I would like to respond to something in the first article we read for class today. Overall, I agree with the overview that music education may lead to what the author calls "creative workers" that benefit the community. Many of her reasons, suggestions, and explanations link directly to critical ped! However, the point that large ensembles like band and choir should NOT be the focus of the music program. Whether or not this is true (and in this case, with the aim on "creative workers," I suspect it probably is true), how can we expect to change such a bold tradition in music education? In the schools I went to, these large ensemble classes were pretty much all that was offered, along with one fairly lame theory class. Music is already often thrown to the back burner and scheduled at the same time as more "important" classes such as APs. How can we, as teachers, expect our administration to give us more intricate, more beneficial classes when they do not see grand results with the large ensembles? Should we maybe focus on encorporating these same techniques into the ensembles instead?
posted by Juli @ 7:28 AM
2 Comments:
I know what you mean Juli. I think there has to be some kind of balance between large and small ensembles. Perhaps half the "cycle" can be dedicated to a large ensemble and the other half dedicated to small ensembles (kind of like Schola is doing this year). I think that will give the best of both worlds.
I think while we read all of these articles, we have to keep in mind that the authors are thinking of big long term changes. When you say, how can we expect such a big change, that's exactly what the author is advocating. There are such set traditions and ways of doing things in schools today that we talk about in class as "needing to change." And they're usually substantial changes. I agree with you that there is a risk to changing the focus of school ensembles, and messing with tradition. However, a lot of what Jones talked about in his article was only possible in schools with a lot of resources. He mentioned that the large ensembles shouldn't be taken away completely, but that there should be more opportunity for students to be conductors, performers, recorders etc... His plan requires a lot of students who are willing to take the time out of their day, after school or on weekends, to be in more than one or two choirs. It's a hefty goal, and one that isn't very practical in many school settings. What we have to do with these articles is take them as inspiration, find what we believe in as well, and hopefully implement that as much as we can.
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