School Music - Fighting the cuts

[doversoul1]

At the root of the problem, I feel, is that a majority of people don't think that the Arts are important; for them, it doesn't matter that money isn't being spent on "hobby" subjects. Without a change in this attitude, nothing will (nothing can) improve.

Has it always been like this in this country? Is it something so deeply embedded in the national psyche (whatever that is) that nothing can be done about it? Or is it a new (-ish) phenomenon as a result of some changes?

[Dave2002]

It's not difficult at all if you ignore the adult "baggage"

I think that's where I disagree with you. Of course it may not be difficult to "teach" music, but what would be good would be if this could have long lasting effect - a willingness to listen to music, to perform it, to get involved. Some children might appear to be receptive, yet still have reservations, which they won't share with the teachers.

I was always interested in music - there is evidence from my early life (which I can't really remember) that I listened to music, and liked some of it - mostly, but not exclusively, classical. I did start to learn the recorder - I'm not sure when - and I guess I must have enjoyed the technical challenges. The BIG turning point was when our class was taken to a live concert with a full orchestra. That just blew me away, and I knew that was something I wanted to be involved with. That must have been at my junior school. Somebody organised that, and paid for it. I may have still become interested in music without that, but I do think that had a very significant impact. Obviously a few of my fellow students didn't feel the same way, even though they presumably also attended that concert.

I don't know what happens in many schools these days - and perhaps my school even way back then - was unusual. Most children are exposed to music through the radio, TV and perhaps other electronic portable devices, but many may not experience live events - which I still think may be more significant.

The sort of participation you are discussing is another way, and I have no doubt it can be motivating, but surely it is going to require time and resources to nurture chldren with that approach. It seems to me that these are aspects whcih some schools still manage to achieve, but many may have just given up the struggle, or indeed never tried to deal with them in the first place.

[doversoul1]

I think that's where I disagree with you. Of course it may not be difficult to "teach" music, but what would be good would be if this could have long lasting effect - a willingness to listen to music, to perform it, to get involved. Some children might appear to be receptive, yet still have reservations, which they won't share with the teachers.

I was always interested in music - there is evidence from my early life (which I can't really remember) that I listened to music, and liked some of it - mostly, but not exclusively, classical. I did start to learn the recorder - I'm not sure when - and I guess I must have enjoyed the technical challenges. The BIG turning point was when our class was taken to a live concert with a full orchestra. That just blew me away, and I knew that was something I wanted to be involved with. That must have been at my junior school. Somebody organised that, and paid for it. I may have still become interested in music without that, but I do think that had a very significant impact. Obviously a few of my fellow students didn't feel the same way, even though they presumably also attended that concert.

I don't know what happens in many schools these days - and perhaps my school even way back then - was unusual. Most children are exposed to music through the radio, TV and perhaps other electronic portable devices, but many may not experience live events - which I still think may be more significant.

The sort of participation you are discussing is another way, and I have no doubt it can be motivating, but surely it is going to require time and resources to nurture chldren with that approach. It seems to me that these are aspects whcih some schools still manage to achieve, but many may have just given up the struggle, or indeed never tried to deal with them in the first place.

Live concerts can easily put children off (usually) classical music for a very long time if not for life for many reasons (poor performance, uninspiring programme or even the child's health on the day). It is important that children have opportunities to experience live music but it needs to be thought carefully and not, I think, to be treated as the main diet let alone a magic portion in music education.

The reason why many schools don’t even seem to try any methods of teaching children music is the very reason for this thread, isn’t it? They can’t pay Mr GG. Civilised society used to mean where things that had no practical purpose were highly valued along with skills and trades. This no longer seems to be the case.

[Richard Barrett]

One of the issues we are skirting around here is that music (whether writing it, performing it or teaching it) isn't something that can be reduced to standardised approaches. Allotting a higher level of resources is something everyone here can agree on no doubt. (And not just high enough to be able to pay MrGG but enough to train enough MrGGs to go around!) But also enough freedom should be allotted to individual teachers for them to be able (and encouraged/motivated) to use their imaginations and skills to the full. If there are enough teachers there's no need for any kind of one-size-fits-all policy. But surely any policy needs to involve some component of live performance because isn't that the lifeblood of the kind of music we're talking about?

