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MUSIC IN RURAL BRITISH COLUMBIA
Sponsors:
Children, Music and State Schooling
A presentation to the House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland, Select Committee on Children's Interests.
October 17, 1995
By Dr. Brian A. Roberts
This paper is available in published form in the Canadian Music Educator, 37/1, pps.1-6.
Honourable Members:
It is with great pleasure that I accept your invitation to make this presentation today. We are all aware from reports in the press of many challenges for our province's children which have been laid before you in recent weeks. There can be little hope of a pleasant future without personal safety, adequate nutrition and a reasonable level of economic stability having been secured. While these problems are real and often appear overwhelming, it would be a serious oversight if the Committee's work were limited to just these and other pressing issues of life and limb.
Without a doubt, one of the most important aspects of our children's lives is that of schooling. Society is generally convinced that an adequate education is the only hope that our children have for a reasonably good chance at a bright future. Our education in Newfoundland is not adequate and the current directions being recommended and in some cases already implemented by the Department of Education are making the situation much worse rather than better. The preoccupation with mathematics and science in the curricular reform is misguided and will have seriously negative implications for our youth.
In making my presentation today, I represent the Canadian Music Educators' Association, the national professional body of school-based music educators whose association's aim reads in part, "to encourage and guide throughout Canada, the development and delivery of quality music education programs within a balanced curriculum . . ." ("CMEA/ACEM Aim and Goals", 1995, p. 20). The current reform agenda is seriously undermining the whole concept of a balanced curriculum.
To that end, I would like to present and discuss briefly only three reasons why music education must play a significantly more dominant role in today's schools. The first is economic. The second is academic and the third is directed toward more social ends.
ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS
There is little discreet economic data available on the music industry alone but as a large and integral part of the Canadian arts industry a great deal of information is available. Compared to all of Canada's manufacturing industries, the Canadian arts industry in 1985, the last year for which these complete comparisons can be made, was "the largest with respect to employment, the 3rd largest with respect to salaries and wages of more than $3.8 billion and the 9th largest with revenues of $11.3 billion or 2.4% of G.N.P. (Research and Evaluation, 1988)" (Chartrand, 1992, p. 68). It is also important to note that "between 1982 and 1985 the rank order of the arts industry's salaries jumped from 7th to 3rd indicating the growing employment importance of the arts in the post-modern economy" (Chartrand, 1992, p. 68). In fact, the arts labour force was nearly 4% of the total labour force, larger than that of the primary agricultural labour force and larger than the total federal government employment in Canada (Chartrand, 1992, p. 68).
In the United States, the second largest net export after defence products is entertainment programming ("Meet the new media monsters", 1989). Chartrand, former Research director with the Canada Council writes "cultural knowledge including knowledge of languages, religions and life ways plays a critical and often interactive role with physical technology in successful innovation and marketing. And cultural goods and services themselves are becoming a major part of international trade" (Chartrand, forthcoming).
In Canada, wise governments are regular contributors to the arts through grants of various kinds. These are not, however, gifts but rather investments. In Ontario for example the big five, the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet, the Toronto Symphony, the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival all either in Toronto or within a hundred miles of it returned more than six times the dollar value of their grants back into the economy, a return in 1984 of some 141.7 million dollars (Wood, 1986).
Unlike that in science and technology where last year's model is obsolete, artistic capital remains stable or, in fact, can appreciate. "King Tut, Shakespeare and Bach still speak, still sell" (Chartrand, 1991, p. 151).
The Canadian arts related employment profile is growing faster than all other sectors of the economy. What is even more important is that arts related employment is not confined to the arts industries exclusively. Chartrand writes that the "arts labour force occupations are similar to scientific and technical professions in that arts-related skills are used throughout the economy, not just in the arts industry (Chartrand, 1992, p. 78). Furthermore, writes Chartrand, "university recruitment by major corporations is beginning to favour arts and humanities graduates in preference to MBA's. Recruiters are finding that the arts and humanities graduates are more rounded in terms of social and communication skills and more flexible in terms of career development than business administration graduates" (Chartrand, 1992, p. 89).
The labour force for this vast and important part of our economy, a fast-growing and ever more pervasive sector, will arise only from a solid arts education in our schools. It is in the educational institutions which provide a balanced curriculum with a strong arts agenda including an engaging and powerful music education component that our students will prepare themselves for a future in this massive proportion of the Canadian economy. In the United States it is predicted by the Education Commission on the States that "one in three children in class now will eventually work in an arts-related job at some point in time during his or her career" ("Fact sheet: Music and SAT scores - an update", 1995, p. 47). Can our schools ignore the pressing need for a major increase in arts-related education in order to make our students competitive?
