Music Education

Personhood matters

Posted on by Marissa Silvermann

In MM2, we write about the nature of personhood. One among many points we make is that “the kind of care that was needed to make us who we are…is, in turn, the kind of care we owe, or will owe, to each other.”

Yesterday, npr.com posted the following story:

Trapped In His Body For 12 Years, A Man Breaks Free

What would you do if you were locked in your body, your brain intact but with no way to communicate? How do you survive emotionally when you are invisible to everyone you know and love? 

This is the story of Martin Pistorius, who fell into a mysterious coma as a young boy. He had only one thing left as his mind began to function again — his own thoughts. Here’s a glimpse into his story.

[audio:http://www.musicmatters2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/20150109_atc_trapped_in_his_body_for_12_years_a_man_breaks_free.mp3]

 

 

Music Education and Advocacy

Posted on by David Elliott

My father was an exceptionally good jazz pianist. He was a self-taught amateur. He played every night at home after his daily work and at sing-along parties with our neighbors on Saturday nights. And he composed songs for his own satisfaction and for the delight of his friends. I loved the sounds he played, improvised, and composed.

The joy and excitement that swirled around his music making at our family and neighborhood musical get-togethers was infectious and socially transforming. I wanted to be like him; I wanted to be able to do what he did. So after starting me out at age 4 with informal jazz piano lessons at home, he took me to a local community music school in Toronto for regular lessons with Vincent Cinanni, a professional jazz, pop, and classical pianist and composer—a wonderfully artistic, creative, and kind man. I was five-years-old. Soon I began to play at our musical gatherings, surrounded by supportive adults who sang and played along on guitar, harmonica, and violin.

Although my K-6 elementary school music education was unsystematic, with infrequent opportunities to engage in music making, I was asked to play piano at many school and community functions. These little gigs started to build my musical-personal identity as “the musician” among my peers and teachers.

During my middle and secondary school years, two deeply talented musicians-music educators—Glen Wood and Bob Cringan—worked diligently to involve my peers and I in all forms of music making and listening. Because of them, I became involved in band and jazz band groups as a performer, arranger, composer, conductor, and a novice teacher of my peers.

These rich and varied experiences allowed me to take leadership roles in my school music programs and in many community music groups, including my own professional dance bands and jazz bands. And so it was—with a rich and joyful foundation of musical experiences—that I began to study music at the University of Toronto and that I made a commitment to music education.

All of these experiences formed the bedrock of the praxial philosophy of music education I wrote in the first edition of Music Matters (1995) and, now, in MM2, with Marissa Silverman.

Advocacy in Action!

My point in relating my personal story is to suggest that although verbal statements about the values of music education are necessary and fundamental forms of advocacy, the most powerful means of making our case are the processes and social settings of musical particip-action that yield deep satisfactions for participants of all ages and ability levels.

For example, a parent engaged in joyful music making and listening usually means a child engaged in music making and listening. A school principal, politician, or business person involved in personally and/or social satisfying experiences of singing, playing, composing, and listening is likely to support school and community music education.

So in addition to teaching our students, we need to find more and various ways to provide meaningful musical experiences for our students’ parents and friends, other teachers in our schools, and political and business leaders in our communities. And we need to find ways to create community music groups and school-community partnerships that provide opportunities for parents, colleagues, and others to engage in joyful music making and listening and witness our music teaching expertise in action.

So what about written and verbal advocacy? Yes, of course, it’s imperative to consider scholarly views about the values of music and music education as a basis for evaluating advocacy statements and as material for valid and reliable advocacy claims. But it’s essential to keep in mind that music education advocacy (or MAD, for short) and music education philosophy (or MEP) are fundamentally different. Why? Because MAD too often focuses on the “short, fast sell” using fluffy sound bites, incomplete or “pop research,” and t-shirt slogans (“Music Raises Math Scores!”) tailored to fit the latest “school reform” mandate (e.g., Common Core Standards). Thus, MAD blogs, ads, and articles often “dumb down” the complexities of our profession, mislead parents, and demoralize excellent music teachers. This is why it’s so important to approach MAD cautiously and critically, and to teach future music educators to do the same.

By the way, I’m terrible at math. TERRIBLE!

MEP is about thinking very carefully about what people say and do, being skeptical when reading MAD claims, and asking: Where’s the large body of recent and excellent research that we must have before we can be confident in saying “music education can raise math and reading test scores, or music education improves academic achievement?” MEP is about combining scholarly sources in many fields—and the informed, practical wisdom of experienced teachers—to carefully formulate our professional aims, goals, objectives, curriculum content, teaching strategies, and assessment procedures.

