Spring 2011

Preparing For A Lifetime in Music

Dr. Barbara Resch was asked by SAI Music Director Dorothy Kittaka to write an article for the Music Medley column this issue.

It is impossible to listen to the media these days without hearing something about the state of education in our country.  Policy-makers are debating what should be at the core of the public school curriculum, and how we know that students are learning what they should. 

The central question (both now and throughout the history of American education) is driven by concern about schools adequately preparing today’s students for the roles they will eventually assume as productive members of society. There seems to be widespread consensus that the K-12 school years are crucial for acquiring the knowledge and skills all young Americans need for a lifetime of contributing fully to their jobs, communities, and country.

As musicians we share a fundamental point of agreement with this idea.  Throughout his term of office, Scott Shuler, national president of MENC: the National Association for Music Education, is making the point that “Music lasts a lifetime,” and that the goal of music education is preparation for making and enjoying music throughout the life span. 

As with the other core academic subjects, we can make the point that music needs to retain its place in the K-12 curriculum because it equips people for what they will do during the remaining decades of their lives when they are no longer in school.

We have been convinced for some time of this value of music education, especially in early childhood.  In the ‘60s, Edwin Gordon wrote about the importance of a musically enriched environment in cultivating a person’s musical aptitude.  His research suggested that the window of opportunity for developing music aptitude closed at about age nine, implying that the preschool and early elementary school years were crucial times in which the potential for lifelong musical learning was formed.

Brain research, a field that has grown exponentially in the past fifteen years with the development of scanning technologies, also supports the foundational role of early experiences with music.  The neural connections in the brain that are formed through repetition of a thought or action are established and retained most easily in the young — which is why a nine-year-old beginner will often learn to play the piano more fluently than an adult beginner, and why this music still “stays in the fingers” years later.

It is also true that our brains form mental maps based on our musical experiences, and that music that is heard from a young age determines the musical syntax our brains come to recognize and expect.  Just as children grow up pronouncing words with the accent that they hear around them, their brains are also programmed to recognize and accept the musical conventions in their environments.        

Thus the music of another culture or music that is consistently dissonant sounds strange to us: it doesn’t fit the expectations put in place by our brain’s maps.  Similarly, an education that provides experiences with a range of musical languages at a young age will enlarge the brain’s “open-mindedness” and acceptance.

Finally, music-making is a whole-brain activity, involving cognitive processing, motor functions, memory, visual processing, and emotional responses, and it engages the brain more actively than almost any other human activity.  These whole-brain workouts have the potential to transfer to other learning tasks and develop strategies that may aid the learner through the years of schooling and beyond.  In addition, these salient musical experiences often become deeply entrenched in our autobiographical memories, tend to stay with us over the lifespan and often influence our attitudes toward music well into adulthood.

A recently-released study by the National Endowment for the Arts offers additional proof for the impact of music education on lifelong participation in music.  The NEA researchers analyzed  data from 1982 through 2008 and determined that adults who had childhood instruction in the arts (music, visual art, theatre or dance) were 50% more likely to attend events like jazz or classical music concerts, plays, ballet, opera or art galleries.  Arts education during the K-12 years is also one of the strongest predictors of adults performing or creating art forms, including music, later in life.

The evidence, coming from music learning theory, brain research, and demographic survey data, is potent: directed musical experiences in childhood have an impact on the development of musical aptitude, skills, attitudes, and behavioral patterns that persist into adulthood. Given such a body of support, why then do most American adults interact with music passively through a set of ear buds instead of being actively involved with it?  Why is the National Anthem sung by soloists instead of the whole crowd at sports events?  And why don’t we have a nation of enthusiastic and active music-makers who rise up in full force to protest whenever there is a hint of reducing arts education in our schools?

I offer two possible characteristics of American music education that may actually deter the natural progression of musical involvement from school to adulthood. 

First, for decades, we have heard students talk about the disconnect between “school music” and “my music,” between the music taught in school classrooms and rehearsals and the ways in which adult amateur musicians in America choose to make music.  A 2006 Gallup poll noted that of those Americans who reported that they were playing instruments, 73% of the instruments were piano, guitar, bass and drums — the rhythm section — and only 27% were traditional band and orchestral instruments.

Patrick Jones uses the term “lifewide and lifelong musicing” to describe the activity of adults whose interests — both in school and in adulthood — extend beyond the musical ensembles typically offered in schools to include less formal and more diverse music-making.  The music education being offered may not be preparing them to continue making the kinds of music that engage their interest.

The other factor that may hinder development of a lifetime of music-making is the emphasis that is placed on the extra-musical social benefits of school music, such as the close bond of friendship that develops in the secondary performance ensembles, and the interdependence of the ensemble members.  Loyalty to the group, its members and its director can become the primary motivation for musical participation, yet this musical/social unit to which students become fiercely loyal is destined to disperse at graduation.

