Public School Music Education Research Articles

Early American Sunday School Tunebooks: Laboratories for Public School Music

Early nonsectarian Sunday Schools provided instruction in spelling, reading, writing, and singing in the years prior to the introduction of free, public education in the United States. This study explores the Sunday school as a laboratory for public school music education. Several of the first Sunday school tunebooks included theoretical introductions with elementary instruction in music reading much like the early school songbooks that followed. Three early tunebooks will be considered, E. Osborn’s The Sunday School Music Book (1826), Ezra Barrett’s Sabbath School Psalmody (1828), and Elam Ives, Jr’s American Sunday-School Psalmody (1832). In each case, the various “experiments” introduced in the tunebooks will be discussed. Some of these experiments were rejected in the public schools, but others had lasting importance.

Sense-Making, Meaningfulness, and Instrumental Music Education.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the nature of “meaning” and “meaningfulness” in the context of instrumental music education. By doing so, I propose to expand the ways in which instrumental music educators conceive their mission and the ways in which we may instill meaning in people’s lives. Traditionally, pursuits of philosophical deliberation have claimed that meaningfulness comes from either personal happiness (e.g., Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) or an impersonal sense of duty (e.g., St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant). However, philosopher Wolf (2010) criticizes these positions in favor of a broader perspective, one that arises from understanding that there is a third sort of value, namely “meaningfulness.” Rightly understanding meaningfulness may help us engage more fully with a greater sense and understanding of the full potentials of eudaimonia: a life of significance and value for oneself and one’s community. Therefore, this paper links meaningfulness to a 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) account of “sense-making” in/for instrumental music education. In doing so, I discuss the aims of public-school music education; aims that engage teachers and students in meaningfulness—a meaningfulness that is ethical, embodied, enacted, and extended—in, with, and through musics and, more directly, “instrumental” music making.

Music Booster Groups: Alleviating or Exacerbating Funding Inequality in American Public School Music Education?

As fundraising has become a key component of American public school music educators’ professional responsibilities, in many places, parent organizations have taken an increasingly outsized role in raising private funds to supplement public school music budgets. The purpose of this study was to understand the finances of public school music parents’ associations and music booster groups and to understand the relation between the socioeconomic status of school communities and the amount of money raised by their local music booster groups. Using Internal Revenue Service (IRS) fiscal 2015 data for 5,575 music booster groups throughout the United States, we found evidence that, collectively, music booster groups raised at least $215 million in support of public school music education. At least four groups raised over $1,000,000; at least 31 raised over $500,000; and at least 723 raised over $100,000 each. We found that total booster revenues were significantly associated with local median household income. Each additional $1,000 of local median household income was associated with an additional $305 in revenue for booster groups filing IRS Form 990-EZ (“short form”) and with an additional $1,637 in revenue for booster groups filing the full IRS Form 990.

Development of musical taste in public school music education: do we really need Western trends?

To involve popular music inschool music education is not an unknown phenomenon in Western European Countries. Education in the first ten years play crucial role in human cognitive development. At the same time the majority of our pupils meet valuable musical materialsonly at public schools. This is the reason, why popular music should never get an exclusive place in the tuition of primary-school aged children. Theoretical background of my paper are Kodaly’s sentences. I intend to support my hypothesis by the means of a questionnaire among primary school-teachers and pupils coming from different social and geographical background.

Music Education, Inc.

Today’s students live in the center of a rich, interconnected system of public, philanthropic, and for-profit entities that support the act of music teaching and learning. Students are not limited to the kinds of musical instruction available to them in their schools. Provided they have the means and the access, the musically curious can supplement or supplant their in-school musical lives with extracurricular and cocurricular activities, private studio lessons, community ensembles, or religious services. The for-profit music education industry in particular has grown in popularity and commercial success since the global recession, encouraged in part by what appears to be an increasing demand for instruction in popular genres that is not being met in the public schools. Corporate entities that sell music instruction have reached unprecedented levels of cultural saturation and student interest. With their successes have come a number of new teaching models, philosophies, and innovative ways for students to engage with music. However, these experiences may come at a cost, particularly to equal access by disadvantaged populations who might not be able to pay for said services. This article examines the popular music education (PME) franchise and its budding relationship with public school music education.