But, and……….— here’s the takeaway message—long before I started to read advocacy statements and scholarly discussions about the natures and values of music, music education, and community music, I experienced over and over again—in my childhood and adolescent years—the creative and emotional powers of music through active music making and music listening. This probably holds true for many people, including most music educators and community musicians.

If so, then our concept of “advocacy” should include but go far beyond words. We should—we must— put our musical, educational, financial, diplomatic, and social skills and understandings to work to make it possible for more people in our communities to experience the joys and satisfactions of music-making and, therefore, to “make a life in music” to the extent they desire.

The future strength and security of school music programs depends not on using music for MAD purposes, but on our ability to combine valid, evidence-based verbal and written explanations about the values of music education with our best musical actions toward achieving much wider and more varied approaches to music instruction inside and outside schools.

We must find ways to engage more and more people of all ages, in all walks of life, in personally and socially meaningful, satisfying, and joyful musical particip-action.

Music = ax2 + bx + c. Huh?

Posted on by David J. Elliott and Marissa Silverman

As music education professor and music psychologist Don Hodges says  “we should teach music for all the wonderful humanizing benefits that accrue, and if—big “IF”—academic achievement is affected positively, that is extra value added.”

If you’re tempted to believe all the hype about how music education definitely, actually, absolutely increases the likelihood that students will achieve higher scores on standardized tests of math and reading, consider three counter arguments by top scholars who’ve spent their long careers researching relationships between music education and achievement scores: Dr. Ellen Winner, Dr. Glenn Schellenberg, and Dr. Eugenia Costa-Giomi.

1. Ellen Winner is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Boston College and a Senior Research Associate at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. She directs the Arts and Mind Lab, which focuses on cognition in the arts in typical and gifted children. Winner is the author of over 100 articles and four books. In 2000 she received the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Research by a Senior Scholar in Psychology and the Arts. Winner has devoted her long and distinguished career to supporting and improving school arts programs through copious scientific research on relationships between the arts and intelligence, thinking, and creativity, and the “invaluable habits of mind that arts education teaches us.”

Winner rejects the claims of arts advocates when she says “there is NO definitive evidence that music improves math.” To take one example, her research team studied “mathematicians’ self-reported musicality” and compared them to people in other fields: “We asked over 100 PhDs in math . . . to self-report on all kinds of measures of their musicality. And guess what we found? No difference.” People in other fields “are just as likely to report being musical (including playing an instrument) as people in mathematics.”

2. Glenn Schellenberg, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has spent decades investigating possible relationships between music, math, and reading. After one (among many) large meta-analysis of correlation studies, Schellenberg concludes that if music lessons correlate with improved math abilities, this does NOT mean that music causes improvements in math abilities. It may only mean “children with high IQs (who perform well in a variety of test settings) are more likely than other children to take music lessons.”

To repeat: correlation is not the same as causation. Just because two things occur together doesn’t mean that one thing (e.g., music making, or music listening) caused the other, even if it seems to make sense—or even if we desperately want to say something like “musical participation will raise math scores.”

3. The renowned music education researcher Eugenia Costa-Giomi (University of Texas-Austin) argues that there is “not a single study” supporting the claim “that classical music improves young children’s cognitive development.” Like Schellenberg, Costa-Giomi acknowledges that even though there might be “a strong relationship between music participation and academic achievement,” she warns that “the causal nature of the relationship is questionable.” Why? Again, because what NAfME and other music education organizations’ advocacy bloggers often fail to understand is that statistical correlations “do not necessarily mean that arts instruction produces [or causes] achievement gains.”

In fact, it may be the other way around because “it is known that students who choose to participate in the arts are more academically inclined than students who choose not to do so.” In addition, considerable research does not support claims that musical participation might improve academic achievement because, says Costa-Giomi, “it’s difficult to disentangle the true effects of music instruction from the effects of many other variables [e.g., a student’s capacity to concentrate during music teaching and learning interactions; her family’s income; the social dimensions of her musical experiences in her band, rock band, choir, etc.; the positive emotional effects she experiences during her teacher-student interactions] that mediate participation, persistence, and success in learning music. And this is why we must be cautious in our assertions about the long-term intellectual benefits of music instruction.”

It follows that any claims we read about music improving any specific dimension of cognitive functioning are premature at best, and invalid and unreliable at worst.

Let’s take a moment now to put these points in the broader context of American educational and political policymaking.

