Sociology for Music Teachers

Practical Applications

Hildegard Froehlich, Gareth Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315402321
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Sociology for Music Teachers: Practical Applications, Second Edition, outlines the basic concepts relevant to understanding music teaching and learning from a sociological perspective. It demonstrates the relationship of music to education, schooling and society, and examines the consequences for making instructional choices in teaching methods and repertoire selection. The authors look at major theories, and concepts relevant to music education, texts in the sociology of music, and thoughts of selected ethnomusicologists and sociologists. The new edition takes a more global approach than was the case in the first edition and includes the application of sociological theory to contexts beyond the classroom.

The Second Edition:

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• Presents major theories in ethnomusicology, both traditional and contemporary.

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• Takes a global approach by presenting a variety of teaching practices beyond those found in the United States.

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• Emphasizes music education in a traditional classroom setting, but also applies specific constructs to studio teaching situations in conservatories (with private lessons) and community music.

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• Provides recommendations for teaching practices by addressing popular music in school music curricula, suggests inclusionary projects that explore musical styles and repertoire of the past and present, and connects school to community music practices of varying kinds.

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• Contains an increased number of suggestions for projects and discussions among the students using the book.

1
The Musician and Teacher in You

A Matter of Multiple Identities

This chapter follows up on and expands your group discussions from the Introduction:

• Processes of Socialization
• Identity Research on Musicians

Hildegard: From second grade on I knew that I wanted to become a teacher (the reasons not always fully clear to me), but only when I graduated from high school did I seriously consider enrolling in music education as my field of study. As much as I loved singing, playing, and listening to music (and have continued to do so all my life), teaching has always been my first interest and I have found great joy in interacting with students about many subjects in education, music, sociology, and research. Most important, however, I discovered that one has to be a lifelong learner in all of these subjects to call oneself a professional (music) educator.

Gareth: Although I have long had an interest in teaching, my route into becoming an educator grew out of a firm commitment to being a rock drummer. I began teaching music in a primary school after graduating with a classical music degree, in order to pay rent while pursing my rock ‘n’ roll dream. I soon enrolled to study music education so I could learn to do my teaching job better. I found teaching—and learning and thinking about education—to be incredibly creative, understanding I was actually a teacher when a parent of a student addressed me, “Mr. Smith”! I feel a constant urge to develop my art—as educator, scholar, and musician.

Hildegard: My performer colleagues have often claimed that once you have been trained in the classical music tradition you can play any musical style thereafter. I have never quite believed that and have certainly found for myself that I am very afraid of branching out into musical styles that are not classically based. Gareth, what has been your experience in that regard, and do you think the issue is instrument specific? Were/are my colleagues correct?

Gareth: Prior to and alongside my formative years as a drummer in the popular and musical theatre styles that have been my professional musical home for decades, I trained as a classical clarinetist. Growing up in the UK this meant studying for graded exams 1 to 8, playing in a concert (wind) band at weekends, in orchestras at school and in the community, and then studying classical music for my undergraduate degree at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. As I transitioned through music college and as my career took turns toward drumming and more popular styles, I found that I called upon my classical training less and less. In terms of instrumental technique as a drummer, the rock and punk music that I mostly played was much louder than classical music, so required far greater physical stamina and the development of different, much bigger movements. For singers, classical technique can be a significant hindrance, especially if they try to apply it in popular styles (as Australian singer and researcher Diane Hughes has repeatedly shown). With the possible exception of recently emerged sub-genre “symphonic rock,” the sound of a bel canto vocal is antithetical to nearly all non–Western classical musics. Other disadvantages of classical training, in my experience, include over-reliance on following instructions and on reading sheet music (a form of following instructions)—skills that, although helpful up to a point—can alienate musicians in communities that value democratic collaboration and aural musicianship. One major advantage of classical training that I have noticed is the discipline that it instills, including arriving on (before) time to rehearsals and concerts, practicing your instrument for excellence, and knowing when not to play in rehearsals.