Breaking the cycle: Personal perspectives on the shifting landscape of public school music education offerings

Abstract

Teaching the ‘people’s music’ at the ‘people’s college’: Popular music education in the junior college curriculum in Los Angeles, 1924–55

Abstract The historical foundations of formal popular music education in post-secondary institutions in the United States has rarely been explored. This article provides an overview of the seminal popular music courses and degree programmes at three post-secondary public institutions, from their establishment in the 1920s until the 1950s. Several important music educators responsible for these innovative programmes are profiled, including band director Audre Stong at Pasadena City College, department chair Leslie Clausen at Los Angeles City College and band director Dwight Defty, who introduced the first popular music degree programme, Modern Music, in 1936 at Long Beach City College. Factors that led to the introduction of popular music in the curriculum included the expansion of vocational education in California public schools, softening the boundary between highbrow and lowbrow musical traditions in the Los Angeles music scene, strong local public school music education and the democratic movement towards student- and community-centred education.

Pipe dreams, ideals and transformation in music education: Lessons from the field

The purpose of this article is to use the lens of the author’s teaching experience to examine the complexities and understand the difficulties involved in transforming instructional practices in secondary schools in the USA. The study is an autoethnography, which is a research approach that examines personal experiences to understand how beliefs are shaped and thereby allow us to interpret our work and the world in a meaningful manner. The paper reviews concerns that critics have expressed regarding the difficulties of reforming large ensemble music instruction in secondary schools. The author’s experiences in attempting to transform his own practice suggest that unexamined underlying values, axioms and power relationships inhibit meaningful change and reform in public school music education. Lessons from testing reform-based ideas by actually working with students and teachers in secondary settings provide insights into the intransient nature of school music practice. The article concludes with suggestions as to how reform and transformation might be realized.

Invincible Eagle: The Career of Keith Brion

As an innovative music educator and prominent conductor, Keith Brion has had a rich and varied career in music. His resume includes eighteen years of teaching in public schools, working as a music supervisor, performing professionally as a piccolo player, directing the Yale University Band, conducting hundreds of orchestral pops concerts, and most recently, founding and directing the New Sousa Band. Brion has arranged and published countless works, particularly those by Percy Aldridge Grainger and John Philip Sousa. He has released over thirty professional recordings highlighting the works of not just Sousa but also of Victor Herbert and Alan Hovhaness. Brion's impact on the American wind band has been both diverse and far-reaching. The primary purpose of this study was to document an oral history of Brion's professional career. In addition to compiling a comprehensive professional biography, this study sought to identify various thematic elements that characterized the stages and turning points of Brion's career. Brion consented to participate in the fall of 2011 and provided personal information (e.g., professional biography, discography, relevant publications, etc.) to aide in selecting appropriate interview topics. After reviewing these artifacts, Brion and the author agreed on the following five topics for discussion: 1. General overview of Brion's early life and teacher training 2. Brion's K-12 teaching career, emphasizing years in West Caldwell, New Jersey 3. Middle career at Yale University 4. Orchestral pops conducting 5. Development and evolution of the New Sousa Band A series of open-ended research questions was developed for each topic. Following the development of these questions, Brion and the author established dates for in-person visits to conduct the interviews. A total of six interviews occurred over the course of two days at Brion's home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and each interview lasted between sixty and ninety minutes. Follow-up questioning was regularly implemented to elaborate on specific topics or events mentioned by Brion. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed by the author. To check for validity, Brion reviewed all interview transcripts for correction and clarification purposes. The author also conducted multiple site visits to locations significant in Brions life and career. These visits included Brions personal library, Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), James Caldwell High School (West Caldwell, New Jersey), and the Carnegie Hall Archives (New York City, New York). During these site visits, the author collected relevant artifacts, took photographs, and conducted additional informal interviews with others who knew or worked with Brion. The oral narrative approach to this study effectively combined Brion's life interviews with thorough artifact analysis to uncover themes across the various stages of Brion's career. Early Life (1933-1951) Keith Brion was born in July of 1933 in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Though he spent the early years of his life in Philipsburg, in 1941, during the second World War, Brion's father was transferred to Bloomington, Indiana, through his position with Signal Corps. It was in Bloomington that Brion had his first memory of music education: We lived not far from the University of Indiana campus. I went to school at the University School in Bloomington.... That was my first musical experience in a school. This was during the war, but yet we still went to see Hansel and Gretl, the opera, and we had singing classes, as well. It was a model program. (1) Though his first musical experiences in Bloomington were positive, the Brion family spent only one year in Indiana before returning to Pennsylvania. The remainder of Brion's childhood was spent in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. From that point forward, Brion's public school music education experience always felt lacking to him. …

