Najee Lee

November 24, 2014

Intro to Music Ed
Patrick Schmidt
Music Education Philosophy
Music Education is a field of study that constantly evolves with society. As society
continues to evolve, the perspective of our students evolve, as well. Learning music is critical to
the advancement of our students because like any other subject, it challenges their way of
thinking, expands their knowledge of new genres of music, and develops a passion that will also
bloom. In order to keep this field of study alive, it is crucial for music educators to adapt their
lessons to the time period and keep it culturally relevant for the students. If not, music
curriculums will be cut from the lack of diversity and application to daily life. In order to prevent
this, I propose that music educators implement teaching strategies such as music education with
technology and popular music as well as traditional music.
In Music Education at the Tipping Point by John Kratus, Kratus mentions that the only
way to understand the change and impact in music is to first, understand the dynamics of social
change. This is crucial to the argument because it relates to how society has evolved throughout
time and how popular music and technology has taken over traditional music. Kratus introduces
in his article a book called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwells theory explains that small changes can combine to make a
massive change to where a tipping point has been reached. To present the change technology
has made, Kratus explains how invention of email decreased the crime rate in New York City.
With something as simple as e-mail making such a vital change in our society, todays
technology and culture can impact music education even greater. These changes are evident in
our way of living today in a plethora of examples. For example, people now use the
technological advances of their phone and take videos, or covers of popular songs and post
them on social networks such as Facebook, Vine, Twitter, Instagram, or the most widely known
YouTube. This is extremely important for music education because it keeps it from being
outdated. This also ties in with a quote from Kratus that music education must find ways to both
keep up with the changing musical culture and preserve the best of our musical past.
It is important to incorporate pop music with traditional music into music educators
curriculums while incorporating relevant technology students will enjoy using. In Lucy Greens
article The Music Curriculum as Lived Experience: Childrens Natural Music Learning
Processes, Green talks about an informal experiment of teaching students popular music. In the
experiment, students learned imitation, improvisation, and composition just based on listening to
a CD in a practice room with their friends. Also, in Patricia Rileys Teaching, Learning and
Living with iPads, Riley implements the use of iPads to teach instruments, create and compose
music. The results were very positive when music educators applied the technology to their
students from K-12. If we do not implement these strategies and bridge the gap between popular
music and traditional and keep up with society, music education will rest in peace.