Why We Ought to Stop Playing Notes for School Choirs

Choralosophy has been at the epicenter of the music education conversation since 2019. The first episode that really made a splash was #18. Ripping Off the Bandaid. It seemed to draw a two sided coin of responses. Colleagues were either offended or found their instruction revolutionized for the better.

In this episode, I look back to #18 to try and find which ideas presented there are still true for me, and on which points my view has shifted or evolved. Many points made in the original episode were wildly misinterpreted and taken out of context. Other ideas have stood the test of time.

In the last five years, the conversations with colleagues have been incredibly illuminating, educational and humbling for me. It has forced me to consider the difference between circumstance and pedagogy. What is the “best” pedagogy for building advanced, independent, fluent musicians in the choral or instrumental classroom? Are there any right and wrong answers?

Short answer: YES. There are right and wrong answers. We know more about the way the brain acquires language fluency than we did when many of our music education methods books were written, and definitely more than when many of industry norms were formed. Nuanced answer: kids, people and circumstances are INCREDIBLY complex. We don’t teach prototypical humans in labs.

Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com

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