ACADEMIC CONSIDERATIONS
The Canadian Music Educator's Association seeks a strong place for music within a balanced curriculum. The imbalance towards mathematics and science in our current reform agenda is an attempt to improve the standards of achievement in these areas. The basic proposal, however, can be reduced to a single point; increase dramatically the required amount of time spent on these subjects to the exclusion and detriment of all other curricular elements.
The truth about the future for better educated students in mathematics and science, however, is a large leap from the propaganda currently distributed to support the need for such massive increases in time spent on these subjects. While there will be a growing need for experts in computing sciences, mathematics and sciences generally, these are high end professions which will absorb only the very brightest and highest achieving students in these disciplines. No amount of increase in school science or mathematics will produce students able to work in positions which require these discipline specific skills. For the remaining majority of students in school, the curricular imbalance will rob them of opportunities to invest their time in other more meaningful studies related to other occupations or life goals.
Since the aim of the curricular revision is to improve performance in schooling, it would be provocative to demonstrate the impact that arts courses can make. In Canada we have nothing quite like the American SAT scores with which we can make such comparisons. But the American data can show us much about ourselves since our schooling agendas are quite similar. The most recent data comes from the 1994 SAT scores and shows that "students of the arts continue to out-perform their non-arts peers on the SAT according to reports by the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB)" ("Fact sheet: Music and SAT scores - an update", 1995, p. 47).
In 1994, SAT takers with course work in music performance scored 49 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 36 points higher on the math portion of the test than students with no course work or experience in the arts. Scores for those with course work in music appreciation were 59 points higher on the verbal portion and 42 points higher on the math portion. Longer arts study means even higher scores: In 1994, those who had studies the arts for more than four years scored 56 points higher on the verbal potion and 38 points higher on the math portion than students with no course work in the arts. ("Fact sheet: Music and SAT scores - an update", 1995, p. 47)
While no direct countervailing evidence is available that these scores cannot simply be attributed to music study, even if it were to be shown that these higher scores were simply scores from better students, why would we rob these better students of opportunities to study music if they are already demonstrating a superior performance in language and mathematics. And in computer science, the most impressive technical "knowers" are more likely to be found in the music room wiring and writing MIDI patches for their sound modules and composing multi-media presentations on their MACS.
There is direct evidence, however, that music study does play a significant role in the improvement of spatial reasoning, the type most closely related to geometry and architecture. Research at the University of California at Irvine by Dr. Frances Rauscher has demonstrated a direct cause and effect relationship. She writes bluntly, "all other things being equal, if you look at two kids - one who studies music and one who doesn't - the child who studies music will have enhanced spatial reasoning" (Snyder, 1995, p. 40). This improvement, she writes, "generalizes as they get older and into better mathematical skills . . . a better understanding of those concepts that are required of research mathematicians" (Snyder, 1995, p. 41). This is the kind of spatial reasoning that is used when playing chess, for engineering, architecture, navigation and anything that requires a conceptual understanding of how things go together in space. She concludes, "I think the schools are really where music is going to make the most difference, and this connection to spatial reasoning is perhaps the place where music instruction is the most important and crucial for disadvantaged kids" (Snyder, 1995, p. 41).
Every indication suggests that music will improve performance in the very areas that the educational reform movement would have us believe is important. But by their actions, the reformers are removing the opportunities to achieve the very ends they set out for themselves.
SOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS
During the last century, there has been a remarkable growth in and expectation for ever-longer periods of formal schooling. The socially acceptable elementary school graduation for our grandparents was soon replaced by an acceptance of high school graduation for our parents and today more and more pressure and expectation is placed on our youth to complete some sort of post-secondary certification. We are requiring of our youth periods of scholastic confinement with little chance of parole for longer periods than we incarcerate murderers. What is the face we place on our schools as social institutions? Are they places that students would want to be? As we offer our students more and more rights as persons, will they abandon schools because they are simply not agreeable places to be? Will an increase in mathematics and science on-task time lead to a more learning friendly atmosphere? How will we encourage more students to stay in school long enough to learn any of these skills being thrust down on us from above?
Research with Canadian youth between the ages of 15 to 19 years of age has shown that the most important thing to them is friendship with 75% ranking this highest. Second only to that is music with 72% selecting this as the highest category. By comparison, sports ranked first with only 44% of respondents (Biddy & Posterski, 1985).