This past summer, the eminent NYU educational scholar Diane Ravitch wrote: “I don’t know about you, but I am sick of the test score obsession. I think our schools need to have a prolonged testing moratorium so we can figure out what education should be about and how to reduce our dependence on testing.” We couldn’t agree more. And we’re very concerned about what today’s testing obsession—and music advocates’ manic drive to link music and academic test scores—has done and is doing to music education.

For example, as we write this post, many music teachers in our hometown of New York City are preparing their math lessons. Wait, what was that? Yes. In a growing number of public schools in NYC (and in other places across the U.S.), music teachers are being told to set aside a considerable amount of time in their music classes—including their band, choral, general music, pop music, and other music classes—to teach math and literacy skills. In addition, many music teachers are being notified that a percentage of their evaluations will be based on their students’ standardized test scores in math and literacy. And this trend is currently moving upward in the form of “report cards for teacher education programs,” as Dr. Anne Whitney explains. 

Which brings us to the first of two takeaway messages: Be Very Careful What You Wish For! Why? Because the more administrators and policymakers are persuaded that “music makes you smarter” and that “music raises math and literacy scores” (etc.), the faster music students and music teachers will be evaluated NOT on their musical achievements, but on students’ math, reading, and other achievement scores.

One of the engines powering this obsession is called the Common Core or the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The Common Core is a recent U.S. school “reform” initiative that outlines quantifiable benchmarks in English-language arts and mathematics at each grade level from kindergarten through high school. On the surface, it seems reasonable and necessary. But, look more carefully—go below the surface of official U.S. documents and uninformed journalism—and you’ll see that this policy is deeply flawed.

Why and how? Ravitch, other scholars, and thousands of teachers provide detailed explanations of how the Common Core is reeking havoc on many aspects of education in the United States—and why it’s becoming a serious threat to music education. For constant updates, see Diane Ravitch’s blog and read her book: Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Schools. Know, also, that Ravitch values the importance of music making as an aim of schooling.

In fact, she once said to David in person that she wished all teachers would teach as effectively, educatively, and joyously as the best music teachers she’s seen.

Books and blogs by Ravitch, Michael Apple, Alfie Kohn, and many likeminded scholars and parents explain why NAfME’s well-intentioned support of the Common Core is highly problematic—NAfME’s adoption is politically correct, but it’s educationally injurious nevertheless, as was MENC’s quick and uncritical adoption of NCLB in the 1990s.

Time for a reality check: Is it fair to say that music teachers are and should be primarily educated to teach music? Is it true that most music teachers are not fully (or even partially) educated or certified to teach math or literacy? Is it right to say that it takes a considerable amount of skill and content knowledge to teach math and literacy well? If so, why not leave the teaching of math and literacy to math and literacy teachers? We’re not saying that music students should not engage in cross-curricular experiences if/when appropriate. But this is for each music educator to determine in his/her class.

One last point—a second take-away message. What few people realize is that the Common Core movement, and Bill Gates’s initiatives, are powered by a socially and educationally damaging economic-political movement called neoliberalism. Among other things, neoliberalism aims to privatize all areas of social life, including education. Today, education is “Big Business”—education is not about education in the deep sense, it’s about preparing “job-fillers,” not well-rounded citizens—as the eminent critical pedagogue and cultural critic Henry Giroux explains in his commentary on education, social justice, and neoliberalism.

In short, the Common Core is the tip of a very ugly economic-political iceberg.

Given today’s corporate, Wall Street priorities, many politicians and policymakers fail to value music education because learning how to make and appreciate music and the other arts is not immediately “profitable,” meaning that music is not directly related to preparing kids for jobs, and money-making, and future consuming. Here’s another reason why many advocates and teachers are knocking themselves out trying to explain why music education improves math and reading and why some advocacy “stuff” tries to persuade parents that if their children participate in music, they’ll make higher salaries as adults.

What does all of this mean for students? It means the steady erosion and elimination of meaningful school music programs, musical experiences, and the end of many music teachers’ careers.

What Schools Are For?

Posted on by Marissa Silvermann

The renowned educational researcher and theorist John Goodlad investigated the processes needed for renewing schools and teacher preparation. In MM2, we oftentimes refer to Goodlad’s meaningful ideas about curriculum, education and schooling, and more.

For example, in What Schools Are For, Goodlad (1979) examined the purposes of schools. His thinking paved the way for understanding the need for public school in and for a democracy.

Sadly, Goodlad passed away November 29, 2014. He was 94. He lived a long and meaningful life. His ideals and dreams for education will hopefully continue to inspire us to do better.

