Philosophy+of+Music+Education

Carolyn Osborne's Philosophy of Music Education

My students at Capital University have to write their philosophies of education, so I thought this would be a good exercise for me to do as well. Also, after 35 years in music education, I find I have a lot to say (stop reading when you get bored...I can get long-winded and feel an invitation here to do so). My students have a two page limit; I don't!

At the foundation of my philosophy of music education is my understanding of what music is, so here goes. After that, I will discuss how my understanding of music fits into my teaching practice. I might have to throw in a few things I have learned about human beings over the years.

What is Music? My academic specialty is something called semiotics, which is the study of how things make meaning. Meaning-making systems include language, music, the visual arts, dance, and so forth. There are some characteristics which are true across semiotic systems, such as the structure of meaning making. Specifically, meaning is derived through oppositions. In language, "hot" is "hot" because it isn't "cold." Certainly there is no temperature that is "hot," since a hot summer day and a hot vat of molten steel have two very different temperatures but are relative forms of "hotness." Likewise, in art, red is not blue and in music, one of the biggest oppositional contrasts in western classical music is that between the tonic (I or Nashville number 1) and the dominant (V, 5) chord. The tonic chord is where you feel at home--the piece ends here. In contrast, the dominant chord is far away from home and gives a sense of longing since a piece does not feel as if it has ended if it stops on something that can be heard as a dominant, the dominant seven (V7 or 57), especially.

While there are other characteristics that are similar across semiotic systems, let's assume that these other characteristics are equally present. The purpose in mentioning these characteristics is to suggest that music makes meaning similar to the way in which language makes meaning. While some might like to be able to put into words what music means, in fact the whole point of multiple semiotic systems is that there are some meanings that can be made in music that can't be made in words. Each semiotic system opens up what might be expressed within that system and there are features unique to each system. (For examples of how "sadness" gets expressed across several systems, go here: http://literacymethods.wikispaces.com/Semiotics+and+Semiotic+Systems).

Meaning Making Practices in Naturalistic Settings One thing that is common across semiotic systems in a naturalistic setting is how people become able to participate in them as both receivers and creators. By naturalistic settings, I mean settings in which people "pick up" the system without formal instruction.

For example, people learn language through participation in families and communities as did the people who made the paintings on the Lascaux caves or the traditional Appalachian musicians that also formed the basis for bluegrass.

Human beings are highly motivated to learn to participate in meaning making and naturalistic settings interact with this desire resulting in the fact that the vast majority of people become at least competent in the meaning making system and some go on to becoming extremely creative and adept within these systems. For example, Shakespeare, presumably like every other person learning language, began his linguistic involvement as a babbling toddler but eventually grew to write some of the greatest of English literature. The rest of us probably do not reach Shakespeare's heights but we are relatively competent language users.

Within a community, language conveys information and solves many practical problems outside of its potential artistic uses in literature. Within a community, music has equally important functions. Music serves to bring people together for common purposes as well as entertainment. It provides the foundation of emotional connection even when words fail. People worship God using music; even the anti-instrumental music Old Regular Baptist tradition in Appalachia has the most profoundly beautiful singing tradition, which, in turn, was a major influence on such singers as Ralph Stanley and Hazel Dickens. The coal mining unionization movement in Appalachia have been held together with an array of songs from Which Side Are You On written on the back of a calendar in the 1930s by a woman whose house had just been trashed by company thugs to Darrell Scott's much more recent You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive (somehow the coal companies have never come up with a compelling song extolling their virtues). A whole week's worth of hard scrabble labor on a hillside farm or in the mines could be at least somewhat mitigated by a fiddle, banjo, and a square dance caller on a Saturday night. The community that danced together on Saturday and worshiped together on Sunday could jump in and help each other survive and stick together when workers went out on strike against mine owners who ran unsafe operations and all this happened with the sustenance of music. When you don't have a lot in the way of material goods, something else has to make a hard life bearable.

Learning to Make Meaning in the Naturalistic Setting As babies learn language, there are certain characteristics to their approach to learning and to the ways in which their families and communities support them.
 * Motivation: children are highly motivated to learn language in part because language solves problems (getting a cookie is a lot easier when you ask for one by name than when you just cry) and because it bestows social status.
 * Approximation: parents provide positive feedback every time a child's babbling starts to sound like words even if those words are a little difficult to understand.
 * Conventionality: by the time a young person begins school, most vestiges of "baby talk" are gone. Social interaction pushes conventionality; no one wants to sound like a baby.
 * Idiosyncrasy: while all children learn words, no two children have the exact same vocabulary because every person lives in different social contexts. Kids who have cats learn vocabulary related to that quicker than kids without cats learn the same words.
 * Meaning: the fundamental focus is on meaning--no one does "language etudes" at the age of 2 in order to learn to speak unless there are some serious language production issues going on. They don't study vocabulary flash cards.
 * Social learning: social interaction drives learning in a number of specific ways. Scaffolding involves more competent users of language provide easier ways of using language, such as when parents use baby talk. Baby talk simplifies some of the more difficult sounds to make, indicating, for example, that the "w" sound is an acceptable substitute for the more difficult "l" sound (as in: my wittle baby...). Scaffolding also occurs when a parent takes a child's one word utterance and expands it as in: "Cookie!" "You want a cookie!"
 * Meaning-centeredness: children want to join the "language club" not for the sake of learning the techniques of language but for the sake of being able to express themselves. Creating meaning is the primary reason for doing the work of language learning.
 * Constructivism: children construct concepts about language in the process of learning language. This is the reason children will overgeneralize rules such as adding "-ed" to indicate past tense ("I goed to the store yesterday"). It is also the reason children will innovate, putting together words and ideas in their own unique ways, as do all of us. They are not merely imitating adults, which is a common misunderstanding about language learning.
 * Expectation: the expectation is that children will become competent language users. While the concept of talent can apply to language in terms of the many great writers and orators across history, talent doesn't limit access to language to a privileged few.

