Category: Music Education Philosophy

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Learning in Laboratories (Allsup)

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.

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Allsup – Remixing the Classroom

Randall Allsup opens his book Remixing the Classroom with three stories that point toward the differences between open and closed forms of education. In a style similar to Jorgensen’s Pictures of Music Education, these stories help Allsup lay the foundation of his argument of an open philosophy of music education. These ideas are similar to ones that Jorgensen discussed at various times in Pictures. Jorgensen cautioned us with her metaphors, attempting to show that while there are obvious benefits to certain teaching styles, they are not without their consequences.

Near the beginning of Chapter 1 Allsup is describing Dapper Dan’s Boutique and how his fashion designed was marked with innovation and a lack of conformity. Allsup continued, “And unlike today’s schools, measurement and assessment, essential aspects of the creative process, were reached through qualitative, idiosyncratically defined means.” My take away from this paragraph is a strong disapproval of assessment (epically summative assessment) in lieu of a flexible, artistic, and unpredictable experience.

My mind immediately went to band programs in this country, where contests and assessment are highly emphasized. But what if there was more gray area in those assessments than we realize? What if the problem wasn’t whether or not we should have assessment? Perhaps the problem lies is who those assessments are really for.

As a teacher, I was usually highly stressed in October, and again in April, as the annual UIL contests for Marching Band and Concert & Sightreading approached. My stress was rooted in my desire for my students to have a positive experience, a culminating event where they could showcase the work they had put in up to that point. The ratings mattered to them, but they mattered more for me.

What was more important and valuable to my students was the formative assessments they received each day in rehearsals, sectionals, and private lessons. I had the inside knowledge of where each student’s abilities laid at the beginning of the school year or rehearsal cycle, and I could assess how those abilities grew.

Where those summative assessments had a small, momentary impact on my students, they were my lifeblood. To outsiders, to people teaching in other schools in my region, to Fine Arts Directors at those districts I wished to one day work at, the summative assessments that we received at those contests determined my worth as an educator. That’s not to say that they don’t understand the difference between formative and summative assessment or that they don’t value to growth a student makes, but when looking through stacks of hundreds of applications it’s an easy way to start categorizing. Over the course of several years, my students make some wonderful advancements in their musical abilities. Growth that I was extremely proud of. But we never reached what the UIL considered “superior” and my worth as an educator was deemed lower.

To me, systems that rob teachers of their confidence and is more of a detriment to a student’s education.

Zooming our lens out a little further, the problem with closed vs open systems and ideas of master-apprentice style teaching only becomes a problem if a teacher begins to change their teaching in a way that puts those summative assessments and the opinions of others ahead of the growth and education of their students. You see this a lot, where the only goal of a music program is to win a certain contest or achieve a certain mark. That’s when a closed system is used for power, control, and the fulfillment of a teacher’s goals rather than the student’s.

I think that we can make a bigger impact on the quality of music education in this country by finding ways of better supporting our teachers. As the public becomes increasingly critical of teachers and more education “experts” write about what’s wrong with classroom dynamics and its hierarchy, we are slowly losing our educators. People who have a gift for impacting the lives of young people find themselves perusing other careers. Assuming we didn’t hire already broken teachers, perhaps a better question to be asking is – what are we doing that’s breaking them?

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Factory and Production (Jorgensen)

In reading Chapter 6 “Factory and Production” of Estelle Jorgensen’s Pictures of Music Education, I was conflicted with her view of music education as a factory enterprise. More specifically, the undertone that factories, with their “standardized machines, parts processes, and products”, might be great for making potato chips but are awful at producing music students. I believe that these large-scale operations, the large ensembles in the music education sphere, do not, as Jorgensen states, “undermine the power and life of musical traditions,” but instead provide great arenas for the development of students.

In describing her factory metaphor, Jorgensen touches briefly on the idea of specialization. Factory workers specialize on a specific aspect of the assembly process as “multiple repetitions of particular tasks suggest that the quality of a potato chip made by a team of specialists may be more uniform than one made entirely by generalists.” While not stated outright, I believe Jorgensen is insinuating that schools that are setup like a factory result in teacher’s that are unable to teach the whole student and that course curriculum becomes too narrowly focused on a teacher’s skill and thus the students are robbed of a full education. I believe that specialization is a positive power that schools should do a better job of harnessing. The most successful band programs I’ve seen have a team of teachers that are highly skilled, specialized, and most importantly, complementary of each other’s skill sets. Specialization only becomes a problem when you hire a group of teachers that all do the same thing well. A dynamic and diverse group of educators is the best way to provide a quality education.