We leave Goodlad’s ideals here in outline form only. Consider whether or not we meet some of these goals in/for our schools:

Major Goals of American Schools

  1. Mastery of basic skills or fundamental process. In our technological civilization, an individual’s ability to participate in the activities of society depends on mastery of these fundamental skills.
  2. Career and vocational education. An individual’s satisfaction in life will be significantly related to satisfaction with her or his job. Intelligent career decisions will require knowledge of personal aptitudes and interests in relation to career possibilities.
  3. Intellectual development. As civilization has become more complex, people have had to rely more heavily on their rational abilities. Full intellectual development of each member of society is necessary.
  4. Enculturation. Studies that illuminate our relationship with the past yield insights into our society and its values; further, these strengthen an individual’s sense of belonging, identity, and direction for his or her own life.
  5. Interpersonal relations. Schools should help every child understand, appreciate, and value persons belonging to social, cultural, and ethnic groups different from his or her own.
  6. Autonomy. Unless schools produce self-directed citizens, they have failed both society and the individual. As society becomes more complex, demands on individuals multiply. Schools help prepare children for a world of rapid change by developing in them the capacity to assume responsibility for their own needs.
  7. Citizenship. To counteract the present ability to destroy humanity and the environment requires citizen involvement in the political and social life of this country. A democracy can survive only through the participation of its members.
  8. Creativity and aesthetic perception. Abilities for creating new and meaningful things and appreciating the creations of other human beings are essential both for personal self-realization and for the benefit of society.
  9. Self-concept. The self concept of an individual serves as a reference point and feedback mechanism for personal goals and aspirations. Facilitating factors for a healthy self-concept can be provided in the school environment.
  10. Emotional and physical well-being. Emotional stability and physical fitness are perceived as necessary conditions for attaining the other goals, but they are also worthy ends in themselves.
  11. Moral and ethical character. Individuals need to develop the judgment that allows us to evaluate behavior as right or wrong. Schools can foster the growth of such judgment as well as commitment to truth, moral integrity, and moral conduct.
  12. Self-realization. Efforts to develop a better self contribute to the development of a better society.

Music, personhood, and eudaimonia

Posted on by David J. Elliott and Marissa Silverman

Educative and ethical music making and teaching based on a praxial philosophy of music education can be carried out in a variety of ways that create places and spaces in schools and community settings for a variety of human values or “goods.” These human goods, benefits, life-values, and life-goals include, but go beyond, making and listening to classical instrumental and vocal music, or any other kind of music, for “the music itself.”

A fundamental premise of MM2’s praxial philosophy is that musics do not have one value; musics have numerous values, depending on the ways in which they are conceived, used, and taught by people in different personal, historical, cultural, political, and/or gendered contexts in specific musical praxes.

For example, when music education is ethically guided—when we teach people not only in and about music, but also through music—we achieve what Aristotle and many other great thinkers consider the most crucial, rewarding, significant, and intrinsic set of human values that Aristotle summarized in one word: eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia is a multidimensional concept we explain in great detail throughout MM2 in relation to the natures and values of music and music education and, briefly, in this recent article in The Journal of Transdisciplinary Research in South Africa.

In our view, eudaimonia should be at the center of music educators’ thinking and doing—the numerous values this term integrates should anchor the “why, what, and how” of music teaching and learning in schools and communities.

Following an examination of three community music settings—in Ireland, New York, and Uganda—that exemplify educative and ethical musical interactions, our article builds a concept of personhood that draws from embodied, enactive, empathetic, and ecological concepts of personhood put forth by many of today’s most eminent cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers of mind. Our discussion of personhood leads to an examination of two major constituents of eudaimonia—or full human flourishing—that are often omitted from discussions of music education: happiness and wellbeing. Since music and music education are, or should be, major sources of human happiness and well being, as hundreds of thinkers across the world have argues for 6,000 years, it’s extremely odd that teachers and advocates omit these values from discussions from the why, what, and how of music education. As our article explains, happiness is a complex and highly robust concept and reality. Thus, it’s something we as music teachers should understand as fully as possible and place at the heart of our aims, strategies, curriculum development, and assessment.

Our discussion ends by integrating the above themes with explanations of praxis, praxial music education, and the implications of all concepts in this article for school and community music education.

So, Did Bach Really Compose That?

