We choral musicians are intimately familiar with language. Often we hear beauty in words that others miss. We understand the power of words, but sometimes we don’t appreciate how words can frame a discussion. Case in point: Recently, a friend of mine who is a very talented musician and a very competent music educator posted a link on Facebook to a study trumpeting the value of music as an aid to learning in mathematics. To be sure, this trope has been making the rounds for a while, going all the way back to the infamous “Mozart effect” that was over-hyped in the 1990’s. While I don’t have the space here to go into the causation/correlation argument, what troubles me most about these ideas is how they infer a hierarchy in the learning process, placing music beneath other ‘serious’ disciplines. With all due respect to my very learned colleague, we need to stop using this argument to support our programs.
We musicians may know that music is not subordinate to math, language, or science; yet when faced with looming budget cuts, many of us fall back on the Mozart effect arguments to convince administrators to spare our programs. By using these arguments, we may win the battle sometimes, but we virtually guarantee that we’ll lose the war. We know that music is something humanity has been making pretty much since we came down out of the trees; certainly music pre-dates mathematics and written language by thousands of years. Pythagoras and the Ancient Greeks understood that music was a part of the Quadrivium of Knowledge; one of the four essential subjects for study. There is physical evidence that we were making music millennia before the earliest civilizations took shape. There are even studies to suggest that music pre-dates spoken language, yet when pressed, it’s as though we are afraid to say these things. Why?
I have taught in two districts where music was cut, in one case for a year, and in the other, for five years. I came to both districts just after music was restored. In both cases, what brought music back was community outcry. Passionate educators made the case to parents, not that music supports learning in other disciplines, but rather that music is central to the development of a fully-functioning human. They made the cutters face up to the fact that they were cutting something essential, and the public came to our aid.
Words matter. If we continue to argue that music is best for supporting learning in other subject areas, we sell ourselves short, and we will never take our rightful place in the center of the curriculum, with the other ‘core’ subjects. If the only thing the public hears from us are words that put our subject in a subordinate position, then that’s what they’ll believe at budget time. No one would dare try to cut math, or science; ask yourself why that is. You’ll never hear a math teacher argue that her subject supports learning in another area. It’s time we started talking about our discipline in terms that illustrate its true importance. ARS GRATIA ARTIS!
Bart Brush says
Kitty Babcock says
Jon Eiche says