Factories, over time, have become more efficient, allowing for a greater creation of goods at a lower price. These factory improvements, while perhaps good for the general public (lower cost goods) has had a negative impact on the workers inside the factory. Adding in the idea of the factory manager who is looking to cut costs, I’ve seen first-hand school administrators whose main consideration for determining whether or not a class will exist in the course catalog is the number of students that that class can hold a given time. My former administrators were much more interested in having a general Music History class that could hold 35-plus students at a time, than they were in having an International Baccalaureate Diploma Level course that would serve five students. The result was those five students who were most interested and invested in furthering their music education were pushed aside so that the school could find a place to essentially hold the school’s over-populated student body for 90 minutes. In this case, the factory failed its workers and its customers.

The factory is described as becoming less of a human-intensive operation. Think for a moment about a freshman-level English class in college. You have a large number of students, low levels (if any) of one-on-one interaction between professor and student, department mandated materials/literature, and perhaps automated, uninterested faculty. I’d argue that the music classroom (thinking now about large ensemble in either HS or MS) is similar to the English class only in terms of size. Unlike a large lecture setting, large ensembles allow every member to participate in the class discussion, as it were, at the same time. Like a class discussion, some students might have similar or differing thoughts and opinions, and a quality teacher (director) should be able to direct the conversation/musical performance towards the end goal. Furthermore, I’d argue that there can be (and should be) the flexibility for the teacher to change their opinion of that end (musical) goal based on a student’s thoughts.

At this point the large ensemble begins to look less like a mechanized operation and more like a hive mind. At first glance it could look like the bees of the hive are acting like machines. Caring out these highly specialized and specific tasks that allow the hive to survive. However, with a closer look you’ll notice that working together, in large numbers, does not equate to machinery. Independent organisms are working together, under the watchful eye of the queen, to accomplish their goal. For the bees, it’s survival. For the musicians, it’s art.

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Jorgensen – Pictures of Music Education

In reading the final chapter of Jorgensen’s Pictures of Music Education, I was most drawn to the metaphor of the garden. Especially the part where Jorgensen explained how the cultivating of the garden is accomplished. “It accomplishes these aims through emphasizing aesthetic and artistic values and transforming musical traditions by fostering new and divergent musical expressions.” My final paper, which will center around a reaction against Randall Allsup’s book Remixing the Classroom and his paper The Problems of Band, will attempt to explore the ways that large ensembles (in my case the wind band) is uniquely positioned to provide opportunities for artistic values while being a strong vessel for new music.

Like Jorgensen suggested in the first chapter, it is perhaps better to avoid “one all-encompassing grand narrative” and instead “see the work of music education in ways that defy reduction to a single universal principle or set of principles.” Throughout this semester I haves often times found myself struggling to understand the main arguments that writers such as Elliot or Reimer make it their philosophies of music education. What I’m starting to wonder now is if my struggle to understand is linked to these authors attempting to see music education through a single lens.

It could also be because my own ideas behind why we should be teaching music are too dependent on a single principle. That mixed with a personal philosophy that isn’t entirely fleshed out or understood, results in myself feeling more lost as to why we’re teaching than before I started this course.

I know I enjoy music making, both the process of rehearsal and the public performance that allows for the sharing of the art; and I know that an emphasis on great music is important to me. But beyond that, when considering other aspects of music education – such as Jorgenson’s village, factory, or web – I haven’t yet been able to make a personal connection or establish a specific philosophy.

Perhaps the question I need to answer consider is, does the why of music education matter more for the teacher or the student. If the student comes in with their own why, does the teacher need to consider it? We already arrived at the same art form, why not just spend our time creating art instead of trying to rationalize our choice for doing it?

Obviously, I am posing more questions that I’m answering. Hopefully with time (and the looming deadline of a philosophical paper) I’ll be able to arrive at some conclusions.

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(more) Music Matters & Elliott

In Chapter 8 of Music Matters, David Elliott attempts to describe the different parts and aspects of a Musical Product. These Musical Products, or as Elliott later calls them Musical Process-Products, are comprised of performance-interpretation, design-syntax, praxis-specific style characteristics, musical-emotional expressions, musical representations, cultural-ideological dimensions, narrative dimensions, autobiographical dimensions, and ethical dimensions.

All told I feel like Elliott is effective in describing the multiple dimensions of Musical Products and while none of the assertions made in the chapter are especially groundbreaking, it does provide a solid foundation for Elliott to argue against the principles of aesthetic music education.

For me, the most important claim Elliott makes comes at the end of the chapter on page 303.

“For now, it’s important to emphasize that it’s not a teacher’s job to assign emotional descriptions to pieces or passages in music without students’ participation in discussions and musical interpretations. The teacher’s responsibility is to open spaces where students can feel and develop their own emotive descriptors of musical experiences and meanings.”

In this sense, music’s abstract nature (a nature that Elliott seems to run from at times) can provide students a unique opportunity to experience art on an emotional level. Yes, a Elliott points out, these emotional inferences are shaped by society and experience; but it’s important for teachers to remember that their students’ experiences are different from their own and that students are capable of developing unique interpretations of music. This is not something that is easily assessed in classrooms but it is an important and vital part of the arts.