Ensemble-based instrumental music instruction: dead-end tradition or opportunity for socially enlightened teaching

Public school music education in the USA remains wedded to large ensemble performance. Instruction tends to be teacher directed, relies on styles from the Western canon and exhibits little concern for musical interests of students. The idea that a fundamental purpose of education is the creation of a just society is difficult for many music teachers who dream of conducting student musicians in polished performances. This paper describes a middle school band programme in which students teach instrument lessons to similarly aged children in a homeless shelter. This qualitative study is grounded in the writings of Maxine Greene and shows how teachers might ‘break through the frames of custom and touch the consciousness of those we teach’.

J. Scott Goble, <em>What's so Important about Music Education?</em> (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010)

Reviewed by: What's so Important about Music Education? Leonard Tan J. Scott Goble , What's so Important about Music Education? (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010) In What's so Important about Music Education, J. Scott Goble proposes a new philosophical foundation for music education in the United States based on the theory of semiotics by American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Following a brief summary, I will note several merits in Goble's book before sketching four recommendations for future editions. In Chapter One, Goble notes how the inclusion of non-Western musics in the public schools as espoused in the 1967 Tanglewood Declaration has raised two crucial questions: "Whose music should be included in the curriculum?" and "What is the role or social importance of public school music education in the United States as a postmodern society?" Noting that music education was established in the United States during the modern era, and that the Tanglewood Declaration did not account for vast differences in beliefs about music, Goble argues that there is a need to establish a new philosophical foundation that can accommodate the varied beliefs and practices of diverse cultural groups in postmodern United States. In Chapter Two, Goble sketches and critiques five cultural anthropologists. Of the five, he singles out Clifford Geertz's conception of culture as "semiotic [End Page 201] webs" (p. 20) as the conceptual foundation that is appropriate for this study. He then links Geertz's notion of culture to the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce which is to become the theoretical underpinning of the book. Subsequently, he unpacks many key Peircian themes: human conceptions are maintained not individually but collectively in cultural groups, provisional truth (as opposed to absolute Truth) is relative and dependent on conceptions of communities, and the scientific method is the sole mode of inquiry by which people in communities may use to satisfy their doubts to formulate beliefs. Most importantly, Goble expounds the "pragmatic maxim" that since humans live in communities united by common beliefs, "the 'clear' meaning of an idea held by a member of the community will almost inevitably stem from the beliefs—or ways of understanding—held by members of that community" (p. 30). Goble concludes the chapter by presenting the Peircian semiotic system of cognition which posits that a "sign" is conceptualized in a triadic relationship: the Sign or "Firstness," the Object or "Secondness," and the Interpretant or "Thirdness" (p. 33). In Chapter Three, Goble considers how music is a sign based on the theoretical framework laid in Chapter Two. Drawing on the work of ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and a neuroscientist, he formulates a Peircian pragmatic approach to musical practices which posits that "the musical practices of different cultural communities represent a diverse cluster of community-specific ritualized behaviors involving sound" (p. 252). Furthermore, each of the musical practices "serves those persons who meaningfully participate in it as a means of psychophysiological, psychosocial, and/or sociopolitical equilibration relative to the worldview—or ordered conception of Reality—they tacitly share" (p. 252). For Goble, this pragmatist conception of musical practices is neither ethnocentric, universalist, nor relativist, and can serve as a conceptual framework for all diverse musical practices in postmodern United States. With the Peircian pragmatic conception in mind, Goble examines historical factors that contributed to current conceptions of music in the United States in Chapter Four. He laments that as a result of European Enlightenment and three socio-political phenomena in the United States (the separation of church and state, promotion of no other worldview than democracy, and adoption of democratic capitalism), music is no longer pragmatically oriented but trivialized and pursued by self-serving musicians. In Chapter Five, Goble traces the philosophical justifications for music education throughout the history of the United States. While the sign "musical practice" was conceptualized as "worship" in colonial America, the sign "music" was conceived as "art" during the age of Enlightenment, and as "product" during the age of science and technology. Noting that Bennett Reimer's music education as aesthetic education is limited in its Western focus on music as works [End Page 202] of artistic objects, Goble aligns his Peircian conception along praxial lines—in particular, with...