Introduction

With the backdrop of the conversation you just read, here is a scenario in which you may recognize part of yourself: feeling reasonably competent as a performer, you go to the music conservatory, university, or music college during the day, hold a part-time job that pays your bills, possibly even playing gigs that provide some extra income and connect you with other musicians. In your mind, there seems to be no reason why the situation should change significantly once you graduate, except perhaps that becoming educated may be replaced by educating others. You envision having musically talented pupils who are as serious about their music study as you were about yours. Then you receive your degree and/or teaching certificate and find your first full-time employment as a music teacher. You soon discover that teaching is a demanding job that makes it difficult to practice and be “on call” for regular music gigs. You may find that not all of your students are as devoted to the study of music as you were at their age and that your work schedule as a teacher often requires a twelve-hour or more commitment per day. You may want to find a partner for life and start a family. In short, you have to make adjustments to your ideals and professional aspirations. Dependent upon a variety of factors, the process of making those adjustments can be easy or difficult. All factors have to do with (1) the view you have of yourself as an aspiring musician, (2) how your training either has reinforced or thwarted your personal and musical hopes and dreams, and (3) how the people you associate with most closely respond to you and your career progress. Thinking about the learning and teaching of music in this way triggers important questions:

• How have you become who you think you are? Who influenced you?
• How do you interact musically with others around you either in personal face-to-face contacts or through the Internet?
• How do you react to those people around you who think unlike you or do not share your interest in music?

Answering these questions honestly will likely lead to some heightened awareness about what it means to think sociologically. In practical teacher terms, the awareness helps you get a grasp of “otherness” around you: why some of your students think unlike you, reject the repertoire you select for them, or continue to seem bored when you try hard to engage them in activities and conversations. You may also begin to understand why your school administrators, your students’ parents, and the school community at large often attach different values to music and the arts in society than you do.

As early as 1991, the former editor of the Music Educators Journal, Charles Fowler, foresaw “troubled waters” for music as a curricular subject in the United States because of a continuous waning of public support for the arts as classically trained artists defined them (Fowler 1991). This trend seems to be ongoing despite efforts to propose new approaches to curriculum revisions and pedagogies. But changes in curricula and instructional imperatives require changing the minds of others. To do this successfully requires knowing your own socio-musical roots so that you discern social and cultural differences between yourself and those with whom you work on a daily basis. Becoming conscious of such differences makes it easier to communicate with other-minded students, parents, school administrators, and non-musician colleagues in ways that are familiar to them. When placing someone’s socio-economic and cultural background into your own understanding of their societal contexts, you consider what has become known as an individual’s socialization process. This chapter first describes that process briefly before focusing on one particular phase within that process, called occupational socialization (sometimes also referred to as professional socialization).

Small Group Discussion 1.1

Introduce yourselves to each other and talk about your respective family, musical, and educational backgrounds. Address the bulleted questions from the Introduction to this chapter, and include in your discussion experiences inside and outside of school that you believe had a bearing on your choice of studying music and/or becoming a music teacher.

Processes of Socialization

Beginning with infancy and continuing well into adulthood all the way into old age, your socialization processes reflect how you see yourself in light of who you believe you are at various stages of life. Three such stages have been “officially” recognized for a long time, but it is quite possible to name more. The primary socialization occurs during infancy in the interactions with your most immediate caregivers (parents, guardians, or other primary providers). The secondary socialization generally begins as you enter the phase of compulsory schooling and is usually assumed to last from pre-school or kindergarten onward all the way into high school and possibly even college. Once you make decisions about professional goals and your job training, the tertiary (adult) phase of socialization sets in, of which your occupational socialization is but one ongoing, critical part. In many nations, of course, the increasing emphasis on training for jobs and careers can blur the lines between the secondary and tertiary socialization phases.

Sociologists and social psychologists alike have been interested for a long time in knowing how (1) musicians acquire norms and values that contribute to their occupational belief systems, and (2) how working musicians uphold and hone those beliefs along with musical skills and knowledge throughout their careers (Heyer, Wachs, and Palentien 2013). Often on the basis of long-term observations of musicians at work, researchers have reported how musicians view their own roles and statuses in the organization(s) that hired them, their relationship to other members in the workforce (ensemble) and the conductor or bandleader, and what it means to be a hired hand in the music world. The studies talk about expectations of artistic and creative independence on the one hand and experiences as workers and replaceable “numbers” on the other. It is a conflict that can cause alienation from the workplace and—eventually—lead to burnout.

