Teaching & Learning

Music has such an impact on students in their everyday lives it's interesting to me that teachers don’t discuss and teach more about contemporary music.

I was very interested in the topic of music’s influence on each student individually. It was also interesting to learn about the reactions and movements students had when listening to classical and contemporary music. I also found the questions students have pertaining to their body in relation to music very thought provoking.

 

This article states that “Music knowledge is presented as atomistic, static and transmittable— yet students know that music is personal, emotional, physical, unnameable, complex, connected and enormously divers” (p.47)

 

This paragraph challenged my assumptions about how music is presented. I always assumed music was not presented as “atomistic, static and transmittable.” It was embedded into my head that music is personal and emotional. When I started learning music I did not understand theory, specifically note values. Thus, I relied more on ear and call and response techniques to learn pieces. This lead to me to think of music as more expressive than technical through my younger years. I assumed that this was the same for most people. But, to a person who was only taught music theory, music is presented as “atomistic, static and transmittable.”

 

It surprised me when the article talked about how music “can make an enormous difference to students’ sense of themselves, their peers, and their world.” (p.60) 

In a world obsessed with self expression and identity, and is in desperate need of more in person communication, it is baffling to me that a class that promotes such qualities is not as appreciated, respected, and financially supported as other subject areas. 

 

It frustrates me that music dictates students “fashions, influences their language and dominates their conversations, defining what and who is cool.”(p.49) Yet, students view music as unimportant, useless, a waste of time, and above all not cool. It’s hard for me to understand the gap between the music that dictates students lives and school music. Although, these are very different genres, it’s still music as a general. Student’s idolize radio singers, yet if you sing in a choir you are somehow not cool.

 

I would like to discuss more on what teachers can do to bridge the gap between liking to listen to music and liking to play music with the author. 

If I were to talk to the author I would share my ideas on how to bridge this gap. For instance, if music programs had more contemporary music classes along classical music classes, the interest in music classes may increase and start to bridge the gap between school music and general music. I would like to know their thoughts on this idea in order to further progress this idea and possibly use it to inspire students to take music when I am a teacher. 

​

Stewart Rose, Leslie, and June Countryman. 2013. Repositioning ‘the elements’: How students talk about music. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 12(3): 45–64.