For a good while, I’ve been wanting to begin a blog to share my opinions on Music Education and strategies to incorporate in the classroom. One of the best ways to grow as an educator is to have your thoughts and opinions challenged by others to offer new insights and perspectives on teaching. As I sit in my hotel room before my Indiana MEA conference, this seems like the ideal time to begin collecting some of these thoughts.
My intentions for my first few blog posts are to highlight the importance of Music Education in public schools by discussing the relation of music to each academic subject. If you’re already involved in Music Education, you probably already know most of the things I’ll be talking about. If you are an administrator, academic teacher, or just some random person, you just might learn a thing or two about the wonderful world of music. If you have something to add, such as criticisms or other insights/examples, your comments are more than welcome. Music is one of the only subjects in school that effectively incorporates each academic subject as part of its core curriculum. Whether it's the rhythmic divisions of the beat (math), the anatomy of the respiratory system (science), comparing thematic content of a poem to musical representation in a piece (literature), or the influence of music found in varies cultures throughout history, the standard music classroom will include each academic subject. Because of its involvement with the other subjects, it's obvious that music would improve student understanding and test scores in those subjects (NAfME), but often times we see music and the other Arts as the first to go in a struggling school.
I hear the same phrase uttered every day from one of my students: "I wish I could just stay in here all day," and the beauty is that it's not the same student every day. I'm sure the same sentiment is true for each of our other Related Arts as well; students find somewhere they succeed, and it improves their overall appreciation and attitude towards school. This is where our education system starts making mistakes. Legislators (most of which have no background in education) see low test scores, so the knee-jerk response is to increase class time in Math and English, decreasing it everywhere else. I'm not trying to belittle the importance of Math and English, but students would be more engaged and interested in school as a whole if they enjoyed at least some of the time they were there.
Instead of beating students over the head with Math and English for the majority of their school day, we should be focusing our efforts towards making them learn as humans. Adam Savage, co-host of the show 'Mythbusters', gave his opinions about standardized testing and subjects covered in school.
Think about it. When was the last time shop or home economics was something found across every school? Think of how much our students could benefit from learning the skills necessary to hold a factory job from shop class or how to cook your own food and raise a kid from home economics. Think of the understanding of different cultures and outlets for expressing emotions students get from the Arts. Following the quote above, Savage continues to hammer in the importance of the Arts by stating:
Solidifying music's importance in the school system has nothing but positive benefits for the students. As educators, our goal should be to provide students with everything they need to succeed in life. Assess your list of priorities as an educator. Which is higher on the list, the well-being of the students or standardized test scores?
That seems like a good place to end the rant before things get too wild. The next few blog posts should be centered around music's relation to various subjects, providing examples for those that may not be aware and discussing the impact music can have on a student's understanding of that subject. I will probably also include how being involved in Band develops the soft skills employers look for in potential hires.
Congratulations on taking the first step of this wild ride with me. Check back for more in the near future!
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