Posted on by Marissa Silvermann

Doubts about the authenticity of some of J.S. Bach’s compositions have risen again.  Alex Ross writes: “the attribution of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor … has been repeatedly questioned, with many scholars detecting features that are atypical of Bach’s style. Nowhere else in his organ music does Bach make prominent use of octave doubling, as in the opening measures of the Toccata: it’s a showy, brazen gesture that suggests a quite different creative personality from the one who produced the St. Matthew Passion.” Additionally, the musical community has long known about J.S. Bach’s compositional and musical collaborations with some of his sons (e.g., J.C. Bach and C.P.E Bach), not to mention his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach. Christoph Wolff, former Dean of Harvard’s Music Department and one of the most celebrated Bach historians, has already explained Anna Magdalena’s musical abilities and her likely musical partnership with J.S. Bach. Wolff writes that Anna Magdalena “came from a family of musicians and brought to the marriage the background and orientation of a professional singer. Indeed, she regularly performed with her husband in Cöthen and elsewhere until 1725, and from the time public singing engagements are no longer recorded, her collaboration as a copyist is well documented. Until the early 1740s, her hand shows up in a variety of manuscripts containing Bach’s music…Anna Magdalena fulfilled many roles over the years: companion, professional partner, assistant, keyboard student, and maybe also critic…” (Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, 2000, pp. 395-396).

Later, in an interview, Wolff states that we just don’t know everything we might like to about Bach’s family life. However, Wolff is hopeful that researchers will continue to investigate the legacy and compositional processes of J.S. Bach.

Very recently, the authenticity of Bach’s compositions have hit the headlines again. Primarily through forensic research (published first in 2006 and again in 2011), Martin Jarvis claims that some of J.S. Bach’s famous compositions were not composed by Bach himself, but rather by his second wife, Anna Magdalena This latest research advances Wolff’s conclusions and moves us towards a new understanding of Anna Magdalena’s collaborative, if not individual, role in Bach’s compositions.

Other musicians and scholars are less convinced. Acclaimed cellist Julian Lloyd Weber has stated that Anna Magdalena was “too busy” watching after the children: “Would Anna really have time to copy something out when she had a huge number of children to deal with? There would be far more crossings out [in the scores themselves] and mistakes.”

Historical-gendered politics aside, though these are extremely important considerations, the larger and perhaps most interesting aspect of this latest examination of Anna Magdalena’s musicianship, and possible compositional collaboration with her husband, is explained by composer Sally Beamish: “What I found fascinating is the questions it raises about the assumptions we make: that music is always written by one person…” In fact, and as we examine in detail in MM2 (e.g., pp. 250-253; pp. 333-360), composing happens in complex personal, social, cultural, political, and other contexts. As such compositional processes are complex social processes, not purely individual, “solo” actions.

Whenever individuals begin to compose, they are never acting “alone,” although it may seem so on the surface. In fact, their composing is always situated and social in a number of ways. First, the musical understanding required to compose particular kinds of music develops in relation to the musical products of other composers (performers and so on) past and present, who have learned and immersed themselves in the music making of particular musical praxes. Composers—including children, young people, amateur adults, and professionals—like all music makers, begin learning composing at a certain point in the past or recent history of the musical praxis contexts in which they’re composing. We learn to compose by growing into (usually with the guidance of others, whether teachers or in relation to instructional videos on YouTube, etc.) the praxis-specific ways of musical composing that musicers maintain, change, embody, and pass on directly or indirectly in and through their composing.

So composing, like all forms of musicing, is highly contextual in that composers don’t generate and select musical ideas in abstraction. Composers don’t simply “compose.” They compose particular forms of music or create new or hybrid forms: styles of songs, film scores, fanfares, preludes, laments, dance suites, string quartets, symphonies, marches, overtures, operas, requiems, sonatas, concertos, cantatas, and so on. In doing so, composers become entwined with past and present models of compositional praxes that they decide to follow, adjust, redevelop, or overturn.

Why Does Music Actually, Really, Definitely Matter?

Posted on by David J. Elliott and Marissa Silverman

Perhaps you’ve read current music education advocacy claims like these:

“ . . . to improve the reading, science, and math skills of American children . . . we should be providing them with more music education.”—Blake Madden 

“You want higher test scores in math and science? Music education will help. You want children with higher mental faculty? Music education will help.”—Blake Madden

Similar claims are flying everywhere in the blogoshpere. Some school music teachers couldn’t be happier: “Wow! Yes! Now we can relax. Finally, we have hard, indisputable, scientific evidence that music education really counts! No more touchy-feely nonsense.”

This is the first of several blog posts we’ll devote to (a) unpacking incomplete, inaccurate, and “truthy-sounding” advocacy claims about the values of music education, and, more importantly, (b) providing credible evidence about why music definitely matters.

This is not to say that music education advocacy is an unimportant pursuit, or that all advocacy materials lack credible supporting evidence from serious researchers. Not at all. Some do. But many do not. Madden’s blog post is just one among many that make misleading and/or unsupported claims, as we’ll explain in a future post on this site.

