The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. (John Dewey)
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (Paulo Freire)
At my college, there are more sections of basic musicianship than any other single course. Students call the course “Bobo” theory. Curiously, they come to that course after 12-years of music classes in school. That usually includes 8-years of weekly or bi-weekly general music and several years in multiple choral ensembles. Yet, they can’t figure out an interval or spell a harmonic minor scale. What happened?
At lunch recently, an administrator friend shared that his college admitted at least 8 students who cannot read music. Several are pianists. What happened?
A nearby school district boasts an outstanding elementary Kodály program. The development of music literacy skills is often a goal of such a program. Yet, in the high school choir, songs are taught by rote because students can’t read the notation. What happened?
Critical Pedagogy for Music Education provides a lens to examine and hypothesize some answers. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) Freire wrote that learners exist in a cultural context and insisted that students learn to think reflectively about themselves. He taught that true and meaningful learning takes place when the learning is a catalyst for a change in the student’s perception of reality. For him, teachers facilitate that connection by helping students to draw upon their own realities to create new possibilities. So the questions become: How should students engage with music inside and outside of school such that the knowings, doings and understandings they acquire facilitate a change in perception and perspective? How might these knowings, doings and understandings help children to know the world in more critical and significant ways? In other words, how might these experiences in school music add value to their lives?
Students are bi-musical. They have two distinct musical lives. One exists outside school and is mediated by a small mp3 player on which students search for, select, download and categorize music they choose to own. All are sophisticated, high level thinking tasks. Little white ear buds are the conduits through which students engage with music a significant number of hours each day. The engagement is private. Then, there is the musical life in school. That consists of general music classes and ensembles. This musical life is public, where a teacher makes the decisions about what children hear and more importantly how to hear or listen, how to classify, and how to understand. Teachers do this with the good intention of promoting a love and joy for music. While some students supplement their bi-musicality with private lessons on an instrument, most do not.
Students value the music they choose to download. It is precious and meaningful to them because it connects to who they are in significant and highly personal ways. Sadly, in the vast majority of instances, students dismiss the music they hear and study in schools because it does not evoke those same feelings. A musical education in schools should focus on experiences where children can think, act and feel as musicians when musicians are making music. Such authentic and empowering experiences would nurture musicianship and be conditioned by context, content and each student's individual and collective social and cultural (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) capitals. Such empowering experiences would connect a student’s bi-musical worlds and once again, add value.
Wiggins and McTighe (2005) encourage teachers to design instruction that begins by defining content that can be assessed. As a result, many teachers teach only what can be quantified and focus their attention on teaching methodologies and strategies. Instead, they might be better served to find out who their students are beyond being Ms. Randolph’s 4th grade class. They need to blend informal music learning (Abrahams, Abrahams, Rafaniello, Vodicka, Westawski, & Wilson, 2010; Green, 2008;) with the formal requirements of the school curriculum guide, state mandated standards and assessments.
In Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner (1983) identified music as one of the aptitudes or intelligences all humans possess. In so doing, Gardner opened the door for music educators to re-think the goals of music instruction. Unfortunately, while the door was open, most music teachers did not walk through. Such a re-thinking might direct music teachers to consider music instruction within the nature and realm of human potential. Gardner (1997) himself wrote, “I think that music may be a privileged organizer of cognitive processes, especially among young people” (p. 9.) Noticing the ways musicians think, act and feel when engaged in music making, one might hypothesize that musical imagination, musical intellect, musical creativity and musical performance individually and collectively constitute a conception of musical intelligence and contribute to the ways one might understand music. Simply stated however, musical intelligence is “one’s ability to think in sound” (Elliott, 1997, p. 67). Music teaching and music learning provide moments of transformation “when a child connects to something that engages curiosity and stimulates further exploration” as a crystallizing experience (Gardner, 1997, p. 12). David Elliott (1993) advocates music teaching and music learning that develops musicianship. Aligning music teaching to promote such goals is appropriate and adds value to a child’s life.
In my classes, I teach that the purpose of music education is to empower musicianship and in the process transform both the students and their teacher. I suggest that the goal of music teaching and learning, from a critical pedagogy perspective, is to break down the barriers that exist between what children know, understand and listen to on their own, with what music teachers believe they should learn in school. It is the music teacher’s responsibility, in dialogue with the students, to find crosswalks to connect a child’s two musical worlds. The mantra “honor their world” is a familiar one among the students in my classes. Curriculum, I say, “is the interaction of teachers and students in authentic and meaningful experiences which are acknowledged as important to both of them. It is content, which becomes significant when situated in a context rich in social capital. The purpose of curriculum is to enrich and change the knowings, understandings, and perceptions that students and teachers have as individuals and as members of a sub-set in society.” Simply stated, it adds value.
What happened in the scenarios described at the opening is that students did not find value in the music program offered at school. They could not construct meaning on their own. They could not connect that meaning to their lives outside of the music classroom and so they shut down. For them, the engagements with music in school did not answer the questions “Why should I learn this? Why is this important? How will this enhance my personal engagements with music outside of school?” Until music teachers ask and answer these questions, they will continue to reproduce students for whom the experience in school music does not contribute in any positive way to human growth, development and culture.
Who determines what value is and whose value is added? That is easy. It is negotiated through dialogue among the students with their teacher and differs from neighborhood to neighborhood, school to school, classroom to classroom and rehearsal to rehearsal. Teachers, who embrace a critical pedagogy perspective, design music lessons that include a multiplicity of objectives, the most significant being the critical objective. Including that objective ensures that musical engagements inside the music classroom or rehearsal result in a personalization that reflects a change of perception and perspective. A focusing question will stimulate problem posing and problem solving and open a space for children to create meaning on their own and connect that meaning to their musical lives outside of school. Performance that includes a celebration of music making rich in original ideas expressed by students promotes learning that is remembered because of the value it adds to their lives.
References
Abrahams, D., Abrahams, F., Rafaniello, A., Vodicka, J., Westawski, D., & Wilson, J. (2010). Going Green: The application of informal music learning strategies
in high school choral and instrumental ensembles. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Society of Music Education, Beijing.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage Publications.
Elliott, C. A. (1997). Music as intelligence: Some implications for public schools. In V. Brummett, (Ed). Ithaca conference ’96 Music as intelligence: A sourcebook (pp. 65 – 75). Ithaca, NY: Ithaca College.
Elliott, D. (1993). Musicing, listening, and musical understanding. Contributions in
Music Education, 20, 64-83.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Optimum.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The Theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1997). Keynote address: Is music intelligence special? In Brummett, V. (Ed.). Ithaca Conference ’96 Music as intelligence: A sourcebook. Ithaca, NY: Ithaca College.
Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning, and the school: A new classroom
pedagogy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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