One of the most important and infrequently questioned issues around music education touches the ground of very understanding of the necessity to provide the population with music education. Why should we do this? Music education cannot be grasped outside of the socio-historical background in which it occurs. Understanding the roots of music education can assist contemporary music teachers as well as the general public to approach the current and future pursuits in the hands-on artful and scientific experience of music making. David Eliott acknowledges that “improving as a music educator involves the thoughtful examination of aims, goals, strategies, standards, and plans in relation to a rigorous professional belief system” (Elliott, D. J., & Silverman, M. (2015). Music matters: a philosophy of music education (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 4).
During different historical eras, the conceptualization of core social purposes of music-making and education varied vastly. Some of the main ideas behind music education include religious worship purposes, socialization purposes, purposes of establishment of international and interracial relationships, cultural preservation purpose, profit gaining purpose. All those grounds to music making were developed to dominate in some periods of time; however, they can coexist harmonically in a single individual’s reasoning to study and practice music. In the given paper, I’ll briefly overlook and compare the prevailing social constructs and bias around music education in the United States.
1.1 Religious worship purpose: singing schools
The religious revival in colonial Americas had stimulated the vivid social interest in church music; music education in this context was said to have the positive impact on the overall moral standards of the evangelistic communities. Most of the musical activities of New Englanders were related exclusively to the religious worship. New England developed public formal music education system as means to support spiritual life of the communities: the church ministers organized a system of singing schools alike earlier European “scholae cantorum” where people were prepared to become effective members of the religious establishment. Everyone who wanted to receive music and religious education and socialize with others was embraced by the movement. Minister Reverend John Tufts of Newbury, Massachusetts wrote the first American music textbook “An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes” in approximately 1721, which was meant to overcome singing illiteracy in the eighteenth century America. Tuft’s methodic was followed by numerous similar publications by other educators and can be perceived as the most influential in American music education treatise until 1820th when Lowell Mason’s music pedagogy took over.
During the period of religious revival in colonial America, music was never socially thought of as a profession per se. The singing masters – teachers of the singing schools mostly treated their music profession as an opportunity to gain the uncertain side income to their other occupations in trade, craftsmanship, and artisanship; other singing masters traveled from community to community upon the exhaustion of work opportunities at the particular town or village.
American music education played an important role in formulating the idea of equality in the US from the earliest historical stages. It must be mentioned that the singing schools were the first social institutions to attract Afro-American students and singing masters in a mixed congregation as early as in 1674 (Mark, M. L., & Gary, C. L. (2007). A history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 99). The tradition of singing schools had not only established the earliest American equal public educational system before the common school came into existence but as well have proved that practicing democratic values and freedom of self-expression, such as practicing music as a profession, can be achieved on American grounds.
The teacher-oriented, often authoritarian educational tradition tied with singing schools had existed for almost two centuries. At the time, musicians’ capabilities to perform vocal repertoire successfully were perceived as a talent, or a gift of God, which cannot be artificially or pedagogically nurtured. However, the aesthetics of the music performance was not a priority at the time, – rather the ability to participate in a collective moral workshop organized by the church. Until today, some of the music pedagogy critics around the world tend to agree with the concept of the selective purposed education of “talented” students. In the twentieth century, the works of Theodor Adorno have inspired the new wave of bias in the conceptualization of selective music education by arguing that the purpose of music education lies in perpetuating music itself which should be performed by exclusively by critically nurtured self-determined music makers (Kertz-Welzel, A. (2005). “The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education.” In: Research Studies in Music Education, online edition).