For now, let’s make two important points. First, we agree with eminent music education researchers and music psychologists like Dr. Donald Hodges, Director of the Music Research Institute (MRi) at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, who urge music educators to be very thoughtful before accepting “truthy-sounding” claims about possible relationships between music and academic achievement: “I think we would be better off being more honest. What do the data really say? Those on either end of the spectrum—from those who want to hold that music is ‘pure’ and does not have anything to do with other academic subjects to those who feel that ‘music makes you smarter’—would do well to wrestle with the complexities that are being reported in the literature.” (Personal communication to us from Don Hodges, 8/15/2014).

Second, we also agree with Hodges when he argues forcefully that “We should teach music for all the wonderful humanizing benefits that accrue, and if academic achievement is affected positively, that is extra value added.” (Personal communication to us from Don Hodges, 8/15/2014).

But what are some of the “wonderful humanizing benefits that accrue” during and through the processes of effective, educative, and ethical school and community music education? An excellent practical example is demonstrated in a YouTube presentation (see below) by the extraordinary trumpeter Alison Balsom. Balsom explains how musical participation can contribute to personal and community flourishing, which is a fundamental concept at the heart of our praxial philosophy of music education in Music Matters (e.g., pp. 17-21 and 43-52).

After beginning her presentation with a performance of Debussy’s Syrinx at Royal Albert Hall, Balsom explains and illustrates—with real-life examples—how children’s active musical participation can “engage, empower, and repair” their personal, social, and community lives. At one point, she argues that music has the potential to “heal” in numerous ways, a statement that receives considerable support from numerous contemporary researchers in a wide range of fields (*see below).

Toward the end of her presentation, Balsom shows a short film of her work with AfroBrass that focuses on facilitating children’s personal and community flourishing and overall health and well being through active music making and educationally caring relationships between Balsom, her colleagues, and the children. The children’s narratives detail how AfroBrass has made significant differences in their lives.

Is it possible that some children do not benefit from participating in AfroBrass? Probably. Must we consider that this film is carefully edited? Yes. Nevertheless, it provides tangible evidence that, for many, this community music program is making a significant difference in the lives of these children. Moreover, as Balsom and her colleagues testify, their own lives and “personhoods” have been transformed deeply through their participation in the AfroBrass program.

Are there more programs like this? There are thousands. Are school music educators carrying out this kind of work? We know many who are. But we’d love to hear more on this topic from readers who are already involved in putting their musical abilities “to work” in their schools and communities for students’ full human development and flourishing.

In a recent article in the Music Educators Journal David explains why Balsom’s kind of music teaching—which is equally possible for school, community, and amateur music educators to carry out in their own schools and communities—might be thought of as “musical citizenship” or “artistic citizenship.” A central tenet of artistic citizenship is original to John Dewey, who argues that we need to “recover the continuity” between the arts and the normal processes and needs of people’s everyday lives. Are there ways we can add social and ethical weight to some of the things we do? Yes, of course. Balsom’s teaching is only one example. Indeed, the term “artistic citizenship” is not restricted to the educational or musical work of professional artists or “stars.” As we explain fully in Music Matters (e.g., pp. 268-270), the concept of “artistic citizenship” can and should apply more broadly to the music that all people (students, teachers, amateurs, and professionals) perform, improvise, compose, arrange, conduct, record, and teach for a wide range of human purposes.

*Contemporary researchers in the neuroscience and neurobiology of music, music psychology, public health, human development, nursing and occupational therapy, emotional development, psychiatry, and so on substantiate Balsom’s claims in Music, Health, and Wellbeing, edited by Raymond MacDonald, Gunter Kreutz, and Laura Mitchel. The 34 chapters in this volume provide more evidence to support the kinds of arguments Balsom discusses.

 

Music and its wider relevance

Posted on by Marissa Silvermann

While the music education profession has made great progress over the last 25 years, we still face many questions which remain unanswered: What is the relationship between music and literacy? Music and mathematics? Musical expertise and practice? Researcher and scholar Susan Hallam of the London Institute of Education tackles these questions and more. She offers balanced answers that suggest that we still have got a long way to go to fully understanding the relationships between learning and music.

“Teaching”: What Does it Mean?

Posted on by David J. Elliott and Marissa Silverman

When people use the word “teaching” in everyday talk, or when they attempt to define what teaching means, they often overlook some basic facts about the verb “to teach.”