Exploring the outcomes of rock and popular music instruction in high school guitar class: a case study

The purpose of this study was to better understand the impact of rock and popular teenage music on public school music education programs. ‘Frankstown Secondary School’ is a large suburban public school offering a guitar program that includes a strong popular music component. Subjects in this study were selected from students enrolled in Frankstown's guitar program. They participated in two rounds of in-depth interviews, which were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. The guitar program at Frankstown emerged as a powerful educational tool. Students who deliberately ‘chose the margin’ or adopted ‘oppositional frames’ found a program that explicitly embraced the margin. Guitar class was a place where the students seemed comfortable; a place where they were able to ‘act out’ their oppositional persona within the larger Frankstown culture – a place that accepted them as they were and was a product of their own negotiations with the instructor and one another.

MSNC Comes of Age: George Oscar Bowen and the 1928 Conference

1928 convention of the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC) marked the coming-of-age of that organization. Since the founding of the MSNC in 1907, music education had consistently grown in importance and quality in American schools. increasing popularity of school bands had given added vitality to music programs throughout the nation, although some music supervisors believed that the increased prominence of bands in the schools was a threat to long-established choral programs. Some of the growth in public school music education could be attributed to the general prosperity of the nation after World War I. In 1928 that prosperity was near its zenith, before the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression that gripped the nation in the 1930s. 1928 MSNC convention celebrated American music education better than any previous meeting. program was more varied than those of previous conferences and the performing ensembles, nearly all of which were vocal, were reportedly of higher caliber. This was the first biennial MSNC conference and the organizers wanted it to be of extremely high quality. Previous conferences had been smaller in scope and attendance. Successive conferences during the 1930s, though increasing in number of participants, suffered from the economic depression of the period. According to Edward Bailey Birge, music education (and education in general) suffered from the general economic malaise of the 1930s, and because conference attendees had less money to spend, these events had to be somewhat less grandiose than they might have been otherwise. (1) As president of the MSNC, George Oscar Bowen presided over the 1928 convention. Originally from upstate New York, Bowen was a successful choral director with an outstanding public school teaching career. Since 1924 he had taught at Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city that enjoyed an unprecedented oil boom in the 1920s. Immediately before coming to Tulsa he taught music education courses at the University School of Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and prior to that he held joint appointments with the Flint Community Music Association and Central High School in Flint, Michigan. Early in his career he taught in Cortland and Yonkers, New York, and Northampton, Massachusetts. (2) Throughout his tenure as president of the MSNC, Bowen worked on preparations for the national convention, which originally was to be held in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Rochester, New York. Because of a lack of hotel rooms in those cities, Chicago was chosen for the site. convention was held on Sunday, April 15, through Friday, April 20, 1928, in the Stevens Hotel. (3) Advertisements for the hotel in the Music Supervisors Journal claimed that, with 3,000 rooms, each with a private bath, it was the largest hotel in the world. (4) For a number of reasons the leadership of the association had decided to change from yearly conferences to every-other-year meetings and this was the first biennial meeting. Edward Bailey Birge, one of MSNC's founders and a former president of the organization, said of the 1928 conference, The year 1928 marked the coming-of-age of the National Conference, dating from the initial meeting in Keokuk in 1907. (5) More than 4,600 participants attended, while MSNC membership at that time was approximately 5,400, (6) up from about 3,000 three years earlier. (7) Michael Mark and Charles Gary, in A History of American Music Education, said that Bowen planned a historic gathering for Chicago's mammoth Stevens Hotel.... Both musically and organizationally the meeting was one of the most significant in conference history. (8) conference was widely advertised in music education journals. March-April 1928 issue of School Music stated: National Conference of ours is doing things. It is no mere body of theorists dealing in scientific jargon. Nor is it merely a group of time-worn pedagogues talking unscientific twaddle. …

Early Public School Music Education in Zanesville, Ohio

Early Public School Music Education in Zanesville, Ohio

Music Students and Academic Growth

IF or years, dating back as far as the early 1900s, proponents of public school music education have proclaimed that student participation such activities as band, choir, and orchestra has a positive effect on everything from academic achievement to self-discipline, from citizenship to personal hygiene. In 1919, Will Earhart, president of the Music Supervisors National Conference (later to become the Music Educators National Conference), argued that music enhances knowledge the areas of mathematics, science, geography, history, foreign language, physical education, and vocational training.1 Interest relationships among seemingly disparate disciplines is not a thing of the past. Recent emphasis on interdisciplinary study, along with the uncertain future of many school subjects, has provoked renewed interest cross-curricular research. James Hanshumaker of the University of Southern California has compiled two thorough bibliographies of various research studies addressing relationships between music and academic achievement.2 He concludes that in addition