As for civilised society, I don't think there's been one yet. There was a time when what you say, doversoul1, was true in terms of values placed on non-practical (for which read non-profitable, of course) things; but back then other values were even more upside down than they are now, with regard to gender equality for example. So let's not think in terms of going back to a mythical golden age!

[Dave2002]

Has it always been like this in this country? Is it something so deeply embedded in the national psyche (whatever that is) that nothing can be done about it? Or is it a new (-ish) phenomenon as a result of some changes?

It could be that in the past so many people were just trying to survive, live their lives, fit in, that they didn't have enough spare time or interest.

What I also don't know, but perhaps suspect, is that "life" for many people centred around a very small area - including perhaps the pub, the church, the village hall and the local primary school. There might have been events in the local community which some partiicipated in - fetes, jumble sales, and some even went to church. Re the latter, some children might have sung in the church choir - and while no doubt some still do today, I doubt whether it is a big attraction for many young children now.

Now we have a more "global" world, and while we can now experience through radio and other means music performed to a much higher standard than is possible in a small village, there may be less of a sense of community, and willingness to provide one's own entertainment and performances for the local village. One might argue that cities have always been like that, but I would suggest that even within cities there used to be a lot of small "island" communities.

Enthusiasts can also travel to larger cities, or even to events in other countries - something which people 50 years or more ago were unlikely to do, be able to do, or to afford. Thus now people who are interested can actually fly to New York to see the Met, or at the very least go to a large town with a cinema complex and watch performances there. So why bother with local events and local participation - the community probably won't care either?

How does that work for a partial explanation?

[Richard Barrett]

music performed to a much higher standard than is possible in a small village

Radio has been around for quite a while now! and TV too. I'm not sure that the more recent expansion of media has necessarily brought much more awareness of high performance standards - have you seen what some people are apparently sufficiently proud of to put on Youtube??? But surely amateur music making has never been a matter of trying to match professional standards, as opposed to creating an opportunity for active participation which has value in itself.

As for the "national psyche", I really don't think it's helpful or realistic to think in those terms, for reasons I tried to explain with regard to "human nature" and which S_A explained with more clarity and eloquence than I managed. What this all boils down to is that, under the neoliberal ideology which has held sway in most of the West since the 1980s, the ruling class no longer sees it as necessary even to pretend that "the arts" should be something the majority of the population need to be interested in, since this involves spending money on them which could be put to better use further enriching the wealthy. It isn't exclusively a British phenomenon by any means; the situation in the US for example is far worse, while even among the more traditionally social-democratic countries of Europe the trend is the same. The ideological devaluation of mass participation in artistic/creative pursuits has evidently been so successful that it's possible to see it as a characteristic of a supposed "national psyche" - that's how bad things have become and it needs to be resisted by all means necessary, beginning from refusing such terms of argument.

[MrGongGong]

I went to an early years school this morning in rural Scotland
I played recordings of insects, the sea, electronic drones and bats while my friend sang South Indian lullabies in Tamil.
The children lay on the floor with the staff and some went to sleep.

It's all about context.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of the issues we are skirting around here is that music (whether writing it, performing it or teaching it) isn't something that can be reduced to standardised approaches. Allotting a higher level of resources is something everyone here can agree on no doubt. (And not just high enough to be able to pay MrGG but enough to train enough MrGGs to go around!) But also enough freedom should be allotted to individual teachers for them to be able (and encouraged/motivated) to use their imaginations and skills to the full. If there are enough teachers there's no need for any kind of one-size-fits-all policy.

- I don't think that any subject can be taught or studied in any meaningful sense in these "one-size-fits-all", less financially expensive ways that schools have to adopt. It's just that something approaching "learning" (although in reality this is more Exam. preparation) can be achieved in this manner in some other subjects.

