issues in teaching music.

Anyway, I know this is nothing spectacular today, but I just wanted to say that I think Ms. McCarthy is really an insightful person and a very thoughtful thinker and speaker. I'm glad we had the chance to interact with her today.

Curriculum Continued...

I know we never really ended our discussion about curriculum and student empowerment today, so I wanted to touch on it a bit more, especially for James' sake.

James, I know you were super shocked by my description of my teaching experience in the private school in NYC where the kids called teachers by their first name, and where curriculum was a very student-centered ideal (meaning the students take part in creating and defining their own curriculum). I totally know what you mean that this would not work in your school system. Having students call you by your first name probably would not go over well with the school board and the powers that be.

However, you can try to take different approaches to the curriculum, or even just setting the rules and tone of your classroom differently in the beginning of the year. I think the reason why the whole setup worked in this private school was because of the tone set at the beginning of the year. For instance, instead of giving your kids a catalogue of rules for the year, come up with a contract among all of you, and what you would like to see happen and what you wouldn't like to see... kids are smart, they will tell you that loud and profane language shouldn't be used. If you don't hear what you are looking for, suggest it and see how they feel about it. I think if the students feel more empowered about learning, they will truly committ to the learning experience and take charge. From this point you could still follow your strict music curriculum in MANY different ways, but tweak it a bit, as the kids might even propose to do certain things and projects revolving around the curriculum topics. If something like this works, you're happy, the kids are happy, the parents and the school board are happy. Now I don't know everyone's school dynamic and such, and that this is very idealistic in a society that does not think this way, but it just some ways to think outside that pesky box called curriculum that many of us do not agree with but teach anyway because we have people breathing down our backs.

Okay, so now that I've said that, I hope that makes more sense about the whole situation I was in teaching. This entry was not totally dedicated to James, but I just used his name because he was the one who raised the questions about it in class. :-)

Music and Meaning

I have to address the issue I have with music and meaning. Throughout the article on Music and Social Ordering, there is much mention about the meaning of a piece, or the feeling of a piece. As the article says, "music as aesthetic intention." My issue is this--how can music--an intangible thing, have one meaning?

There are many notions about music and meaning. One is by Susanne Langer, who believes that a piece of music is not a "happy" or "sad" piece, but rather the emotions evoked from listening to that piece are "happy" or "sad." The emotions evoked from any given piece could be different depending on the person (though in the article, the "chick" pieces played did evoke romantic emotions). But I just had to clear up my discontent with saying a piece is "happy."

Also, to go along with this, there is also the idea of the Intentional Fallacy. Many times we will listen to a piece of music and say, "Oh, the artist is saying this." The Intentional Fallacy says that it is not the artist or composer's intention that counts, it is what the listener gets from it, and the interpretation of the listener. So it bothered me a bit when the girls in the article kept referring to certain intentions of music, because music has no intention--the girls do!

Then again, I could just be getting way too philosophical over this, and I apologize if I am not making any sense!!!

Great First Debate!!!!!

Hello All,

I hope by now all of you have had the problems with the posting solved. I see that the vast majority was able to do it without trouble yesterday and I only gets easier from here on.

I was very impressed with the quality of the entries and with some serious discussions (such as the ones about Fowler and assumptions he makes. Keep them coming!!)

As I said in class this is another venue to engage in discussion, argue about issues, raise questions, suggest possibilities and originate critique.

I am looking forward to today's issues and dialogue.

PS

Performance as a Means to an End

Taken from Fowler's "Finding the Way to be Basic:"

"In music the goal has not been edcucation through performance so much as performance as an end in itself. The goal has not been to teach all students their musical heritage, but rather to teach production to the talented" (11).

So I know that we all know that often cases such as the above are true. Many music teachers drill notes into students' heads to get through a piece so it is performance ready for a concert. After all, looking and sounding good at the concert is all that counts. But I cannot express my anger at this--a teacher will teach notes, all the while not mentioning anything about the composer, the historical setting or context of a piece, how the students perceive it to be (how the piece makes them feel, how they think they should sing it--many Langer-esque qualities can be applied to any music lesson!). Should we not be using the performance as a means to foster music literacy, music fundamentals (rhythm, dynamics, etc.), a relationship among other disciplines such as history (wouldn't your students be interested to know why Beethoven wrote the Eroica symphony?!), and desire for students to take learning into their own hands? All these things should be considered, and introduced and discussed throughout the learning of the piece so students can draw connections (because we know that it takes more than one class period for students to begin to understand concepts and connect them). This stream of learning experiences should never end, nor should the connections they made never be applied to anything else once the piece they are learning is finished.

Perhaps it is my naivety being a new teacher and thinking so idealistically that we can promote all sorts of things through the music while also singing the notes, but I feel there is no end to learning in any discipline, especially music. It should be an ongoing process that is seen through many lenses, as we discussed in class this morning. Students will become much more thoughtful and articulate in the way they perceive things both inside and outside of the music realm if they are introduced to this idea of teaching. And is just frustrates me to see teachers that teach notes for the sake of a good sound, rather than focusing of fostering students' appreciation and respect for the Arts. Don't you think?

Welcome to Our First Conversation...

By now you should have receiced the email inviting you to be part of the blog. You should login everyday we have class and initiate a new thread and comment on another already posted.
The subjects are as varied as you can think (hopefuly connected to our class and issues surrounding it. Please let's not discuss Tom Cruise and Scientology, even if that's what we really want to do it).
There is no limit to how much you can participa and hopefuly the minimum entry required will be just that and we will have interested and heated discussions.
Welcome!

Helping to Develop the Blog

Please send suggestions of how we can improve on the Blog and how it can be changed and expanded.
You should also add to the list (on the right corner) of favorite websites related to music education.
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First Entry

This first Blog is an experimental one that basically poses a first question for the blog as newcomers start to entry and investigate the site.

If we talk about our history of music education and what has happened in the profession for the past 50 years. have we really changed or do we only have the appearence of having changed. If we did, what did change? If we didn't, what has prevented significant change?
Now its on to you...