In Chapter 3, Learning in Laboratories, Randall Allsup talks at length about the balance between laboratories and museums in educational settings. Allsup’s ideas are centered around the writings of John Dewey, especially The School and Society. Allsup describes Dewey’s ideal school setting as one “that houses a museum at the center of the building with openings on four sides leading to chemistry, biology, art, and music labs.” Dewey also says that information should be flowing in both directions, “the art work might be considered to be that of the shops laboratories, studios, and work spaces, passed through the alembic of library and museum into action again.” Allsup concludes this thought by saying, “the museum is not a building where dead objects go but a living space of invention and reinvention, a vital heart, a text. The laboratory is a place of patience and action, where knowledge is sent in arterial fashion into the world and back. The school, like life, is alive with its pulse.”
Turning now to the subject of marching band, how does the activity live up to Dewey’s ideal? No one can argue at the advancements made in the last 20 years in marching band show design.
In some schools, directors are still creating everything in house. Either spending their weekends and summers writing their own charts and drill or purchasing pre-made, stock arrangements and shows. However, many schools are now outsourcing their design needs to industry experts with many years of experience, usually in both high school marching band as well as drum corps. These design teams, consisting of music arrangers, drill writers, set designers, and costume designers, work together to design one-of-a-kind, original shows for the marching band to perform. The resulting products are much more intricate, complex, stimulating and demanding on the performers than shows from the last few decades of the 20th-century. From this view, there’s little doubt that the laboratory is alive and well in marching band.
But is it?
Turning to a different metaphor, how would Dewey (or Allsup) feel about the elementary school music teacher who, one summer, goes out a buys a new class set of music books. These books include the latest songs from popular culture and are written to be played on recorders. The songs in this new book sound very different from the class’s earlier book, that was made up of simple arrangements of Mozart melodies. The students, upon opening the new books, are thrilled to be playing music they recognize. There’s a renewed since of energy in the music classroom as they begin the new school year.
Obviously, some change is happening in both setting described above, but is it the laboratories of change that Dewey and Allsup describe? Unless the actual instruction changes or the manner in which the students are allowed to interact with the art form changes, then I would argue no.
What’s missing is the “tension” that Allsup describes in his book. School should be “a location that serves society through the preservation of past accomplishment and agreed-on cultural standards, as well as through the expectation of new discoveries and reimagined practice.” Those new discoveries and reimagined practices need to take place in school and with the students. Just because marching band show design advances, composers write in new styles, or a pop-musicians drop new albums isn’t enough. We need to open these doors with our students and help them explore the changing world of music. Experienced music students can tell the difference between a good and bad marching band. They have a grasp on the “agreed-on cultural standards.” Few take the time, however, to consider how a certain show concept could be “reimagined.” Even fewer are actually given opportunities to explore those ideas and put them into practice. Marching band is one of the most popular aspects of the high school music curriculum. It’s time for us to start using it in ways that actually better our students.