Micah Dalbey
Philosophy of Music Education
American music educators have sought for years to justify music’s curricular position by arguing that music facilitates learning in other areas. Some point to music’s ability to increase neural pathways and activate both hemispheres of the brain. Others emphasize music’s cross-disciplinary nature and its unique ability to provide a synthesis of various subjects. While much good has come from these lines of research, I believe that the two greatest arguments for the indispensability of music education are music’s ability to nurture and give language to the emotional side of humanity, and music’s ability to affect the social dimension of our existence.
Susanne Langer believes that “music is a provider of profoundly important human insights attainable in no other way, and specifically, a means of gaining insight into… the nature of human feeling.” Langer perceived music as the symbolic expression of the ‘inner life’ or ‘felt life.’ She argued that “music does for feeling as language does for thought” (Bowman, 1998, p. 200). Therefore, the argument that music helps students with language comprehension is less important than the notion that music is a form of language all its own. Music gives expression and utterance to those inner impulses which humans normally struggle to articulate. Plato wrote in his Socratic dialogue, The Republic, “Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul” (Plato, 1974, p. 118). Of all the arguments one might make for music education, the most powerful seems to be that music has the ability to affect the inward parts of human beings. One of my college choir directors recently underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery, and after the operation, he joked with the doctor about how insignificant teaching music seemed in comparison to medical work. But the doctor quickly responded that while medical professionals patch skin and put casts on bones, music teachers deal with the human spirit! The way I think of it is that doctors prolong life, while music teachers help people live. Robert Shaw, considered by many to be the most influential choral conductor in American history, wrote that “music is great… because it calls out to something deep and persistent in the human thing… It carries something so native and true to the human spirit that not even sophisticated intellectuality can deny or destroy its miracle" (Shaw, 2004, p. 351).
Music also affects the social dimension of our existence - how we interact within society and how we communicate with each other. According to David and Gfeller (2003), “Music is used as a medium to help people maintain or improve important life skills in the areas of communication… and social skills” (p. 70). One of music’s greatest benefits lies in its ability to help develop a sense of community. In fact, in a society of “rampant western individualism" (Crow, 2008) “musical ensembles might perhaps be some of the last bastions of real community” (Gluschankof, 2004). Students in a musical ensemble learn to interact and cooperate with each other in ways which no other class can afford. For example, in what other curricular discipline are students so completely interdependent on one other for the final product than in a choir or a band? In these ensembles, the failure of one means the failure of all, but the success of each member means the success and growth of the whole. Perhaps this is why former president Bill Clinton said, “Music is about communication, creativity, and cooperation, and, by studying music in school, students have the opportunity to build on these skills, enrich their lives, and experience the world from a new perspective” (Wilcox, 1999). Education should be more than just dispensing information – it should be providing students with opportunities to create and experiment in cooperation with others, all the while helping them to see themselves and their peers from new perspectives.
This isn’t to say, however, that the benefits of music are strictly emotional and social. Music also has been shown to offer physiological benefits. For example, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine has found that music and language are
inseparably linked as a single system in the brain (Garfias, 1987, p. 100). In addition, Dr. Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research believes that the brains of children not exposed to music are actually being damaged because of the forgone exposure to non-verbal modalities which aid in the development of skills related to reading, writing, and arithmetic (Roehmann, 1988). Research shows that when a child studies a musical instrument, both the right and the left hemispheres of the brain are activated – precisely the portions of the brain involved in analytical and mathematical thinking (Dickinson, 1993, p. 1).
Music can also provide a “synthesis” of various subjects and disciplines. For example, learning about rhythms and meter signatures can strengthen one’s math skills. Once a student learns that a whole note contains four quarter notes, and a quarter note contains four eighth notes, he or she can then begin to understand the finer note divisions (i.e., a dotted eighth note consists of three sixteenth notes). Additionally, vocal music offers students unique encounters with poetry from a wide variety of countries and languages. For example, when reading through Shakespeare, an English teacher could play a recording of “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” (a well-known text from Shakespeare’s As You Like It) by English composer Samuel Barber. And finally, music and poetry are rich with historical meaning. What better way to gain an understanding of the suffering caused by slavery than to perform “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child,” “Soon I Will Be Gone,” or one of many other African-American spirituals?
