Music and Education

This past Thursday evening I got to watch my older daughter—an 8th grader—play bass clarinet in a concert at Northern Kentucky University. The concert was a joint performance with my daughter’s high school’s symphonic band and the Northern Kentucky University Symphonic Winds. My daughter was one of three 8th graders asked to participate in the concert, which began with the high school band performing three pieces, followed by the NKU band performing five pieces, and ended with the two bands combining into one massive band for a final piece that was both rousing and controlled.

During the performance by the NKU band, the audience was treated to a piece which featured an NKU euphonium player. This musician, whose name I can’t remember right now, had recently been named the most outstanding soloist at Northern Kentucky University. And when the two bands assembled together onstage, and while some of the musicians were rearranging chairs and positioning bandstands and tending to their instruments, I looked over and saw that my daughter and this NKU musician were just a couple of chairs away from each other, and my heart swelled with pride and with gratitude that my daughter was able to share the stage with these college-aged musicians. She sat right beside one of the NKU clarinet players, who leaned over to her and said something. My daughter replied and they both smiled and went back to warming up with their instruments. I don’t know what was said but it doesn’t matter—the interaction with the more advanced student is what I appreciated.

And as I watched everyone on stage, a thought occurred to me: So often the music programs at schools—because they’re not tested by state assessments nor the No Child Left Behind program—are relegated to second-class status. I know in my high school, when I was a teacher, the English department would work on curriculum standards and disaggregating data and all kinds of other stuff, and the math department and science department and social studies department would all do the same. Meanwhile, the music, art, business, and vocational education programs were all lumped together into one and asked to work together. They were an afterthought.

Even worse, I guess, is being a NO thought. In many school districts, music programs are being cut out entirely. They’re just viewed as not that important.

And that’s wrong. There’s a lot to be learned from these “unimportant” music programs. Looking at my advanced daughter sitting beside high school students sitting beside college students, it occurred to me that the music program is WAY ahead of the other programs in education when it comes to individualized instruction. There was my daughter, being allowed to move at her own pace. Meanwhile, in English class, where she’s just as advanced, she’s reading the same on-grade-level novel as her peers, writing bland five paragraph essays, and bored out of her mind.

Whenever there’s a band concert at my daughter’s school, there’s always a (cheaply) printed program available. The program lists all of the students performing, and there’s always a bunch of symbols beside different students’ names, a bunch of #, *, and ^. Some of the symbols point out that a student was in All-State or is a member of "Select Band," but there's one there that I've always found interesting: "Enrolled in private lessons." The music directors are trying to point out that these students are working hard to get to where they are musically. Private lessons in music are perceived as a GOOD thing. That's not the case with "regular" subjects. Imagine if at Honor's Day there were asterisks beside award winner's names with notices like "*Attended after school services" or "Enrolled in private tutoring." Those things would be viewed as a sign of weakenss on the part of the student, not as a willingness to improve!

So there's a lot to be learned from music education. If the main education courses were taught like music education, here's what you would find:

• As mentioned above, students would be allowed to progress at their own pace.
• Talented students would take on additional work, and would view it as an honor and a privilege, not as just being given more work.
• Students wouldn't be required to take EVERY branch of a subject level. Instead, the general ideas of the subject would be taught through a specific field of interest for students. (Thus, just as my daughters learn the principles of music by playing specific instruments--clarinet and horn--science students would learn the principles of science by focusing on only ONE science--maybe anatomy, or biology).
• Teachers would admit that they are not experts in EVERY field of their department, and would bring in outside professionals and amateurs to help students in those areas.
• Students would be honored and rewarded for seeking additional assistance.

So maybe instead of pushing these programs to the periphery, we should be examining them to see what we can learn. We might be surprised!