Challenges Faced by Schools Developing Music Curriculum With A Look At Philosophy by David Elliot and Bennet Reimer

This is a response to Music Matters by David Elliot and A Philosophy of Music Education Advancing the Vision by Bennett Reimer on the subject of the challenges schools face when developing music curriculum.

The two aforementioned authors pose many challenges in developing a curriculum for music education that fulfills its responsibility for every student. As Reimer puts it there are different levels of “engagement” of students of music. Not everyone seeks to be “professional”, or immerses themselves in music so much as to make it a career. Likewise, not everyone sits on the back burner as a music “aficionado”, being content to study music from the side and contemplate its facets.

Both authors are very clear that our 9 National Standards of Music Education are musically sound. They provide clear direction into what makes up music and what benchmarks there should be in order to gain a comprehensive music education.

One challenge we face in music education is applying these 9 standards throughout a student’s time in our schools. Typically what ends up happening is a focus in the elementary on “general music” (more academic) and the middle and high school levels are left for “performance” (band, orchestra, other performance ensembles).

            If you think about an entire school system, you will have 3 major types of music students: 1. Aficionados are enthusiasts who eagerly, delightedly, and intelligently seek musical experiences in their lives. 2. Amateurs and 3. Professionals. The latter two seek to partake in music as amateur or professional musicians.

I can certainly speak about the school where I teach. It is a middle school (5-8) and I teach the instrumental music students (band and strings). I get students in every grade every year that want to try to be in a performance ensemble, but find out that it’s not the direction they want to go with music. They would much prefer to be in the aficionado set of students, but in a performance class, everyone is expected to be an amateur musician at least.

I’m sure this is repeated everywhere, but it’s typically the model that after the elementary, it’s time to join an ensemble or say goodbye to music in school. There is nothing wrong with a performance ensemble! You gain so many skills and there is no better place to perform with peers who love to do the same thing you love to do. A huge challenge is to provide those students in this ensemble the opportunities to utilize the other standards of music education: compose, notate, listen, analyze, describe, evaluate, and understand.

David Elliot brings up a very interesting component of curriculum that I agree with and see great insight into. He spends quite a bit of his book discussing lesson plans. Elliot stands that ultra-specific verbal plans or scripts run contrary to the nature and value of teaching. This can be a challenge to get around when higher-ups are required that each teacher provide these ultra-specific plans as proof of their teaching and preparation.

I know that as a teacher I come up with dozens of new ideas and ways of bringing concepts to students every class that I teach. Even the logistics of presenting an experience can be done better, and no amount of planning is going to be better than thinking on your feet. Flexibility is key for great lessons. Adjustment to the flow of the class shows good planning, so why do schools propose such strict requirements for lessons?

I have been told by administration that in the event that I am gone, lesson plans will provide the district with a seamless pickup from where I left off! This is laughable since in the event that I am gone, students will need to be oriented to a new teacher with new styles and they might not even be able to continue or agree with the way things were done. As a long-term substitute, I was always prepared to present experiences based on my background and expertise to provide the students with special musical experiences. In the event that I am gone, I have other lessons prepared that are separate from the curriculum we are working on anyway. They are more community and team-building activities and work well with someone the students aren’t used to.

So then what else do these scripts accomplish? If a parent or administrator wishes to know what is happing on a given day or what is coming up, they need only talk to the students who are responsible for their learning. Another music teacher taking over will establish their own protocols and procedures, as they are comfortable with teaching them. It’s very labor-intensive to have predicted outcomes that don’t come out the way you expect and serve no purpose since their justification is only valid if the students can be observed doing these activities.

I like to record what has happened and plan on experiences for students to experience to get a comprehensive music education. I am constantly asking myself, “Have we done this activity? Should we try it this way next time?” I make notes as needed and we go for it! It’s very spontaneous, collaborative, and relevant. It helps that students, parents, and teachers are all on the same page.

These are some of the challenges that I have personally faced as well as some that are brought up by Elliot and Reimer. I was happy to agree with their findings as well as have a few experiences of my own to correlate to their philosophies.

A Compare/Contrast Look at Views on Music Education Featuring Reimer and Elliott

In reading passages from Music Matters by David J. Elliott, and A Philosophy of Music Education Advancing the Vision, Third Edition by Bennett Reimer both authors take the reader down the path of attempting to define not only music education, but what music fundamentally is. I will spoil this for you now.
Elliot proposes that "Fundamentally, music is something that people do." Elliott then goes on to support this philosophy with "four dimensions of Musicing." Musicing has a doer, some kind of doing, something done, and the complete context under which these happen. Elliot offers many insights that go against a more "aesthetic" philosophy for music. Elliot uses many wonderful analogies when making these comparisons. Elliot stays with the Greek idea that aesthetics suggest "sense experience", or the perception and contemplation of things rather than their creation- looking, listening, or reading rather than making."
In tying everything together, this aesthetic version of music is not complete in Elliot's eyes. He takes the four dimensions of musicing and applies it to listening. Music listening means that there is a listener, something listenable, and there is listening happening, all of this in a specific context.
After this, Elliot combines both groups of dimensions to say that the four dimensions of Musicing, and the four dimensions of listening, combine to create the idea of what MUSIC is. Elliot calls this, "MUSIC: A Diverse Human Practice." This is then taken to music education, where these are the basis for what should be taught and what experiences should be happening in education.

