I’ve been blessed that both institutions where I teach music technology give me considerable freedom in how I do it. I find the music side to be quite a bit more interesting than the technology side, so I center my classes around creative music-making, and we address technical concepts as we encounter them. I’m learning that this approach is an unusual one, that music school is more about learning repertoire and technique and less about discovery and invention. I got some validation for my approach from The New Frontier: Secondary Project-Based General Music by Michael Hayden. His essay is basically proposing that all high school kids get to take my Music Tech 101 class.
General music is the class you had in elementary school where you banged on xylophones or tooted on recorders. Everyone took it together, regardless of skill. After elementary school, maybe you continued into band, orchestra, choir, or private lessons; more likely, you stopped participating in music at school, if it was even offered to you. Michael Hayden thinks that, in addition to the traditional high school and college ensembles, kids should have the opportunity to continue taking general music classes aimed at creative music-making, using the idioms of the present. The title of this post is a reference to MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group, whose work I admire. Lifelong general music can follow a similar model of hands-on small-group or solo creative making.
“General music” often conjures up images of elementary school students singing, playing various instruments, and moving to music, all while learning music fundamentals, music history and developing musical literacy skills. As students transition to middle and high school, general music courses are typically replaced with performance ensembles like choir, band, and orchestra. Non-performance music courses are highly limited, if they exist at all. What about the other students who do not play a traditional “school” instrument or those who do not want to sing in the choir? Does this mean they should be deprived of musical opportunities?
No, they should not!
In a survey of American secondary schools, Elpus and Abril (2011) found that only twenty-one percent of seniors participated in their school music programs.
And those are just the seniors whose schools offer such programs in the first place, a percentage in steady decline.
If we want to provide our entire student populations with the highest quality of music education, one that fits their needs, passions, and interests, shouldn’t we be striving for more ways to include all students?
Yes we should.
There should be multiple ways for students to showcase their successes and talents in music; we need to expand our music offerings beyond traditional performance ensembles. Why not offer students the opportunity to study music in a project-based environment that has them learning by doing and placing creativity at its core?
Why not indeed? The beauty of computer-based pop forms like hip-hop and EDM is that the barrier of entry is low. Any teenager can learn how to throw some loops on the screen and decide whether or not they sound good. And the traditionally trained kids should be part of the class too. If you get the orchestra and band kids into the same room as the DJs, bedroom producers, rock guitarists, and “non-musicians,” some interesting exchanges can take place. The band and orchestra kids can lay down oboe parts or coach their peers on chords and scales; likewise, the latent bedroom producers can help the band kids sound less dorky.
I’m part of the eighty percent that bailed on school music as soon as I was able. If you had asked me in eighth grade whether I was “musical” or not, I would have said an emphatic no. The truth is that I’m extremely musical, I just don’t like the music they offered in school. There are a lot of kids like me. Potentially, it could well be all of the kids, aside from the tiny minority with congenital amusia (and even that can be alleviated through learning.) Let’s serve the other eighty percent!
I asked my music education students this past semester why it’s worth teaching music in school at all. I figured that future music teachers should have some definite answers to that question. My fellow constructivists think that the point of music class is to promote flow. Creative projects are the most effective way to achieve that.
Placing the emphasis on student individual growth, rather than collective performance objectives, can result in more student engagement and excitement… [T]he project-based secondary general classroom also helps create an atmosphere in which students are encouraged to take risks, collaborate, experiment, and be creative.
And isn’t that really what the point of any music class should be?
I must admit, I have sometimes thought, having taught in schools and worked in universities with undergraduate and postgraduate teachers that music in school can easily become ‘nobody’s music’. What is offered does not always cater for everyone’s individual interests and strengths, not to mention the low priority and status music education is often given.
Yet music is so fundamental to life, to culture and to society that it should be part of every child’s education for as long as possible – and not just because it helps with learning and development in other subjects but because it is intrinsically worthwhile.