In Chapter 1 of Music Matters, 2nd ed., we explain that “to teach” is a transitive verb. A transitive verb is an action verb; the action “transfers” something from one or more objects, or people, to another, as in “I love you.” In the latter, “I am not just ‘loving’ per se, but I am loving you” (David Blacker, 1978, Dying to Teach, p. 48).

In contexts of formal schooling and informal teaching and learning, where a “teacher,” taken in the broadest sense (e.g., a school teacher, professor, coach, mentor, facilitator, parent, etc.) advances and empowers a person’s understanding of something, or his or her abilities to do something, “teaching” is always transitive.

According to the praxial philosophy of music education we propose, teaching of any kind—e.g., in school or community music settings—always involves at least five inter-dependent dimensions: (1) one or more teachers. . . who engage in (2) acts of teaching, including informal, formal, or any other act of ethical teaching or mentoring . . . (3) something (skills, abilities, concepts, dispositions, critical thinking, creativity, respect for others, etc.) to (4) another person or persons with (5) the conscious intention of developing a person or persons’ abilities, concepts, dispositions (etc.), and empowering learner(s) personal abilities to construct their own thinking-doing abilities from teaching-learning encounters.

As David Blacker (1978) states, “From this perspective, teaching literally makes no sense without the ‘Other’ who is to be taught” (p. 49).

If teachers understand this, says philosopher David Carr (2000), they’ll see why it’s nonsense to say, as slogans often do, that “one teaches children, not subjects (or vice-versa)—for there could hardly be any coherent notion of teaching which did not implicate both learners and something to be learned” (Professionalism and Ethics in Education, p. 5). Carr continues: “In this respect, it is arguable that at least some of the vaunted differences between so-called traditional or ‘subject-centered’ and progressive or ‘child-centered’ educationalists have their source in a simple grammatical error [i.e., the failure to understand that ‘to teach’ is a transitive verb]” (p. 5).

Because this is a very brief note about the verb “to teach,” it’s absolutely necessary to add more inter-dependent dimensions. Obvious conclusion: teaching, which should be educative and ethical, is an extremely complex process. This isn’t news. But with the above in mind, perhaps the complexity of teaching is a little clearer.

Takeaway point #1:

Simplistic dualisms in education (i.e., teaching children and/or subjects) and music education are identifiable by the word “and.” For example, mind and body, thinking and feeling, philosophy and practice, perception and response, performing and listening, skills and understandings. Properly understood, all of these should be conceived as unified processes: mind-body; perceiving-responding; performing-listening; skills-understandings—all of which involve many additional considerations. Unifying “binary oppositions” will go a long way to improving music educators’ conceptual-practical work. So, Down with dualisms; Up with unified thinking-doing, etc.

Takeaway point #2:

It’s obvious to any teacher reading this very brief discussion that we’ve omitted a huge number of the most difficult, real-world, everyday challenges of what “to teach” actually means and involves, which we could summarize, for now, as “contextual” factors.” More about the incredible importance of “contexts” in future blogs.

For now, it’s worth reading one everyday, pop media source. Yep, it’s simplistic, especially because it omits the unique challenges surrounding music teaching. Nevertheless, it serves to make a point that the general public usually doesn’t understand, let alone value: that teaching is among THE most difficult and stressful of all professions.

“Most teachers deal with lots of job stress. They have to be well prepared every day, and they get very little down time—none, really, while students are present. Many people think that teachers have good working schedules, but teachers take a lot more of their work home with them than other professionals. There are always lessons to plan, papers to grade and records to keep. In addition, the pay isn’t much, compared to professions with similar educational requirements. Increasingly, public school teachers face additional problems of lack of respect from students, and even from students’ parents and the general public. Because they’re paid with tax dollars, public school teachers are always under scrutiny. Few professionals are judged as closely as teachers are. Emphasis on test scores finds teachers held accountable if their students don’t improve each year—even if the students may be hampered by factors outside the classroom.”—Linda C. Brinson (2006). 10 Most Stressful Jobs in America. Retrieved from: HowStuffWorks.com: http://money.howstuffworks.com/10-most-stressful-jobs-in-america.htm/printable

Talent or Practice? Both and Much More

Posted on by David J. Elliott and Marissa Silverman

As most music educators know, there’s a longstanding debate about whether the ability to perform music at an expert level is due more to talent or practice. A recent article in the NY Times (July 14, 2014) discusses a paper in Psychological Science on whether talent or practice is more important for achieving an elite level of performance. Based on a meta-analysis of 88 studies across several domains (i.e., music, sports, games, etc.), the paper claims “deliberate practice” explains only about 20-25 percent of the difference between elite and amateur levels of music performance. In other words, says the Psych Science paper, talent is the key. Contrary to the Psych Science paper, however, seminal research by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson (1993) argues that practice explains about 80 percent of the difference between elite performers and committed amateurs. Are both right, or wrong? Do talent and practice account for different percentages? Or is there significantly more to developing performance abilities than these and similar studies claim?

