Controversial Rep in the schools
Anna Friars
In our skype discussion, I asked why it is that so many music educators are willing and comfortable with exploring ethnic repertoire, but not so much religous and political repertoire. I realize this is controversial, however, it is extremely important that we expose our students to as much music as possible. Hildegard made a great point in stating that we can not simply introduce christian music, but that we must be sure to include music from religions across the board. This is something that I totally agree with, but I feel as though I would lean more towards Chirstian music because of the foundation we receive here at Westminster. I plan to educate myself now in more diverse religous music and introduce that, so that I can justify doing Palestrina as the book mentions.
I thought Hildegard was great about being honest with me in this question. She didn’t know exactly how to solve the problem and introduce more religous music into the public schools, but the warning she gave about diversity in your repertoire was valid and useful. Being a dual major in Sacred music, I try to expose myself to all types of religous music, and I want to be able to share these world religions in my classroom in a manner that will not catch my students off guard or offend anyone. I would be interested to hear he thoughts on different extra-curricular choirs that could potentially perform religious music also. I’m not sure how well this would be received in public schools, but I think that a group such as one of these would be beneficial to the school community as a whole. This type of group would perform religous music of all types, but would not be associated with a class or grade. It would simply be for enjoyment. Hildegard has had me thinking about the different possibilities since she spoke in class.
Also, when Hildegard made the point that the drop out rate of teachers in the first 5 years applied to teachers of all subjects, I was not surprised at all. Music teachers are not the only ones getting stuck setting up risers or being put on hall duty. The math, science, english, gym etc. teachers are all being asked to do things like bus duty or detention duties that were not part of what they were trained to do in obtaining their degrees. I think we look at music education in too much of a bias way. If we could step back and realize that everyone has jobs in their day they weren’t prepared for, maybe we can figure out sooner rather than later that teaching may not be the place for us.