One does not, of course, need to belong to a union or professional members’ organization, or even necessarily think of oneself as a “professional,” to assume the identity of “musician.” Fewer rather than more children and young adults pursue the study of music in order to find work later; rather, many who pursue excellence in music performance seek work in music because it affirms their musician identity, central to who they are or want to become. Nonetheless, the progression from dedicated music novice to accomplished music teacher tends to be slow when one moves from self-perceived musician to musician-teacher and from there to school music teacher and school employee.

From Musician to Musician-Teacher

You probably know from firsthand experience the close connection between early involvement in the making of music and the choices that eventually led to your decision to pursue music professionally. You remember the impact family members, teachers, and peers have had on those choices, and you can recall what engaged you in music so much that you opted to make it your livelihood. For many, going this route requires applied music lessons, playing in ensembles, and taking courses in music theory and musicology. These and obligatory “basic” courses fulfill or fulfilled a person’s formal music education (and degree/certification/licensure) requirements. However, the act of making music itself is likely to contribute most directly to the image young people have of themselves as musicians, including images of becoming professional musicians.

One-to-one lessons and/or other modes and contexts of learning in Western classical music, jazz, or other styles of music each bring with them certain forms of expected conduct, contributing to musicians’ senses of who they are. The identities of choral singers, orchestral musicians, “bedroom players,” YouTube artists, or producers/composers working on laptops and tablets are similarly constructed—either through being part of face-to-face and online communities or through deep and dedicated learning processes of varying kinds (Green 2002; Smith 2013a). Each and every one of these music learning communities and situations functions as a powerful socializing agent.

There is likely nothing more sustaining than being a member in an ensemble of musicians who unite in the common purpose of making music—music that they write or have written or co-written, or music that they are “just” playing. As an integral part of a community of practice, an ensemble or even an online community of musicians becomes a system of enculturation. It affirms and strengthens a participant’s identities as a musical and social person, one more reason why spending time alone in the practice room or at a digital audio workstation (DAW) may feel like a more tangible sign of belonging to a community of musicians than is typical for being enrolled in large academic classes either in education or other subject matter areas.

Apart from occasional teaching assignments in schools and on-site classroom visitations, for instance, most teacher education classes, frequently required for college music students seeking teacher certification, do not commonly allow for one-to-one mentoring processes similar to those provided by studio teachers. Sitting in the library, reading about educational policies, or debating curriculum theories does not usually compare favorably to the “formalized informal” peer-learning that playing in small ensembles can provide (Lebler 2008; Smith and Shafighian 2013). Thus, preparing to become a school music teacher might involve socialization experiences quite different from those that are typical of becoming a performing musician in a conservatory or a music academy setting.

From Musician-Teacher to School Music Teacher

Compulsory schooling, mandated by many industrialized nations, does not always include music as a curricular subject. Where it does, either as an elective (optional) or required course for a specified period of time, expectations vary with regard to what is being taught and learned: acquiring a repertoire of patriotic and/or seasonal songs in earlier years, studying one or more instruments in later years, and performing in choral and/or instrumental ensembles. At a more advanced level, music classes may provide instruction in the rudiments of music reading and music history, provide the intensive study of an instrument (or voice), and give opportunities for personal creativity through improvisation and composition. In some instances, schools may provide room for all of these and more activities, whereas other schools may not offer any such opportunities. It is this wide range of curricular expectations across countries, regions, and locales that signify the rather tenuous status of music as a curricular subject and may also impact the transition from aspiring musician to school music teacher. The tenuous status as a curricular subject reflects on the tenuous social status of those who teach music to children. Although the study of music may be considered an appropriate and welcomed activity for leisure pursuits of children and young adults of all social classes, the arts as a serious career choice tend to be less favorably viewed.

The Social Standing of the School Music Teacher

American cultural and literary historian Paul Fussel (1983/1992) observed for the United States that American families of the affluent upper-class and the “top outof-sight” class tended to look down on the socio-economic standing and social class of individuals who pursue the formal study of music in preparation for an occupation. Thus, although socially and academically advantaged students (possibly not only in the United States) may enroll in music performance classes in high school, they are not generally encouraged by their families to continue their studies for professional purposes. According to Tom Parkinson and Gareth Dylan Smith (2015), this discouragement is also present in other countries, reinforced by mainstream media representations, and it may be even more prevalent for those musicians who study popular music.

On the one hand, then, more affluent students interested in the professional pursuit of music education may find such choice economically and socially counterprod...