A personal anecdote might demonstrate my point. My son, who has just entered junior high school had a choice between two schools, one being Mt. Pearl Junior High. When the decision was made not to attend there the only loud utterings of discontent were that he would not be able to be in Etc., the school musical production show. He did not compare the curricular offerings, the quality of teaching, the time-on-task models or any of the other adult considerations which may have played a part in the decision. If music programs can provide a school with a socially acceptable climate where other things can be learned, this alone would be adequate grounds for the inclusion of the discipline in our curriculum.
Music classes in North America are generally performance based. By that I mean that in class instruments are played or people sing. In every instance, this learning pattern is demonstrated in concerts, festivals, shows and many other public events. Students engaged in this experience develop stage presence and a composure for presenting to groups in front of them. In the absence of this kind of schooling, can we expect to graduate students in the model of the current TV sitcom "Dweebs", all-knowing but socially inept adults? Music performance programs together with the other arts disciplines build these social presentation skills.
Music programs also have many performance groups attached to them in which students find many of their school friendships. If strong friendship is the most important thing to our teenagers (Biddy, et al., 1985) then what better place for them to find them than in school bands and choirs. If the choice is in the music room or on the street corner, I'd support music programs.
Many of these groups are responsible for large scale school musicals which develop leadership and responsibility as well as providing a business model for all participants to learn from. Budgets must be struck and maintained, funds must be raised and expenses accounted for. The show must be advertised and marketed. This is industry. Many of these groups also travel the world. They raise funds and set out to all parts of the globe and the standards in place in our schools today account for the large number of invitations our school music groups receive. What better way to gain a view of the world and learn about culture and geography than by exercising the responsibilities both as a group and as an individual to be a Canadian ambassador abroad. It is also in these music performance groups that students learn group problem-solving skills and group motivational and conciliation tactics. This is industry.
More than anything else, students need places in school where they can be successful. The nature of a musicians identity has been empirically shown (Roberts, 1993) to be such that students in school music programs can construct a successful identity. This leads to an enormous enhancement of self-worth and self-esteem. Students who feel good about themselves are much more likely to succeed generally than students who must rely on doing well on a mathematics test to build a self-image. For some, sports can provide this self-defining success but for many others the strongest possibility rests in the band or choir and music classroom. Can we deny students these opportunities and then expect them to happily incarcerate themselves in our institutions for nearly a quarter of a century?
CONCLUSION
No one style of curricular offering will empower all of our students. Individual differences aside, the demands of school are such that we need to enhance the "likability" of schools without affecting the time-on-task of academic studies. This is possible and music can play an important, but not the only major role in this process. A balanced curriculum with a strong music component can prepare our students for entry into the work place in the fastest growing segment of our economy. Music can enhance the learning of other core disciplines. Music experiences both in class and in performance groups can lead to happier school life, a friendlier school atmosphere, close personal bonds and opportunities for self-growth and self-esteem enhancement. Music is a view of the world that can be a valuable contribution to all aspects of life.
When all is said and done, students may also learn to appreciate some of the world's finest pieces of musical art which is, after all, the way we define our culture altogether. Music in schools needs your support. Our students deserve no less.
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References
Biddy, R., & Posterski, D. (1985). The emerging generation: An inside look at Canada's teenagers. Toronto: Irwin.
Chartrand, H. H. (1992). The contribution of arts education to national income . . . the pattern which sells the things. In N. Yakel (Ed.), The future: Challenge of change (pp. 49-97). Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
Chartrand, H. (1991). Context and continuity: Philistines, pharisees and art in English culture. Journal of Arts Management and Law, 21(2), 141-156.
Chartrand, H. (forthcoming). Intellectual property rights in the post-modern world. Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society.
CMEA/ACEM Aim and Goals. (1995). Canadian Music Educator, 36(4), 20.
Fact sheet: Music and SAT scores - an update. (1995). Teaching Music, 2(5), 47.
Meet the new media monsters. (1989, March 11). The Economist, pp. 65-66.
Research and Evaluation. (1988). Selected arts research statistics (7th). Ottawa: The Canada Council.
Roberts, B. (1993). I, Musician: Towards a model of identity construction and maintenance by music education students as musicians. St. John's, NF: Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Snyder, N. (1995). Dr. Frances Rauscher: Music and reasoning. Teaching Music, 2(5), 40-41+50.
Wood, G. (1986). Music education in the Canadian economy. International Journal of Music Education, 8, 53-59+70.