1.2 Socialization and reconciliation purposes: Enlightenment ideas and the choral societies
After the Revolutionary War, the US restored the cultural connections with European countries; the waves of immigration from Europe inevitably brought the secular element in music making into East Coast cities and large communities. The ideas of Renaissance and Enlightenment European eras with their obsession with the science of all sorts – including music science – finally reached to Americans who weren’t engaged with the aesthetics of secular “scientific” and, additionally, instrumental (not vocal) music making. The secular music-making of European composers required quite an elaborate level of music education from the performers, and there weren’t enough skilled music teachers to educate singing schools students in the new style of music performing art. Therefore, singing schools had developed into the choral societies which had members capable of learning some of the advanced virtuosic religious choral works of European composers, such as G. F. Handel’s, J. Haydn’s, L. V. Beethoven’s, and W. A. Mozart’s Requiem. The activists of the choral societies, first of all, Lowell Mason (1792-1872) insisted on the compulsory inclusion of vocal music education into the public schools’ curriculum. There was about a hundred of listed choral societies in Massachusetts between 1785 and 1840, “all dedicated to improvement in sacred music” (Mark, M. L., & Gary, C. L. (2007). A history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 102), whose practices and public concerts substantially contributed to the elevation of American musical tastes in the nineteenth century.
The concepts of rationality, democracy, and equality which arrived from revolutionary Europe and took roots in the American Constitution, clearly opposed the spiritual submission to the authority of the church in the setting of American singing schools. Young people were seeking intellectual and artistic employment. Gradually, the socializing purposes of music education became more important for the students than the religious practice: “we not only sang every exercise, tune, and anthem to do, re, mi… but at the close… we escorted the prettiest girl, to our way of thinking, home” (Henry Perkins, 1928. Cited from: Mark, M. L., & Gary, C. L. (2007). A history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 81). The more of young adults attended singing schools, the more secular music got introduced into the singing schools’ curriculum besides the traditional religious ‘all-psalms’ approach: music making was reevaluated as an independent intellectual activity.
Music practices believed to enhance drastically the quality of human’s life; the diversity of music practices got introduced into the common school curriculum with the organization of school bands, choirs, and orchestras with every student participating in kinds of music practices. Thinking music as a precise science, educators of nineteenth and early twentieth century America approached music pedagogy as a curative process in consideration with the research of William Gardiner “The Music of Nature”, 1832 (Mark, M. L., & Gary, C. L. (2007). A history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 137). Music pedagogues, impacted by L. Mason’s work, developed Progressivist democratic approach to music education in terms of developing the moral and ethical, physical and intellectual capacities of their students. Music education was thought of as “more difficult than learning Latin or Greek because it demands a cultivation of taste that can only be brought about by industrious, patient and persevering practice” (Ibid., 147). In the meanwhile, all native colonial music practices were ceased in favor of learning and performing only music literature of European style, which was believed by the majority of Americans to be culturally richer and incalculably better.
American educators of the time, led by L. Mason, William Woodbridge and later by J. Dewey, argued that all students can be taught to perform music successfully and completely discredited the religious conceptualization of musical “talent” and the consequent selection of only the qualifying students to present in public concerts. The level of importance of inquiring into the pedagogical methods and ethics arose in accordance with the democratic apprehension of students’ freedoms. Already by 1830 Boston Academy of Music stated a purpose to organize the class of instruction of educators and parents in the methodology of teaching vocal music in the context of child-oriented curriculum (Ibid, 147), however, the national committee would not formulate a general instructional plan for music educators in public schools until 1902 (Ibid., 320). By the end of the nineteenth century, music education shifted from authoritarian “vocal music-making” to the Progressivist era competency-based music teachers’ education.
1.3 Preservation and liberation purposes: roots music and improvisation
As the dominant culture’s music education in the US blindly followed the lead of European spiritual practices and their revolutionary thinkers’ experiments, the only folk music making in the US was practiced in the relatively isolated Afro-American, Mexican-American and Cajun communities in the rural South. Folk vocal music making was conceived as means to preserve the cultural identity, to pass homeland’s history to the younger generations and to express personal experiences in the foreign lands when facing the dynamic social conditions. Roots music immediately reflects the flows which are connected to social injustice, the liberation and integration challenges, working-class hardships and celebrations of all achievements by all groups.
Parents were not the only music educators of their kids in the communities where every kid learned music. Within the slowly merging communities white and black musicians often intersected through collective music making, therefore influenced on each other’s musical repertoires, playing styles and the knowledge of folk musical instruments, for instance, button accordion and percussion. “Music performance was often a place whites and blacks could come together and transcend the social limits imposed by segregation” (Litwack, Leon. “Historical Background” in American Roots Music, online edition). Blues, Tex-Mex, and many other root music traditions were born out of the cultural remnants mixed with newly appeared technical convenience – techniques and instruments, and a certain appropriation of other culture’s musical heritage.