But surely any policy needs to involve some component of live performance because isn't that the lifeblood of the kind of music we're talking about?

- and of all the other kinds that I know of. Performers coming into schools creates a curiosity for what's going on, not just among the kids for whose benefit these performers are brought in - other kids AND Staff members want to know what's going on. And a trip outside school to go to see Performing Arts practitioners is always welcome.

And if there are people who are put off by the excellence of professionals performing, these are far outnumbered by the majority who are either inspired to take up an instrument, or to up their game and devote more to their practising. (And that's leaving out the thousands who turn up to X-Factor-type auditions who believe that they don't need any training at all, and who believe in spite of all the evidence that they are great performers!)

As for civilised society, I don't think there's been one yet. There was a time when what you say, doversoul1, was true in terms of values placed on non-practical (for which read non-profitable, of course) things; but back then other values were even more upside down than they are now, with regard to gender equality for example. So let's not think in terms of going back to a mythical golden age!

So, valuing non-protitable things diminishes after the enfranchisement of women! Aye - think on!

On Anglo-Saxon philistinism, by coincidence, I've been reading Timothy Day's history of the English Cathedral singing style, and I've just encountered this passage:

In 1889 the editor of the "Musical Times" conceded that musicians may as well acknowledge the strong prejudices against nusic and musicians, that many sensible men and women were sure that "devotion to the study of music is inevitably [my emphasis] attended by a weakening of moral and physical fibre" and so "they avoid all personal contact or association with ... these nerveless and effeminate natures", men "destitute of any manly vigour or grit", who had never played cricket or been on a horse in their lives.

(p105)

... and evidence of such general attitudes towards Music and Musicians is scattered earlier throughout the book; a Headmaster at Eton disapproving of a teacher organizing professional chamber concerts for the pupils because "he thought it effeminate and demoralising". (Such attitudes help explain both Elgar's adoption of a "military" public persona, and, in the US, Ives' aggressively "masculinised" pronouncements.) Skip forward seventy years, and there's Peter Maxwell Davies being denied "A"-level Music study because the Headmaster told him "this isn't a girls' school". (A quarter of a century on, and there's my own Music teacher giving up his Free periods in order to teach the two of us who needed to take "A"-level Music - I don't think this is unique, or rare; I would not be at all surprised if anybody here asked any three Music teachers who've been in the profession for ten years or more if they had used their own time to give such unpaid "extra" tuition, they'd be told by at least one of them that they had. This is not something that Science teachers have to do - most of them do for supplementary tuition, but not because there's no space on the timetable to teach the Course otherwise.)

BUT, what's also important to take from these historic examples, is that, whilst prejudice against Music has been a prominent feature of British cultural attitudes, they've never been the only attitude - these examples are taken from accounts of people who fought against them at the time, and who lived and worked to see vast improvements in provision for Music. Such distrustful and contemptuous attitudes come in waves - and we are in such a period now. But we can help to change this, just as our historic equivalents did, collectively, persistently, optimistically.

[doversoul1]

- and of all the other kinds that I know of. Performers coming into schools creates a curiosity for what's going on, not just among the kids for whose benefit these performers are brought in - other kids AND Staff members want to know what's going on. And a trip outside school to go to see Performing Arts practitioners is always welcome.

I must have been ten or eleven, a touring theatre came to my school. Having to watch adults hopping about on the stage while shouting every word in terrible exaggeration embarrassed me so much that I still almost avoid theatre. It was lucky that I found cinema soon after that.

I accompanied a group of primary school children (10-11) to a few live performances including Cats and Snowman. For both, the children’s response was best described as lukewarm. Another group was taken to a concert by Kent Youth Orchestra. Sibelius’s Violin Concerto was the first work; the children’s boredom was almost tangible. Next was The Three-Cornered Hat. The children gradually sat up and towards the end of the work, they were ‘glued’ to the stage. Then, an encore came: a Strauss waltz. Back went the children to their boredom. Funnily enough, the accompanying adults said that was the best thing in the concert.