Rhythmic Movement and Public School Music Education: Conservative and Progressive Views of the Formative Years

The infusion of rhythmic movement into elementary music programs was a gradual process extending from the late 19th century through the third decade of the 20th century, Changing educational philosophies caused the shift from traditional curricular goals focused on singing and note-reading to the more progressive view of rhythmic movement as an avenue for the total development of the physical, social, cultural, and expressive needs of the child, A growing awareness of the eurhythmies techniques of faques-Dalcroze as well as the acceptance of John Dewey's child-centered curriculum persuaded music educators of the progressive New School (a group of philosophers whose aim was the achievement of educational aims through social activism) to develop practices for a comprehensive elementary curriculum of free and creative rhythmic expression. While conservative thinkers, including T. P. Giddings, Will Earhart, Carl E. Seashore, and Jacob Kwalwasser, upheld rhythm as a inherited trait, unalterable through training Charles H, Farnsworth, Karl K. Gehrkens, Mabelle Glenn, and James L. Mursell promoted its cause and tailored curricular materials for its eventual inclusion as a key component in the elementary music curriculum.

The Child-Study Movement and Public School Music Education

The child-study movement was a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century educational I fashion whose impetus came from the influences of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and from the advent of empirical psychology in the 1860s and 1870s. Child-study leaders sought to reform the public schools, calling for widespread and “scientific” observation and study of children. Music educators adopted some child-study principles, incorporating them in certain vocal music series and music appreciation textbooks. These books contained, for example, materials designed to correspond to the various stages of interest and maturity in children. Several nonmusician child-study researchers began to gather data relative to musical learning, while psychological literature on music perception proliferated. Music teachers, more interested in teaching methods, left research activities to future generations of music educators.

Retrenchment in public school music education: “Just a little off the top, please”

tee meetings. Those closest to the situation are often the ones least able to understand how or why this is occurring. When the impact of unemployment, the probable change in career, or retirement finally settles in, along with the loss of time and energy music teachers have spent building their music programs, they begin by blaming themselves and the public they serve. When it comes time to look for the answers, they hardly know what questions to ask.

Forces Affecting Musical Progress

THIS YEAR we celebrate a Century of Progress in public school music education. Our officers have, therefore, deemed it an opportune occasion upon which to recall the past with its pioneering stages, to evaluate the present with its brilliant achievements, and to look into the future with its promise of further progress. Forces and factors may affect progress for good or ill in music, as in all other fields of human thought and action. Some forces accelerate, others retard progress. Many useful inventions are adopted promptly, to become the servants of our necessities and comforts, our education and entertainment. Many lie unused in laboratories -withheld from the public for years. Others are not appropriated readily because of the cultural lag due to ignorance, indifference, and inertia. New philosophies, new ideas can be constructive or detrimental to progress as they happen to be sound or fantastic, or as they chance to be accepted or repudiated. The past offers numerous instances of such positive and negative forces. Today, as perhaps never before, we are confronted by a bewildering maze of conflicting ideas and trends, new emphases, new materials, new inventions-all clamoring for attention, appraisal, and adoption. That school music is no exception in this phenomenon of vastly accelerated change and in this complex accumulation of activities is demonstrated by our innumerable associations and clubs, by the growth of our sectional meetings, involving some thirty phases of school music; by the multiplication of teaching materials, instruments, tools and accessories of equipment here displayed by our exhibitors; by the increasing competition for time in class schedules; by the growing pressure for prolonged training and the harried pursuit of higher degrees; by the rivalry between methods and content courses, theoretical and applied subjects. In such a competitive state, only the fittest can hope to survive. It behooves everyone, therefore, to recall the past from which school music has emerged-more or less triumphantly-to be alert to the present situation and to plan wisely for the future. Upon our faith in music as a beneficent social force, upon our zeal for its preservation in American life, and upon our intelligent choice of emphases, the future of school music depends. It may grow to become the corner stone rejected by the builders. It may fall into decay and oblivion like the temples of ancient cultures, uncovered in our day by archaeologists. Permit me, then, to remind you, for a moment, of the past history of popular music education and of its