The root music had preserved the spirit of personal freedom in arts through practicing music improvisation. While European music makers eliminated the tradition of improvisation from every music school’s curriculum, blues and jazz musicians have demonstrated the entirety of brilliance of it. Only by the end of the twentieth century, academic circles in conservatories and music schools embraced the necessity to provide students with the formal jazz improvisation instruction; European and American experimental music makers, followed by the composer Pauline Oliveros, turned around to the art of improvisation outside of any established tradition. Through root music, the relevance of the First Amendment in music, personal expression of freedom and spontaneity, – the improvisation, – have survived the hundred years of the ban in the intellectualized dominant culture’s educational curriculum.
1.4 Profit purposes: selectivity and decline
The successful launch of Sputnik by USSR in 1957 shattered the competitive spirit of American nation with the fear of failure, formulated in governmental report “A Nation at Risk” in 1983. The federal governmental approach to common school curriculum adjusted in ways of perpetuating the crucially important math and sciences curricular subjects, while cutting budgets directly affected the art and music classes which began to be perceived as “anti-intellectual or irrelevant to national security” (Kelly, Steven N. (2012) “John Dewey and James Mursell: Progressive educators for contemporary music education” in Visions of Research in Music Education, online edition, 21). To the day, students across the country are deprived of cognitive, intellectual, and social benefits of musical pursuits in public schools.
The teaching approaches changed with the lack of trust in the competence of American educators. The focus on standardized testing related the purpose of music education from the process of learning to achieve the final product of education – students’ capability to present in public concerts successfully. Federal initiatives in art and music education took over in 1962 under Kennedy’s administration (Cox, G., & Stevens, R. (2011). The origins and foundations of music education cross-cultural historical studies of music in compulsory schooling. London: Continuum, 147). The student-oriented approach to music education of the Progressivist pedagogy shifted to teacher-controlled authoritarian tradition with the introduction of a highly discriminative process of the selection of qualifying students to present the immediate results through the organization of competitions and distribution of scholarship funds. “School structures began to be modeled after competitive business concepts where favor lies with those who are more successful than others. Consequently, competition among schools and students was encouraged, replacing the promotion of unity and democratic ideals” (Kelly, Steven N. (2012). “John Dewey and James Mursell: Progressive educators for contemporary music education” in Visions of Research in Music Education, online edition, 21).
Not only the standardization of educational process allowed to develop more humane approaches to music pedagogy, it also made the circle of people who have access to music education smaller. The more strict rules the educational system in the US is imposing on the students, the more society rejected the perception of a common school as a tool of societal progress. The purpose and significance of music education are entirely lost in the context of public education in the US; however, the communities contribute to students’ intellectual pursuits by enhancing root music making. While European intellectual music education meets its inevitable decline since fewer and fewer people see the socio-political value of art music making in a new era, the popular culture preserves and perpetuates root music without a connection to the formal educational system.
The aesthetics and the hand-on cognitive experience are the indisputable values of music making among the multiple views of the purpose of music education. T. Adorno, James Mursell, David J. Elliott have proved in their researches in the twentieth century that humans’ capabilities of independent critical thinking and emotional flexibility are best developed through music making. Contemporary music education critics agree that should the process of formal music education remain profit and result-oriented, the quality of life of generations will not be complete.
Bibliography
- Cox, G., & Stevens, R. (2011). The origins and foundations of music education cross-cultural historical studies of music in compulsory schooling. London: Continuum.
- Elliott, D. J., & Silverman, M. (2015). Music matters: a philosophy of music education(2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Kelly, S. N. (2012). John Dewey and James Mursell: Progressive Educators for Contemporary Music Education. In: Visions of Research in Music Education, Vol. 21, pp. np. Available at https://openmusiclibrary.org/article/172216/.
- Kertz-Welzel, A. (2005). The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education. In: Research Studies in Music Education. Available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1321103X050250010301.
- Litwack, Leon. (2001). Historical Background in American Roots Music. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_itc_historical_background.html.
- Mark, M. L., & Gary, C. L. (2007). A history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
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