Blog Post 2: The 'Secret Language' of Music Education

1. What are three of your favorite words or terms from the 'secret language' of your discipline, and why are you drawn to them, or why are they important to your discipline? Help the rest of the class by explaining what they mean to you, to your discipline, and why they are significant.

Diversity: A greater multiplicity in the genres of music we teach (beyond western classical music), the context (large, conductor led ensembles) and the pedagogies we espouse (formal and informal or classical and vernacular)

Inclusion: Bringing a greater percentage of the school going population into school based music education, considering their cultural backgrounds in structuring curricula while drawing from the richness of the local community. Enlarging the purview of music educators towards the inclusion of students with non-traditional skill sets and aspirations as well as those from formal backgrounds.

Access: Critically examining the current gate-keeping paradigm in schools of music that delimit the pool of potential school music educators to those from classical–formal backgrounds. Opening doors to music education majors who emerge from (and wish to serve in) contexts beyond the traditional large ensemble setting prevalent in U.S. middle and high schools.

These three words are significant because they portray a profession that is struggling with major existential and structural questions of ‘Whose music should we teach?’, ‘Why should we teach it?’, ‘How should we teach it?’, (and to whom). This in addition to the issues of ‘Who should be teaching it?’, and ‘How do we select, educate and support a teacher pool that is a better representative of the students and communities that they serve?’

2. Conversely, people outside of the group can tend to reduce the inherent richness and diversity of a discipline by using an unfair condensation of one or two words to describe the totality of the group, or by misusing or misunderstanding these terms.  What is the outsider description of your discipline, or a term that people use to describe your discipline that you find to be most inaccurate, reductionist or plain wrong?

I suspect that when people ask me what field I am in, and I respond with “Music Education” – ‘Teaching Music to Children’ is the image that comes to their mind. The emphasis on teaching and children, is not incorrect or unwelcome, but is certainly limited in scope. I will never forget being floored when an 8th grader Farhan (not his real name) having stumbled in on me practicing quipped “Wow, you’re like a real musician!” followed in short order by “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here at ----- Middle School, shouldn’t you be like in a band or studio, or something…?”

Because the ‘educator’ identity seems to be more salient in people’s minds, our artistic persona sometimes gets passed over. This seems ironic, since most (if not all) school music educators get into (and stay in) music degree programs by virtue of their solid performance abilities. Many of us continue to create, compose and perform in various contexts, relishing the chance to hone (and expand) our musical skill sets. In my experience, there is a dynamic cycle of reflection and revision of our curricula and pedagogy as the abilities and aspirations of students interacts with our continued growth as teachers, performers and creators. The narrowing of our purview to that of children’s musical education also ignores our profession’s concern with young, middle and senior adult learners as well as an expanding research interest in lifelong and community music education.