If these extrinsic social values supersede the joy and satisfaction of making music as the main motivation for musical participation, it is unlikely that a maturing adult will find similar outlets for music.  On the other hand, expertise in reading and playing or singing music, and confidence in music’s ability to improve the quality of one’s life might be factors that motivate an adult to seek out opportunities to continue interacting with music.

At a time when we face reductions in arts education in the public schools as the unintended consequences of budgetary and curricular decisions, our profession needs a nation of enthusiastic and engaged amateur musicians who value and support the arts.  And at a time when life seems to become faster-paced and more stressful each day, our citizens need to continue into adulthood the pleasure of making and listening to music that was so influential in their K-12 years. 

Supporters and practitioners of music education might well consider how we can encourage this engagement with music that will last a lifetime.

    Barbara Resch is Director of Music Education and the Associate Dean of Visual and Performing Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW).  She joined SAI as a faculty member of IPFW’s
Zeta Psi chapter in 1980 and currently is a member of the Fort Wayne Alumnae Chapter.
 

Winter 2011

Introducing Students to Composers

Some weeks after I’d taught a unit about Verdi and opera, a fourth grader returned to my classroom with this announcement:  “We were watching Jeopardy!,  and I was the only one who knew the answer about Verdi.”   While my goal wasn’t to prepare a generation of Jeopardy! winners, I was happy that the lessons about Giuseppe Verdi had made an impression
upon her.

Introducing students to composers can be an exciting way for students to connect to musicians, music genres, culture, and eras.  Making the learning applicable and relevant to the lives of the students involved is yet another challenge.   In this Music Medley column, we will give you some hints, tried & true lessons, and resources for teaching about composers.  We hope as you read and use some of these ideas, you will email us with additional ideas of your own that we might incorporate in future columns.

Project-based studies will allow for differentiation and personal choice.  Listed below are several projects that you might try with your students:   

• Produce a Jeopardy! game with students contributing questions and answers about a composer and his/her work  (country of origin, life, compositions, world events in his/her lifetime)
• Create composer puppets and have a theatre with mini-dramas to share with
other classes
• Build dioramas which show the culture/times of a composer with his/her family and share with the class (afterwards these could be put in a showcase in the hallway)
• Bring a composer radio show into the classroom where students “interview” a composer and review one composition that will be played on the show
• Assemble a poster for each composer grouping them for a gallery showing by either genre or era (include pertinent information about the composer)
• Generate a PowerPoint presentation about a composer with background music of that composer
• Fashion postcards from a composer’s travels or life  (i.e. Tchaikovsky writing to someone from his trip to America; Mozart on his travels as a child; Aaron Copland as he works on the music for Martha Graham’s ballet)
• Film a video about the composer or his/her music where students research and write the script; reenact a life scene with appropriate costumes, wigs, etc.
• Research and fabricate costumes from an opera, narrating a fashion show while including facts about the composer and how the opera was written
• Make calendars with composer information; pictures of composer life events could be the highlighted picture of the month
• Collect and cut pictures from magazines or draw things of significance for each composer and assemble into a collage to share with class
• Craft a composer alphabet book which features a composer for each letter with an alliterative phrase to go along with that composer (i.e. Chopin carefully creates compositions with crescendos) and list other facts about the composer somewhere on the page.  You could also illustrate the page.
 

Lessons and Teaching Tips

• Check out “The Real Beethoven” game patterned after To Tell The Truth in Music K-8/Vol. 11. No. 2
• Use KWL chart to determine what students already know, what they want to know and then to assess what they’ve learned
• Display a Composer of the Month chart with a picture and information about a specific composer
• Construct bulletin boards in your room and hallways with composer information;
• Look at lessons from Plank Music K-8; John Jacobson’s Music Express Magazine; The October 2009 issue of Music Alive has a section on the Gershwins
• Contribute to your morning news show by suggesting a music selection accompanied by a short narrative about its composer
• Find out about a learning strategy called DeBono’s Hats as an avenue for lateral thinking about composers and their music.  For an example, Liberty for All: A Musical Journey, a CD with music from Westward Expansion to the Industrial Revolution produced by MENC has Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with a link to a lesson for Grades 5-7 using De Bono’s Hats.
• Share information in small doses and revisit your composers often using different musical examples of their works
• Leave word searches, crossword puzzles, DVDs or videos focusing on composers for your substitute if you are away from the classroom.
    These can serve as reinforcements for lessons you’ve already begun.

Resources:

Moldenhauer Archives from the Library of Congress (letters, manuscripts, materials in the 3500 piece collection)  

One Page Composer Bios:  50 reproducible  biographies of famous composers by Jay Althouse, Alfred General Music & Classroom Publications

The Composer Special Series  (DVD or Videos)
        •  Bach’s Fight for Freedom
        •  Bizet’s Dream
        •  Handel’s Last Chance
        •  Liszt’s Rhapsody
        •  Rossini’s Ghost
        •  Strauss: The King of Three-Quarter Time
        •  The Composer’s Special Teacher’s Guide by Betsy Henderson
        •  Great Composers of the 20th Century by Jacqueline Wollan Gibbons:  Teacher’s Handbook and CD with                         reproducible student page.