In 1989 Donald Horne wrote a book called Ideas For a Nation. The book opens with a section entitled Warning, followed by a further heading which reads: Danger! Ideas At Work.
Horne writes, ‘A central concern of the book is that, objectively, existence is meaningless but that, as cultural animals, we provide meanings by creating ‘realities’ and it is from these creations that we can think and act. This means that it is the imagination, among other places, that one must seek for change.’
Donald Horne uses three words in that short paragraph which have implications for all arts practitioners: creating; realities; imagination.
Creativity, or the process of making things is, I believe, vital for the social, emotional, physical, spiritual and mental well-being of a nation. I cannot imagine that this view, in this company, would be widely challenged.
However, I believe that the notion of creativity within the current school system nationally, is being watered down or weakened, as schools vie for higher positions on the NAPLAN tables. Preparation for standardised testing in many schools in Australia consumes an enormous amount of teaching time. I have first-hand evidence of schools in New South Wales and Victoria where time which would be spent on Music, Art and Dance, for example, has been reduced in favour of extra time being spent in pursuing activities to increase literacy and numeracy.
Children go to school for two reasons and for two reasons only: the first, to learn how to learn, and the second to learn how to think. Both of these ideas, learning how to learn and learning how to think are inextricably linked.
Children learn things in a variety of ways, most of which involve perception, observation, imitation, experimentation and analysis and ultimately one hopes creation.
In teaching music to very young children the perception of music, is by its very nature, quintessentially aural. Even if the child observes the sound coming from an instrument or voice, the perception of the instrument or voice maybe visual but the perception of the music itself is aural.
Music can be perceived by the unborn child and pregnant women speak convincingly of ways in which their babies respond to sound, especially musical sounds.
Once the child is born, its fairly strong dependence, among other things, on its ability to hear and to be heard is vital to its survival. It is the human being’s capacity to listen to sound and to discriminate sounds which point very clearly to making a case for the serious study of music as early as possible in a child’s life.
Singing a wide variety of songs and nursery rhymes, playing rhythmic games and dancing, listening to a wide range of recorded repertoire with very young children, may help to increase the child’s capacity to concentrate, focus and imitate. These activities introduce the child in the early stages of its life to the world of organised sound, involving repetitive patterns of pitch, rhythm and harmony, which aid the development of aural comprehension, memory and discrimination.
So why we do we teach music and indeed, why should we bother?
We teach music because it is good. We teach music because it is unique. We teach music because it acts in a unique way upon the hearts, minds, spirits and imaginations of children. We teach music so that children can make their own music. We need no other justification for the teaching of music or indeed any other arts subject. These are the real reasons for teaching music.
As a result of teaching music we may notice that children’s capacities to listen, to focus, to discriminate, to reason, to comprehend, to concentrate, to analyse and to apprehend the abstract, start to improve radically and that these qualities and abilities may transfer themselves into other areas of learning. If that is the case then this must be seen as a bonus, and a glorious bonus at that, but never a reason. In short, we do not teach music because it helps children to develop bigger brains and become smarter at languages or mathematics. I wonder how many language or maths teachers teach their disciplines because it helps children become smarter at music?
I define music as organised vocal and/or instrumental sounds, which are in the first instance aurally perceived. The sounds are temporal, that is they pass through time depending exclusively on time for comprehension. The sounds are abstract, intangible, incapable of describing things, have no specific meaning in and of themselves, but yet are capable of evoking strong and powerful independent reactions in listeners.
Even a piece of music with a title, such as The Hall of the Mountain King or a similar piece of program music, does not cause the music to become suddenly descriptive. What the title might do is assist the listener in evolving ideas or evoking notions about the music, ideas or notions which will be completely subjective.
Creating music, making one’s own music, lies at the very heart of music education. The reason we sing songs, play games, play instruments, move and dance with children is to provide them with a vocabulary of ideas which they will in turn use in their own special way. In the school circumstance, particularly early childhood education, we should not teach music only for the sake of performing music. While there is clear and special satisfaction derived from teaching children how to perform, initially the goals should be set to direct children towards a creative path as soon as possible in their education. By directing children towards thinking imaginatively and creatively we increase their chances to comprehend, analyse, think and subsequently learn. If we are depriving children of these opportunities to make and create, not only in music but also in any of the art forms, for the sake of spending extra time on standardised tests, then we are in serious danger of strangling the imagination of the country. I know that children have to be tested an a good teacher is constantly testing his or her charges simply from the point of view of planning what must be taught next at any given time. The maxim we use at Teachers College back in the Palaeolithic period was, plan – teach – test. Results from all over the world reveal that standardised testing achieves very little. Apart from anything else, we educate children because we believe intrinsically in the right of every child to have access to knowledge. The testing of that knowledge should not be the reason for teaching it. Standardised testing has nothing to do with genuine education.
Let’s return to music. Every child in Australia deserves access to a fully qualified and properly trained music teacher. Achieving this is not as difficult as it at first may seem.
All over this vast land there are dozens of excellent teachers whose energies could be harnessed in training and teaching other teachers. It would not be a difficult matter to put this teacher-training program into place and I am currently exploring the concept of establishing a National Institute of Music Teaching to address this very problem. It would require the unification of all teachers who espouse the numerous philosophies and methodologies of teaching music to agree that music is bigger than a method of teaching it and that most methods have some good somewhere. It is indeed our fault, the musicians’ fault I mean, that music education in this country is so fragmented. If we can all agree that music is essential in the life of a child, and we all do, then the way is really clear.
In short, the solution to a universal music education lies within ourselves; those who are still in the field and practising and who are not necessarily within the university system as the following statistics reveal. In Finland, the generalist classroom teacher, not the specialist teacher, receives 270 hours of music instruction. In Korea, the generalist receives 160 hours of music instruction. In Australia, in those places where it is offered, the generalist classroom teacher receives 17 hours of instruction. All of these hours are offered over a four-year span.
If we are to be a truly educated country then we must place the arts at the very centre of the curriculum and stop pretending that we do. We must also agree that all children should have access to the arts and not just the privileged few. We must also agree that the arts are necessary in the loves of young children and are central to the way in which human beings create and evolve new ideas.