Before offering some perspectives, we must emphasize that because we’re writing this blog from the viewpoint of our praxial philosophy of music and music education, as explained in Music Matters: A Philosophy of Music Education 2nd ed., we are not primarily concerned with developing students’ ability to perform at an elite—“Gotta get to Carnegie Hall!”—level of ability. We’re centrally concerned, as we think public school music education and community music programs should be, with fostering lifelong music making of all kinds; with enabling and empowering students’ musical understanding—musicianship + listenership—toward joyful and meaningful “amateuring” through performing and all other forms of music making, as well as listening. Of course, our philosophical stance and practical guidelines don’t rule out teaching students to develop their performing abilities to the highest levels they wish to attain. But again, this isn’t our primary concern in discussing the nature and role of performance in music education. Now back to the research studies in question.

First, it’s important to consider that all domains of research are vulnerable to objections from the outset because researchers’ methods and the central concepts they investigate (e.g., talent, practice, creativity, expressiveness) are inevitably limited by the ways they define the concepts they investigate and the specific training, methods, and assumptions they use in their research. So a serious first question we need to ask about any “talent vs. practice study” is this: How carefully, logically, and comprehensively does researcher X explain what he or she means by talent and practice, or deliberate practice? Which brings us to the next point: Taken together, there’s still no consensus among scholars in psychology, music psychology, music philosophy, and the neuroscience of music about what “musical talent” actually is. And there’s no consensus on what musical aptitude is, or how best to “measure” it, if that’s even possible. For example, it’s easy to determine when someone is playing in tune, with rhythmic accuracy, and so on. It’s quite another thing to “measure” whether a musician is performing expressively, let alone creatively. Surely “elite” performing has a lot to do with a musician’s ability to interpret and perform a score expressively and creatively. But discussions of talent and practice rarely examine these aspects of performance.

Second, a meta-analysis of only 88 studies—88 studies across several domains!—can’t possibly provide a solid basis for answering the question, “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?” or the Blue Note Jazz Club (NYC), or the 9:30 Rock Club in Washington, D.C. Thus, argues Ericsson in the NY Times article, “if you throw all these kinds of practice into one big soup, of course you are going to reduce the effect of deliberate practice.”

Third, most examinations of talent vs. practice fail to consider carefully the many kinds of “musical thinking and knowing” that constitute “musical understanding,” viewed holistically. In chapter 6 of MM2 (pp. 206-231), we provide a detailed explanation of our concept of the 16 kinds of musical thinking and knowing (MTKs) that music performers and other music makers acquire (if educated properly) and require to perform competently, proficiently, or expertly. These MTKs range from action skills (techniques, routines, etc.) to verbal and nonverbal experiential and intuitive understandings, to interpretive abilities, and so on, all of which must be absorbed into one’s actions as a performer.

Fourth, developing students’ performance abilities most likely includes establishing and/or facilitating many types of music teaching-learning conditions including (but not limited to): continuous experiences of joyful and meaningful practice sessions related to an excellent teacher’s coaching and formative assessments of progress; sustained motivation; repeated opportunities to apply the results of one’s practicing in satisfying “flow” experiences of musicing with others; teaching and performing contexts that build students’ individual perseverance, resilience, and sense of self-worth—qualities that are essential for overcoming personal and professional frustrations and failures; encouragement from significant and supportive others; positive teacher-student bonding; access to inspirational musical models—inspirational musicians/teachers often ignite student’s musical aspirations; opportunities to perform for various audiences in different venues; and teaching that encourages students’ expressive interpretations and performances of scores.

Bottom line: It seems fair to say that music educators at all levels should be reasonably skeptical about studies of any musical topic; research is not always as “right” as it may seem. Yes, researchers of all kinds have made HUGE contributions to music education, the development of musical expertise, etc. But many studies are weakened by their methodological inability or failure to take holistic views of the people, topics, and problems they study.

 

1. “Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions A Meta-Analysis”

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/30/0956797614535810.abstract

2. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Talent”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/science/which-matters-more-talent-or-practice.html?_r=0

3. “It Takes Talent, Determination, Good Teachers, and Deliberate Practice”

http://philosophyofbrains.com/2014/07/15/it-takes-talent-determination-good-teachers-and-deliberate-practice.aspx