Music learning in naturalistic settings shares similar characteristics:
 * Motivation: people (including both adults and youngsters) who do not possess musical instruments have been known to actually create their own out of materials at hand so they could play (this is the origin of cigar box instruments back when cigar boxes were made of wood).
 * Approximation: people learning music make sounds on the instrument and when a sound begins to resemble music to themselves, they tend to repeat making that sound, extending it where possible. Other people offer support when they hear something that starts to sound like music.
 * Conventionality: music making technique becomes more conventional over time as the person continues to play. The push for conventionality comes from hearing and/or watching other musicians and wanting to play something similar. This conventionality is not the same as conventionality within western classical music in part because of the isolation of these rural musicians from mainstream cultures.
 * Idiosyncrasy: musical vocabulary is influenced by the community, technology (the availability of radio or phonograph records), and personal interest.
 * Meaning: people learn songs with which they are familiar. The order in which they learn tunes is based on their interests rather than a pre-determined sequence.
 * Social learning: older traditional musicians scaffold younger ones. Bill Monroe learned a lot by listening to and watching his Uncle Pen, whom he immortalized in his song of the same name. Even if a younger person does not know how to play a tune very well, traditional musicians will invite his or her playing, play along with the young person, and adjust their playing to that of the youngster, such as jumping beats to accommodate a child's rhythmic challenges.
 * Meaning-centeredness: the idea of meaning making suggests that at least two people have to be involved in something; that is, while we all make meaning towards ourselves such as talking to ourselves, a central desire is to make meaning with another person. Music is primarily a means for forging social connections. Traditional musicians will play by themselves (it is from traditional musicians that we get the term "woodshedding," as in practicing in an out building so that others will not be disturbed) but this activity is intrinsically motivated through the desire for meaning making rather than externally motivated by adults with kitchen timers.
 * Constructivism: there is a difference between rote memorization and constructing a tune in one's mind in the process of learning. Constructivism suggests that as in learning language, music learners take an active role in learning music, moving from whole to part to whole. In other words, they have a sense of the whole tune they are undertaking and they work to figure out that tune bit by bit rather than receiving bit by bit from another person.
 * Expectation: everyone can learn enough of music to enjoy playing it, singing it, and listening to it. There are people with special talents, but there is great value in every person's musicianship.

Implications for Formal Music Education As an instructor at Capital University, I find myself teaching young music teachers and wondering how many of them will get jobs. The arts in education are probably more at risk than at any other point in my life. I try to provide my students with the kinds of strategies that can help them to create programs that are as safe from being cut as is possible for a teacher to do.

A major strategy teachers think about for recession-proofing programs would be retention of music students. The idea here is that if most or all students are involved in music programs by choice and across many of their years in the system, then school systems are going to have a much more difficult time of cutting them. We have always known this and we have always worked on this, but the consideration of music as a semiotic system suggests even better ways of retaining students.

People rarely stop using language because they lose interest in it and traditional musicians rarely quit playing; in fact, among traditional musicians, playing music is a lifelong activity. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about formal music training across the gamut of contexts in which music education takes place.

What if we were to adapt our music classrooms to the conditions under which traditional musicians learn? What if we were to combine all the wonderful strengths of formal training (such as music theory as a way of talking about music and supporting music learning as a result) with all the wonderful strengths of naturalistic learning? Here are some possibilities:

Motivation: youngsters are typically drawn to participation in music, however, they can also be demotivated to participate when conditions for learning deviate too much from the ways in which people learn in naturalistic settings. For example, when people learn to talk, they receive a lot of support for their efforts rather than criticism or formal correction which has the effect of shutting people down. Negative feedback plays a role in language learning when a child's efforts are incomprehensible but this negative feedback is more than outweighed by the excitement of others when a child says a new word or something that even vaguely sounds like a new word. The negative feedback in a naturalistic setting carries the message, "I didn't understand you this time--try again," rather than "you did that wrong and you were bad."