But despite music’s ability to improve the brain and provide a synthesis of various disciplines, I believe that its position in academia should not be based primarily on these factors. Arguing solely for music’s ability to help students with other subjects essentially cheapens music, rendering it a “means to an end” in the arena of academic achievement rather than a separate body of knowledge and experience deserving of our attention. If music’s greatest benefit lies in its ability to help students excel in other subjects, then all administrators need to do is find another way to help students improve their math scores, and suddenly, music will be dispensable. Rather than scrambling for ways in which music can help students in the “important” subjects, music educators should be standing tall and contesting that music is worth studying simply because there’s nothing else like it. Wayne Bowman writes, “If music's images transform experience, shaping it and imbuing it with qualities nothing else can, perhaps, some would argue, we need look no further for its value. Perhaps the particular qualities it imparts to experience are more important than anything it can be shown to reveal” (Bowman, 1998, p. 223). Instead of promoting music’s connectedness to other curricular areas, we should be promoting its separateness and uniqueness. Music reaches parts of the human being which math, science and reading can never access, and this is precisely why it belongs in schools.
Humans have inherent musical potential, and isn’t the purpose of a liberal arts education to develop the entire individual? What kind of educators would we be if we dispensed the “necessary” information while choosing to ignore the inward parts of humanity, as Plato put it? Of what value is an education that merely fills our minds with information while failing to ignite our spirits? One online source quotes Albert Einstein - one of history’s most intellectually accomplished individuals - saying that “imagination is more important than knowledge." I would add that music is a fertile flowerbed out of which imagination can blossom. Plato said, “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything" (Lubbock, 2007, p. 154). Music stands alone as a body of knowledge, and therefore, it should be treated as such. Music has a role in society today, but more importantly, it has a role in our schools. According to Langer, “to neglect arts education is to neglect the education of feelings" (Langer, 1957, p. 72). When Richard Dreyfuss stood up to accept an award at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for his performance in the film Mr. Holland’s Opus, he said something very profound which has stayed with me to this day: “For some strange reason, when it comes to music and the arts, our world view has lead us to believe that they are easily expendable. Well, I believe that a nation that allows music to be expendable is in danger of becoming expendable itself."
Bibliography
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Crow, Bill. “Changing conceptions of educational creativity: a study of student teachers’ experience of musical creativity.” Music Education Research 10, no. 3 (September 2008): 374
Dickinson, Dee. Music and the Mind. Seattle: New Horizons for Learning, 1993.
Dreyfuss, Richard. Available from http://members.tripod.com/~galigo/dreyfuss.html; Internet. Accessed 25 April 2009.
Einstein, Albert. Available from http://thinkexist.com/quotation/imagination_is_more_important_than_knowledge-for/260230.html; Internet. Accessed 20 April 2009.
Garfias, Robert. “Thoughts on the Processes of Language and Music Acquisition.” In Music and Child Development: Biology of Music Making - Proceedings of the 1987 Denver Conference, ed. Frank Wilson and Franz Roehmann, 100. St Louis, MO: MMB Music, Inc., 1990.
Gluschankof, Claudia. “In Dialogue: Response to June Boyce-Tillman, ‘Towards an Ecology of Music Education.’” Philosophy of Music Education Review 12, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 185
Langer, Susanne K. Problem of Art. New York: Scribner, 1957.
Lubbock, Sir John. The Pleasures of Life. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2007. p 154
Plato. The Republic of Plato. Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books, 1974.
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Shaw, Robert. The Robert Shaw Reader. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
Wilcox, E. “Straight talk about music and brain research.” Teaching Music 7, no. 3 (December 1999): 29-35 |
