On "Music: a Curricular Subject"

My responses and reactions to the second chapter of of A Concise History of American Music Education are as follows:

“Pestalozzi was committed to social reform throughout his life. He believed that education was the only means to elevate the social and economic status of impoverished Swiss peasants in a feudal society, who had little if any opportunity to improve their lives… he wanted to give them dignity through education. He replaced strict discipline and the traditional memorization teaching method with one based on love and understanding of the individual child.” (p. 31)

While I agree with the last sentiment and wonder why we’re still treating that as though it is a new concept, I have to wonder: is there dignity outside of academia? It’s possible that an education would be the only way for them to garnish more of a living and a higher rung on the social ladder, but I’d like to think that there is dignity to be found elsewhere. This sentiment almost reminds me of the way the Spanish and the French recultured the native people they found in the Americas.

“Pestalozzi believed that the purpose of education was to prepare people to achieve their highest potential at the level of their station in life, and he advocated reforms that would allow pupils to relate education to life activities.” (pp. 31-32)

This seems very similar to the modern notion of what education should be going forward, rather than simply job training, which Mark later writes was a very intentional goal of education after the Industrial Revolution: “As the nation created an industrial society, school boards and administrators favored subjects that reflected the mechanization of the Industrial revolution and that would prepare students for their future work.” (p. 54)

“Nägeli also wanted uneducated adults to spend their leisure time in worthwhile pursuits.” (p. 32)

By whose definition?

Elam Ives Jr. (p. 33-34) and Lowell Mason (p. 34-35)

This section of the chapter really highlights how money matters. Ives wrote many books and art songs but “is virtually forgotten in American music history,” despite the fact that “he had great impact on music education, and his work as a teacher is historically significant.” (p. 34) Lowell Mason, however, “was born to a prosperous family in Medfield, Massachusetts.” (p. 34) We can, however, learn from how involved he became in the communities where he had influence. He held secretary positions of many organizations, worked in a dry goods store, was town librarian, and “in 1820 he became a clerk in the Planter’s Bank” (p. 24). He also met very influential people, such as Dr. George K. Jackson of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston.

The “Class-Convention” of 1836 (p. 42)

I was strangely encouraged to read that one of the resolutions of the class-convention was “notwithstanding we have to contend with the prejudice of some, the opposition of others, and the indifference of many… we find in the progress of musical education for a few years past, abundant encouragement to persevere in our labors, and not become weary in well-doing.” (p. 43) Apparently, we’ve always been fighting this opposition, and we’ve come this far. I also liked that they had to spell out that they would “strive to avoid as far as in us lies, any thing like invidious rivalry; and that we will assist each other in our profession as we have opportunity” (p. 43) Later on the same page, Mark wrote that George Webb had a falling out and started classes in competition with Mason’s. Thank goodness their “differences were eventually resolved,” (p. 43) because as they said in their seventh resolve, we had and have much to overcome.

“The David committee… made a positive recommendation on the basis of three utilitarian reasons - intellectual, moral, and physical - that mirrored Pestalozzi’s legacy.” (p. 45)

I understand that there wasn’t always a separation of church and state. But as we pattern ourselves after and learn from the past, I would really like to see “moral” swapped out for “ethical.”

“Classroom teachers and community volunteers continued to lead classroom singing while the board [of the Common Schools of Cincinnati] debated during the next few years whether to hire music instructors. William F. Coburn and Elizabeth Thatcher finally were hired to begin teaching… Coburn’s salary… indicates that ‘music professors’ were considered highly qualified because male principals earned the same amount. Thatcher taught one-third as many hours and was paid twelve dollars a month, three dollars less than the lowest paid full-time women teachers.” (p. 51)

Inequality aside, I don’t know what to make of Thatcher making what she made compared to the classroom teachers or why she would be hired for a different amount of time than Coburn. The whole thing is both typical of the time and still disheartening.

“The early school music programs were the genesis of music education as we know it today, but Lowell Mason and his colleagues were criticized many years later for the choice of music.” (p. 52)

Good.

“They replaced the indigenous music of the singing school with music typical of the less prominent European composers.” (52)

Not good.

“Britton’s view of the quality of music education literature raises the question of why music educators chose to look down on their native music in favor of a bland, innocuous genre with no obvious redeeming characteristics. They used this music because many Americans considered European culture to be more advanced than their own at a time when the United States was still young.” (p. 53)

That, while a bummer, does make sense to me. What doesn’t make sense to me is why we’re still doing that two-hundred years later.

“There was another, more crass reason for Mason’s choice of music. Mason and his colleagues had excellent business sense. They saw clearly that they could establish a huge demand that only could fill by creating a need for new music. They were right, and they made a great deal of money in the process.” (p. 53)

Again, I do not like it one bit, but it does make sense. And it explains, to a degree, why Mark spends pages sixty-three to seventy-one talking about music textbooks for the classroom in a book that was published in 2008.

The National Music Course (pp 58-62)

Not a textbook for students but rather a method book for teachers, I was strangely happy to see that this existed as early as 1870. While the language is somewhat dated, I loved seeing the example script from 1888 on page 59.

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Mark, M. L. (2008). A concise history of American music education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield

Education.