Rose, L. S., & Countryman, J. (2013). Repositioning ‘the elements’: How students talk about music. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 12(3): 45–64.http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Rose Countryman12_3.pdf
The teaching of music has become standardize throughout the Western World and has become viewed as the “proper” way to teach students how to become better musicians. I think this article poses a very interesting question about the ineffectiveness of our teaching style. Previously, the question stood to ask whether our kids were learning the “proper techniques”. However, through analyzing our teaching style the question is now modified to ask whether we are providing our kids with a lasting desire to make, listen and participate in music. I think the statistic that reports that only “5.7% of students enrol in Grade 12 music” is the most alarming fact placed in the article. This statistic could be due to two factors; music is not seen as a necessity in someone’s life or they have not enjoyed past music classes in school environments. In order to solve these issues for students I think it is essential to adjust the curriculum to suit the students wants more closely. If we do not provide student’s with an incentive to participate in music classes it will make for an extremely challenging task to motivate the students to take music. In the article, the authors illustrated how fellow music teachers drove their students to work harder on in-school band pieces by using contemporary and popular themes. This was an extremely effective way to encourage the kids to practice and get interested in their band instrument, in addition the students did not play any simpler music than would otherwise be selected by the teacher. In the article the authors mentioned the piece had “the measures in 5/4 time and key signatures of 4 sharps”. Thus, these teachers were able to persuade the students to learn challenging pieces of music by persuading them to play pieces of music that they were already motivated to play. Through working with the students motivation the teachers were able to produce greater results with the students performance. Furthermore the teachers were now able to provide them with an incentive to continue to play and work hard for the class. To summarize, I think a complete redesign of our school board’s curriculum would be an inefficient use of time. However, I think this article does help to make light of the issues in our school board’s music programs. I think small tweaks like, updating the musical examples used or repertoire performed and incorporating music from other cultures will help to strengthen their program and will also help to inspire students to continue to take music.
1 Comment
Eric
1/26/2018 11:32:59 am
Thank you for your thoughtful response. As I read your post, it seems to me that you found in this article a set of strategies for incentivizing participation in music and persuading students to perform better. As I read the article, I see a call for more student-centered experiences in school music making, with a diminished (not completely abandoned) focus on the formal elements of western art music. Perhaps the two are not mutually exclusive, but I think it is important to consider the reasons for each. Would changing the way we structure curriculum make improvements toward those goals, or do we need “trick” students into staying longer, working harder, and performing higher level repertoire?
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