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Arts curricula and stopping

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Education blogger Diana Senechal writes about the difficulties of assessment in music.
Musicians in an orchestra, for instance, assess themselves continually as they play but have no need to document such assessment. 
One of the biggest challenges is assessing the development of musical judgment, which Diana, quoting NASM’s Samuel Hope, describes as “knowing when to stop”.
Knowing when to stop is an aspect of mastering many relationships and balances in music. Mozart, Beethoven, and other great composers are consummate masters of knowing when to stop, when a chord or key or musical figure has been continued long enough, and when there is time for a variation or a change altogether. The performer of such music has thousands of choices about how to make the structural decisions of the composer come alive in performance….Knowing when to stop is an essential determiner of the line between fine works of art and kitsch.
The post goes on to discuss assessing curricula as well.
One of the problems I see in K–12 education reform is precisely the lack of a sense of when to stop. Let’s take group work as an example. It’s one thing to say that certain kinds of group work, used in the right contexts, can foster certain kinds of learning. It’s another to require group work in every lesson (or even in most lessons). Similarly, it’s one thing to regard test scores as limited measures of intellectual attainment of a particular kind. It’s another to treat them like numerical oracles.
She takes particular aim at rigid directives like ratios of “informational text” to “literature”. Read the whole thing.
 
I would suggest, however, that this is part of a confusion between training expert professionals and providing education for general good citizens. Math curriculum designers often consult mathematicians as if our goal in schools is to train more mathematicians rather than to get most people able to balance their checkbooks. English professors want to create people who obsess about metonymy and foreshadowing, whereas most people are going to be, at best, enjoying reading novels and poetry in their spare time. In music, do we want to focus on maximizing the number of professional performers, or increase the number of citizens who better understand classical music (or even pop music) and are more likely to participate in community choirs and bands and barbershop quartets?
 
The endless discussions about “college prep” just exacerbate this confusion in all subjects. What we need is more high school graduates who can really read fluently and know how to add fractions correctly, but we’re instead trying harder to prepare more math majors. Sure, we need lots of engineering majors, but trying to force all students to take algebra isn’t going to make more of them.
 
Senechal falls into the trap immediately, connecting comments made by an NASM rep, who is mainly focused on college music majors curricula, with K-12 music classes, whose students are overwhelmingly likely to choose other professions. Music majors at college are a specialized population. How do we balance the needs of that small segment who are going to major in music with those who have a chance to enjoy music as amateurs?
 
 

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Comments

  1. It wasn’t Diana who I was quoting about orchestral musician self-assessment, but rather Samuel Hope, the ED of NASM, who I’m going to speculate knows what he’s talking about.

  2. Allen:  I generally don’t read your blogs simply because I don’t read ANY blogs (I greatly enjoy discussions, but not monologues!), but I’m glad I read this one.
     
    In fact the (excellent) question you raise was answered a good many decades ago by a Hungarian fellow named Zoltán Kodály.  And he was a clever enough politician to sell that answer to the autocratic communist rulers of his country under the rubric of the “music of the people.”  His stated purpose was, in fact, not necessarily to produce a population of professional musicians, but to produce a musically literate and musically aware general population throughout his country, exactly as you suggest.  But at the same time he made sure that the small percentage of students who WOULD have the interest and ambition to go on to music as a profession would do so with the best possible fundamental musical education, taught in an organized and sequantial way with clear goals.  And the point is that the same education served BOTH goals perfectly well.
     
    You mention math teaching.  That happens to be my older daughter’s specialty, and her dissertation (just completed and defended) relates to exactly the kind of questions you (properly!) ask.  And it’s research that has been done rather well at the elementary school level, but pretty much ignored at the secondary level on the assumption that the elementary findings could simply be extrapolated to older students.  And “it ain’t necessarily so!”
     
    I also have some serious disagreements with the “Assessment Experts” we are saddled with at the university level, and in particular with some of their Great Truths that I’ve become aware of:  the median score for an exam should be 50% in order to separate the students; exams have nothing to do with teaching and are entirely separate; all learning can be measured through multiple choice tests; exams and exam questions can be completely objective.  NONE of those premises, in my opinion, is true.  But then I’m old fashioned enough (or maybe new fashioned enough?) to consider my students as individual human beings.
     
    I don’t know whether it’s a good thing that courses like calculus are now taken in secondary school rather than waiting until college.  I do know that when I first came to this university the School of Engineering used the introductory calculus course as their Freshman flunkout course, thereby ceding that job to the Math Department!  And a number of years ago someone writing in a music teachers’ journal wrote an article titled “Stop Teaching College Theory in High School,” to which I replied in a letter titled “Stop Teaching High School Theory in College”!!!!!  (I learned all my really useful theory from my mother long before entering college, and refined it over about 60 years of professional arranging!)  College is clearly too LATE to start learning music theory, just as it is too late to take remedial “singsinging” courses.
     
    Diana’s claim that “Musicians in an orchestra, for instance, assess themselves continually as they play but have no need to document such assessment” is an interesting one, but it really makes me wonder whether she herself has actually ever played as an orchestral musician.  It seems to be a rather broad generalization, and no generalization is ever completely true (including this one!).
    All the best,
    John
     
     

  3. Good Sunday Morning, Allen and all,
     
    This is a very interesting post and, while I haven’t had a complete cup of coffee as yet, has got me thinking–forgive me if I ramble.
     
    High school music students as a group, want to achieve more than compentancy.  My own kids high school program–from a very highly rated high school–was very good because their district believes every subject, even the fine arts, should be stressed and should strive for excellence.  As the students climbed the ranks in band or chorus or orchestra, they could brag about the “every three year” tour each group takes–and as parent, I sure as heck raised money for those tours!  The kids played more than arrangements–not *just* things for high schoolers. Two of my sons went to Spain and China and my autistic son was held to the bosom of the orchestra as one of their own, a wonderful program for all levels.  Our kids appreciate talent and having a classmate play a concerto or have the big part in the musical, most of them are thrilled. My kiddos high school had an AP music theory class, and it was quite something, in addition to the usual performing groups, guitar class, etc etc.
     
    I wonder what is meant–do you want to expose the future music majors to theory? Or music history? Or to repertoire?  Singing and playing in excellent ensembles is  a start–my boys played in a youth symphony which had nothing to do with their high school program and studied with outstanding pedagogues. As parents, my husband and I felt it was our job when our kids showed talent early on, to have them study with private teachers–it was never the school’s duty. And it is not the school’s duty to fill the every need of the future music major, but their parents and, ultimately, themselves. Private teachers can teach technique and many highs schools have a list of private teachers or even give those teachers time and space after the school day to teach on campus. But so much of what we do as musicians, is by ourselves in a practice room.
     
    Personally, as a parent of three–one of whom is in this profession, one who is a more than proficent amateur and one who is an educated listener–I think the most important thing we can do for all of the kids is to expose them to fine performances and encourage them to play and sing in fine performing groups.  Those who will become music majors will have something to expire to, those who will become amateurs will have something to use as inspiration and those who will become educated listeners will have something they wish to experience again for the rest of their lives.
     
    And–this comment is for JF–it is important for those NOT going to be in this profession to love it enough to someday be patrons and donate money to performing arts organizations.  They have to be exposed to good music and understand how to put the *show on the road* from them to want to someday fund it! Because without funds, our profession will not be able to continue.
     
    Marie
     
     

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