Bennet Reimer, in contrast to Elliot, uses the aesthetic concept of music largely to support his philosophy. Reimer states that "Aesthetic education in music attempts to enhance learnings related to the following propositions:
1. Musical sounds create and share meanings available only from such sounds.
2. Creating musical meanings and partaking of them, require an amalgam of mind, body, and feeling.
3. Musical meanings incorporate within them a great variety of universal/cultural/individual meanings transformed by musical sounds.
4. Gaining its special meanings requires direct experience with musical sounds, deepened and expanded by skills, knowledge, understandings, attitudes, and sensitivities education can cultivate.
Reimer later merges this aesthetic, sound-based learning with music as practice. I am summarizing quite extensively, but similar to Elliot, Reimer claims that music not only should be listened to, but should be created as well to be fully appreciated. This means playing, singing, composing, arranging should be mixed with listening, analyzing, and contemplating the meaning of the sounds being performed in a work of music. He takes these large concepts and attempts a synergistic "experience-based" philosophy of music education. Reimer summarizes this as:
"An experience-based philosophy of music education is inclusive of all musics and of all ways of being engaged with it because every particular kind and type of music, and every particular way music is made and received, represents a particular opportunity for musical experience."

I must say that I have pondered this question, "what is music?" many times. Usually it's when talking about my own education with others and I start talking about the contemporary aleatoric and chance music. When do we leave the theater? When is the play done? When is the work you came to see at the concert truly over and the piece is completed?
I can relate this best to Elliot's "four dimensions of Musicing." The music is done when humans are no longer performing music, or when listeners stop listening, or there is no context for any of this to be happening! While the bird outside singing it's song is repetitive and seemingly "composed", it is not attempting to perform music. Similarly, Elliot uses the analogy of the ticking of a clock. No one is listening, humans are not performing, and there is no work here that is happening. If you were to record, or use these sounds as instruments or parts of a piece or work, it would have context, musicers, music, and it would be MUSIC. Reading these author's philosophies greatly aided my own definitions in my mind.
As a music educator, and as far as music education is concerned, I lean toward Reimer in my own philosophies and advocacy. Reimer says that music should be taught in school for music's sake. I agree with this completely. We do not learn other practices such as Science or Math so that our Reading scores go up. We study them for the sake of their individual practice. While there may be benefits that reach beyond that practice, this is not a justification for delving into those practices or any of the arts.
I also agree with Reimer that music should be experienced in all of it's facets. It does not do the subject justice to only have experience listening to music, or playing, or singing. All facets of music should be experienced to gain the full value of music education.

On a side note, I was surprised how many times the authors quoted each other. I read Elliot first, and he would devote entire half-pages to quoting Reimer. This happens multiple times and it was an interesting experience reading Reimer after already viewing so many bits of his writing. Reimer returns the favor in the same way, if not a little more discretely. I definitely got the sense that Elliot was directly challenging Reimer's philosophy more than the opposite. It was something interesting that I felt as I read the two authors. This makes sense I suppose, since Reimer's first edition was in 1970, and Elliot's book was written 1995. Also, Reimer had his second edition out in 1989, so Reimer would definitely be one of Elliot's predecessors.

Hopefully reading these two authors in conjunction can aid you in your own philosophy as much as it did mine! There is a lot of discussion that is far from one-sided. Elliot in particular attempts to devote as much of the book to views that he does not agree with as views he does. This is what is means to be a philosopher I suppose.

My Professional Life

My name is Kevin Thoendel. I am currently the instrumental music director (band and strings) at King Science and Technology Magnet Middle School in the Omaha Public School district. It is a 5-8 grade school and I am all that is instrumental music! I started working there in January of 2011. I've been enjoying the school immensely. There are tons of kids with tons of talent and creativity.
I was previously the band director at Creighton Community Schools in Creighton Nebraska. There I also accompanied for the choir and soloists for contests. It was a rural community, but I grew up in a rural community so I was used to it. I also happened to have lots of family around there.
In 2007 I graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with my music education degree. My main instrument is tuba, but I am extremely proficient on the piano as well. While strings were definitely my weakest instrument, I am now enjoying teaching them. I learn every day better ways to explain things and give my students the models they need to follow. I hope to be at King Science for a long time.