I am making an obvious (but not at all helpful) point: simply being live performance does not necessary work the magic. Spare a thought for poor children who have to suffer boredom and embarrassment. Is there a way to ensure that children always encounter quality (ah...) performance?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Leaving aside the point that discovering that Cats is intensely boring is a valid educational experience - "boredom" will be inevitable for some children in every educational activity. In total I spent about a week of my life being bored on various sports fields, and Science laboratories. Suffering boredom and embarrassment is part of the educational experience: it helps us define who we are - and how to devise strategies for coping with boredom and embarrassment! And, just as my fascination for all things scientific wasn't dimmed by my experiences in school, so the kids who enjoyed The Three-Cornered Hat will take that away with them. And, at 10, I think that I would have found Sibelius' Violin Concerto boring - just as I would have found King Lear boring, or Das Kapital. That's the teacher's fault, not the Live performance's.

And were all your classmates as "embarrassed" by the touring theatre company's performance as you were? Were others not intrigued by what they encountered (for the first time?) and move on to a lifelong love of Live Theatre? Boring some children is a risk worth taking occasionally in order to make larger groups of children experience something they may never otherwise encounter - or even frequently, so that your 10-year-old self could have seen different theatrical styles, more appealing to you.

[Dave2002]

I went to an early years school this morning in rural Scotland
I played recordings of insects, the sea, electronic drones and bats while my friend sang South Indian lullabies in Tamil.
The children lay on the floor with the staff and some went to sleep.

It's all about context.

Some rural communities in Scotland do still seem to have the sort of village spirit I was thinking of in msg 140 and which has all but disappeared in most UK cities and small communities in England.

I was also thinking back 50-60 years at least rather than a mere 30 or so, though some of my comments could still apply in the more recent periods.

Re the comments that going to live performances (music, theatre, dance) can be “boring” for students I have no answer, though what was different about de Falla’s music which stirred a spark of interest? Are children these days just bored with everything?

[MrGongGong]

Some rural communities in Scotland do still seem to have the sort of village spirit I was thinking of in msg 140 and which has all but disappeared in most UK cities and small communities in England.

I was also thinking back 50-60 years at least rather than a mere 30 or so.

Re the comments that going to live performances (music, theatre, dance) can be “boring” for students I have no answer, though what was different about de Falla’s music which stirred a spark of interest? Are children these days just bored with everything?

I don't think it's because they are rural. I'm also currently working with another group from Possilpark in Glasgow who have an insatiable appetite for all sorts of sounds.

One "mistake" that folks often make is that they assume that music is without context. So if someone says they are "bored" it is assumed that it is the SOUND of the music that is boring, rather than the context within which listening happens.

(R. Murray Schafer et al )

And my village band (in England) is a hotbed of (unintentional) microtonality

[Dave2002]

I think it’s also relevant to remember that many people - children, and probably also includes some of us, have the attention span of a gnat. Expecting kids to sit through Sibelius’s violin concerto, while great for some, might also be considered an act of sustained torture by others.

[oddoneout]

I think it’s also relevant to remember that many people - children, and probably also includes some of us, have the attention span of a gnat. Expecting kids to sit through Sibelius’s violin concerto, while great for some, might also be considered an act of sustained torture by others.

The R3 morning schedule format(aka bleeding chunks) might be easier to take especially for younger children....
Having professional musicians coming into school(I'm thinking here of orchestras/ensembles which do short residencies in the wilds of not-London, and go into schools as part of an outreach programme) is perhaps better at engaging the interest of pupils, not least if they can get close to and handle the instruments?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am making an obvious (but not at all helpful) point: simply being live performance does not necessary work the magic.

Sorry, I meant to mention this - you are, of course, absolutely right here. Teachers (preferably in consultation/collaboration with performers) should "curate" Live performnaces that they wish their kids to attend - selecting suitable repertoire, and preparing them for what to expect (where appropriate - sometimes the shock of experiencing something new can itself be the best "entry" to a lifelong love for and interest in a subject/genre).