One issue I take with this chapter is how Elliott, through a focus on the process of listening and interpreting music, doesn’t give enough space to discuss composers and composition. Running through most of this chapter is a focus on how listeners gather meaning from music through different means (the dimensions of Musical Products) but what about the composer who truly is composing abstract music? Take for example composer James Syler, a composer who while known for composing pieces with programmatic titles, decided to write a Sinfonietta for Wind Ensemble. The piece opens with a 12-tone fugue at the minor 7th. In talking with James he said it took him several weeks to figure out how to get the fugue to work, mathematically. Here is a composition that is not emotionally based, it’s abstract in the truest sense. That is not to say that it can’t elicit an emotional response from a listener but if Elliott is working to a establish a philosophy of music education that encompasses all aspects of musicing, then he should keep in mind all the ways in which music can be created, not just the ones that align with his argument at the time.

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Elliott – Music Matters

On page 67 of Music Matters, David Elliott is discussing two broad categories of music, “work-centered concept” and “contextual-social” (or “praxial concept”.) His aim is to discredit the work-concept of music in order to later promote his praxial arguments.

According to Elliott, “…the work-concept assumes that music = musical products (e.g., composed works, improvisations)”. Within this view, music is simply a combination of musical elements (melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) and that any value lies in “how these elements are organized or formed.” Elliott goes on to connect the work-centered concept with the “aesthetic concept” of music, where listeners approach listening by blocking out “extra-musical” considerations and only focus in a “distant” or “disinterested” way.

In my opinion, Elliott misrepresents (or perhaps simply ignores) some of the merits of the work-centered concept by relating the work-centered concept directly to the aesthetic concept and by placing too much emphasis on extra-musical elements. Consider any piece of programmatic, classical music. If you were to listen to it without knowing the program could you still find enjoyment in it? I’d argue yes.

Elliott takes the argument too far – by saying that extra-musical attributes are necessary for understanding undermines the importance of quality music. What I’m not advocating is for a purely aesthetic experience, but a listener can experience feelings that are unrelated to a work’s societal, historical, or political influences. Extra-musical elements are not needed in order to enjoy music. They can help, but they are not required.

With an increased emphasis on music’s context, are students given enough space and opportunities to explore less concrete aspects of music such as what makes a piece of music good? Many pieces of music were created under similar circumstances, be it spiritual, economical, social, etc.; but no one would argue that they’re all equally great. There’s no formula or correct answer when it comes to determining what makes a piece of music great, but if teachers blindly follow Elliott and his idea that “the work-concept of music and its aesthetic corollaries fail to provide a board, open-ended, and logical foundation for understanding the natures and values of musics in the world,” we are going to find ourselves increasingly removed from the art that we originally set out to teach.

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Reimer – Philosophy of Music Education

In A Philosophy of Music Education, Bennett Reimer proposes for a music education system that is rooted in aesthetic education. Reimer’s philosophy uses a synergistic process of bringing in different aspects of musical value (such as music creation, cultural impact, and meaning to name a few) together to give students opportunities to experience music’s aesthetics in a way that a performance based education doesn’t.

In Chapter 3, Reimer goes on to discuss music’s ability to produce feelings (an extension of emotions). Music’s power to make people feel is one of its “most defining characteristic” but is also one that has been suppressed the most in education as it’s the most difficult to explain. Reimer goes on to argue that this unique quality is the very reason we should continue to promote music in educational settings. As he states “Music allows us to create and share experiences available in no other way.”

What would a purely aesthetic education look like in today’s classrooms? Compare students who have the opportunity to perform music in school to those who just take a music appreciation or music history course. Does Reimer suggest that the students who are learning about music aesthetics are more likely to be engaged in the art and therefore more likely to have a lifelong connection to it than the students who spend much of their developmental years actively involved in the creation (performance) of the art?

I believe where these ideas are headed is a philosophy that approaches music education with a “both, and” approach rather than an “either, or.” Reimer’s arguments for an aesthetic based curriculum is valid and important but shouldn’t be used in a vacuum. A praxial philosophy of music education, with its greater emphasis in performance, isn’t itself the solution either.

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Freire – Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire compares education with a “banking” model where teachers are responsible for depositing knowledge into the empty vessels that are the students. Freire argues that because knowledge is viewed, by those who give it, as a gift it serves to further separate teachers and students and thus the oppressors from the oppressed. The oppressive nature of this education system discourages students from being creative and self-thinkers which helps the oppressors keep the status quo. A better education model, Freire argues, is one where teachers engage students in critical thinking and “the quest for mutual humanization.” Students in a “problem-posing method” are more likely to be able to view challenges as interrelated to other problems and not just as theoretical exercises. This leads to students who are more committed to their learning.

