Energizing the “Birge Story” of Public School Music in the United States: Some Ideas on How to Amp it up

Abstract

I want to thank symposium organizers, especially Alan Spurgeon, Bill Lee, Patti Tolbert, Michele Gregorie, and Phil Hash, for all their work and for inviting me to speak. (1) It is an honor to address this group. It is a pleasure to spend a few days in such a beautiful, historic place. In 1528 Spanish explorers in Florida observed native people singing, playing instruments, and using music to heal sick. (2) A few decades later, not far north of here, French settlers were greeted by a marching band of Indian musicians and warriors, and music played a role in Sir Francis Drake's capture of fort and burning of town of St. Augustine in 1586. (3) A Spanish missionary taught singing at St. Augustine not long after that. (4) These and other stories are not found in first book on history of music in American schools, of Public School Music in United States, by Edward Bailey (1868-1952). (5) Birge's model defines music education largely as school music, emphasizes leading individuals and organizations, and provides factual but little analytical history. Since book was first published in 1928, most music education historiography has followed this model. (6) The book has meant a great deal to profession, and historians have augmented line considerably. However, no one has seriously challenged approach, scope, findings, conclusions, or facts, and here is where we can improve. No matter their importance, works of history rarely remain definitive forever, because among most important tasks of historians is challenging of assumptions, paradigms, methods, conclusions, and facts of other scholars. Toward that end, I propose holding a centennial symposium in year 2028 to celebrate Birge's seminal contribution, a century during which so far his of American music education has stood virtually unchallenged. In meantime, during these next fourteen years, we could energize, add vitality to, and generally amp up Birge story of American music education. Multiple Story Lines Most groups of historians produce multiple lines about their respective collective areas of interest, but so far that has not happened in our field. (7) In fact, in a comparative study of and Mark and Gary books I found high correlations, beyond p The strong similarities are not desirable because multiple, differing, even contradictory lines are essential to understanding of history. (9) Communities of scholars should not be content with a single the story, but should instead provide various perspectives and stories. By doing so they energize and provide vibrancy and richness to our understanding of history. As sociologist James Loewen put it in Lies My Teacher Told Me, his well-known critique of secondary school American history textbooks: History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason. (10) Ongoing research and debate among our community of scholars should result in corrections and alternate interpretations, or lines, as well as additional details. The actual history of American music education is far too complex to permit its rendering as a single story. The may be as good as any, and we should continue to improve it, but parallel stories would enhance our understanding of our own history. Undoubtedly there is a causal relationship at work here, in that we music educators probably learned much of what we know about our history from reading repeatedly in various forms. Over a decade ago I asked eighteen music education historians, including some of you, to rate 254 individual music educators, whose names were taken from two books mentioned earlier, for suitability for inclusion in a biographical dictionary. …