Approximation: anyone who has ever taught a flutophone class to a bunch of fourth graders knows exactly what happens when you pass out instruments. Everyone wants to play! They want to make sound and see what the instrument can do (which, in the case of flutophones, is not a whole lot outside of a shrieking noise, but that's another story). The same thing is true in instrumental music. Kids don't want to wait like little statues while someone fixes their instrument hold and bow hold. They want to experiment the same way babies babble. Learning takes place in the context of experimentation.

Conventionality: no one wants to play a tune and have others say, "what was that?" People have a strong desire to be understood, so they will work at something until they can be clear about what they are doing. Likewise, no one wants to sound like a dying cat all the time while playing a bowed instrument. As teachers, we can loosen up about approximation and the worry about teaching "wrong" habits because of this internal desire. Particularly when youngsters are exposed to slightly more advanced youngsters, they get excited about doing something new and cool. When I taught a fiddle group at Gahanna High School, we played an arrangement of Swallowtail that the well-known Michigan fiddle group (the Saline Fiddlers) played--beginning slowly and getting faster and faster. There was an awful lot of diligent, intrinsically motivated work as kids vied to avoid dropping to our second part (slower notes that change with the chord changes). Yet they were invited to play no matter how well or poorly they played the music and they improved in part because of wanting to be part of the music "club."

Idiosyncrasy: I have learned over the years that I can teach just about any concept I believe a student needs to learn through any piece of music the student wants to play. I know this is heresy in the world of methods books, but I have seen this over and over in watching traditional musicians learn and in talking with them about their learning processes. My classes at the Southside Baptist Church School of Bluegrass are notoriously diverse, since I pull in not just our fiddle players (who range from rank beginners to fairly advanced) but anyone else who doesn't fit in with our current structure of classes taught by volunteer teachers. So, not too long ago I taught a class that included a range of fiddlers, a beginning dobro player, and some mandolin players whose teacher was not able to be there. In order to satisfy people's desires to play tunes that are important to them, I found out what each person was working on and made sure that across the hour we got to as many of those tunes as possible. The dobro player worked on changing chords, so I would give him a heads up on the chords we would be playing. When a couple of my mandolin players needed some more one on one work, I chose someone who knew how to play what they wanted to play and had them work together nearby for ten minutes while I did something with the more advanced students. My advanced students played the same tunes in different octaves or worked on creating harmony. I worked on getting better sound with the bow for the slower tunes we played, which benefited all the fiddle players but particularly the less advanced. No one got the equivalent of a private lesson, but on the other hand, everyone worked on being able to play in time with other people which is a challenging skill that cannot be mastered by playing alone!

Meaning: no one picks up an instrument for the soul purpose of playing something meaningless. If a person chooses to play something meaningless, it is generally on the way to playing something meaningful. Vassar Clemens described how he spent about a year just working on creating a bow sound he liked, but that was on the way to becoming the brilliant fiddler he became. Most people need to have a much more direct connection to meaning, to things they know. One of the challenges in teaching fiddling to students in the modern age is that most have not grown up with these tunes. This is one reason we have jam sessions at the end of each class session as well as monthly gospel jams in which students are invited to participate (beginners of all ages and stages sit in the choir loft and play along with the more advanced folks who stand up and play into microphones). This way, students ask to learn to tunes they have heard, so they are able to seek meaningful experiences within the genre of music we tend to play at the church.

Social learning: peer learning is one of the most powerful forces that music teachers should learn to master. The process of one slightly more advanced student teaching one slightly less advanced student reinforces learning for both people. Taking advantage of peer learning stretches the teacher's ability to set up learning situations that will work for the full range of students. This is where relaxing about approximation pays off since one peer might not teach everything "perfectly." If we understand the development of conventionality as a series of stages of approximation rather than something that has to be insisted on from the beginning, then we can reap the benefits of motivation that peer teaching and learning engender.

Constructivism: one of the most powerful ways of teaching music is to stay as hands off as possible. If you watch a learner closely, you can tell if he or she is ready to think about figuring something out. You'll see evidence of concentration rather than blankness, boredom, or frustration. I try to hold give enough information for the student to then be able to figure things out rather than my telling them. If I tell a person that the key of D major has 2 sharps, they won't remember that. But if they sound out a major scale starting on D, then they notice they have to play two black notes, which is much more memorable. I like to cue students to put their thinking caps on. For example, when reading music, I like to ask them to think about what the next note will sound like (to get them listening in their heads) and even to predict what is likely to happen next in music (gets them thinking about form).

Scaffolding: while it may seem to be "cheating" for students to write down the names of the notes on their music, this scaffolding is self-limiting. If they write the names in, then they are practicing reading music and pretty soon they won't have to refer to a "cheat sheet" for the note names. If they are given encouragement to write in the note names, then they will quickly get bored with doing this and it will quickly drop. Many times people do what they need to do in order to be successful, so I don't say anything about this sort of thing. This is where understanding that conventionality is a powerful force comes in handy. Students notice that other students' music doesn't have notes written in so they will drop it on their own.