In my opinion, Freire’s arguments make sense, but only when you remove them what I see as the core argument in his book. Education is not the cause of oppression. Oppression can manifest itself in education but only if poorly trained and uninterested teachers allow it to happen. Plus, the actions of a poor teacher can be felt by all students, not just those who are oppressed or marginalized by society. Even the worst teachers I’ve seen aren’t actively trying to teach in a way that oppresses their students. I think that in order to claim that teachers are oppressing their students Freire needs to cite more concrete examples. (Examples, that in my mind would lead to the termination of a specific teacher, not a educational revolution.)

Learning is a skill and takes time to acquire and hone. Simply blaming poor education results on the teachers and institutions is, what I believe, the biggest problem facing American education today. As Freire points out, education should be a collaborative, joint journey between the teachers and the students. Said another way, and against what I think Freire argues, the students are just as responsible for their education as the teacher; and to place all the blame on the teachers fails to consider the entire narrative. The pedagogy of the oppressed (and un-oppressed) needs to focus on great teaching – that puts the subject in the center of a discussion between teachers and students – but also needs to find ways of teaching the importance of education to students (and adults) at an early age. (Most) everyone wants an education, just not everyone wants to work for it; and in education sometimes the oppressed are themselves the oppressors.

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Small – Musicking

While reading Christopher Small’s book Musicking, I was struck with a similar concept that is woven through Parker Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach. Palmer, in describing various teaching styles, compares “The Objectivist Myth of Knowing” where knowledge flows down from an Object, through an Expert (the teacher) who has spent time studying the object and through that study has become the gatekeeper of knowledge for the students, and “The Community of Truth” where a Subject is placed at the center of attention with Knowers (teachers and students) working together to find a better understand. (See this link for a visual representation – https://www.txprofdev.org/apps/ct/assets/text/images/ParkerDiscussion.jpg) Palmer argues against the top-down approach of “The Objectivist Myth of Knowing” in a similar way that Small argues against the music model of a composer creating a work, having a performer attempt to realize that work, and then having a listener experience the work. Small suggests that we instead examine all the different relationships that are built while musicking. Niether Palmer or Small’s remarks are necessarily brand new but they both offer teachers and musicians new ways to think about music making and music teaching.

If we follow Small and believe that musicking is about these different relationships being formed around music, how can that change what we’re teaching and how we go about explaining it’s values?

I say this as I’m still uneasy about how to best go about music advocacy considering what we read in Music Matters. Small’s book might hold the key to some of those answers. If music teachers are designing curriculums that aren’t focused solely on performance (and especially competition) then we might be able to better understand what hesitations administration/society/parents have with the study of classical music and through these relationships, start the process of changing their stance.

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Freeland – But Is It Art

With any subject or genre, I think people tend to look to certain “experts” to help them discern between what is good and what is bad. Film, music, literature are all areas where the opinion of a well thought of critic or organization can sway public opinion. The same is true in the art world, for both older and new works. (How many people discovered the works of da Vinci on their own, without any direction from outside forces?) While this is an effective time saving measure, that can help us focus our attention on the greatest works; relying solely on the opinions of critics can leave you with a warped view of what speaks most to you. As Freeland points out, “…the critics of modern art are nostalgic for beautiful and uplifting art like the Sistine Chapel,” and there’s a good chance that any prejudices they have are being projected into the critic’s words and therefore being absorbed by you. Therefore, we must have the courage to ignore what the public is saying and thinking about a work long enough to form our own opinion. Consider what about the piece pleases you and what doesn’t. Then take the next step to consider why you’re having these feelings.

Another important thought Freeland left me with was the importance of looking beyond the technique, especially the “I could do that mentality” to try and understand what the artist/piece is trying to express. A layman may look at a piece of art and only see technique, the wonderment of what humans were able to create hundreds of years ago under what was likely much harsher conditions than we experience today. There’s a romantic quality to the artwork of the great masters that can be harder to feel with modern art. Some artists have replaced oils and canvas with fluids and prints but it’s important to remember that the mastery of the materials does not make the art. The lasting value is what those materials come to represent through the mind and technique of the artist. Modern artists are still striving to represent ideas through visual space, they’ve just moved on to different mediums.

Along the same line, I think there are times when it’s appropriate to ignore the title of a work. The title is important and can help us understand what the artist is trying to express but it can also lead to an immediate rejection of something before we have the chance to try and understand it. Serrano’s Piss Christ is a perfect example of this. Hearing the title and then looking at the work caused me to immediately question even considering the piece as art. If instead, I had seen the work without the title and had a chance to consider its wonderful color, lighting, and beauty, I might have been able to approach the work with a more open mind. Again, the medium of the art is just the vehicle. We as the audience needs to see beyond that to what the artist wants to say.