http://www.usatoday.

com/news/opinion/forum/story/2011-10-02/high-schoolmusic-programs/50635878/1

Column: How to enliven and save high

school music
By David Sall
Updated 3d 7h ago

There's an elephant in the room the band room, anyway. It's no secret that
music education is declining in our schools. According to the National
Endowment for the Arts, the number of children who received any kind of arts
education decreased by more than 21% from 1992 through 2008.

Why? A few reasons instruments are expensive, and we're in a recession. No Child Left
Behind has increased focus on test scores in "core" subjects. Our state governments
have slashed funds for education, making it difficult for school districts to keep arts
specialists. These are serious issues that we need to address as a country if we care about
the future of the arts in the U.S.

But there's a more fundamental reason why music education is in trouble: the way that
music classes are taught. In a comic strip by music advocate Nick Jaworski, a stick-figure
high school principal best articulates the problem: "How can I justify spending our (school's)
limited $ on a curriculum that only reaches 20% of high school students?

This question is at the crux of the public music education debate today. The primary reason
for the dwindling number of students is very likely an ever-increasing disconnect between
the traditional band-orchestra-choir conservatory method of teaching largely geared
toward helping students to become professional musicians in classical ensembles and
the way that high school students listen to and experience music today.

There's immense potential outside of this teaching method to help students connect to
music on a visceral level. To see this in action, one only needs to look at the way that Fox's
hit show Glee and its embrace of pop culture has led to a dramatic increase of show
choirsin high schools. We need to update our model of music curriculum in a similar way to
meet the needs of a wider array of students.

A good place to start is with the recognition of the role that technology plays in music today.
With a new version of Spotify (an online streaming music database), students have
unlimited legal access to essentially all music, so long as they have an Internet

connection. GarageBand, Apple's easy-to-use sound editing software, allows students to

easily compose and record themselves. Given the ease with which students can now
create and listen to music, why is it that most music students graduate high school not
knowing how the music that they listen to is produced?

In addition to evolving technology, the nation's shifting demographics are inconsistent with
our traditional views on what types of music should be performed in public schools. If a high
school band isn't playing an arrangement of a Shostakovich symphony, it's probably playing
something that many would mistake for one. Considering that as of 2010, the majority of
American 3-year-olds are not white, why limit our students to predominantly European
music if we're hoping to attract students representative of our communities' shifting racial
and ethnic groups?

We advocate for music in schools by touting it as a subject that teaches students to

innovate. It is a universal language, after all. The sad irony is that music education has
stagnated in the 21st century and consequently is anything but universal.

There is still room for "traditional" music education, but music shouldn't be taught with the
intention of making every student a professional musician.

Instead of trying to defend traditional band, choir and orchestra classes, music educators
would do well to embrace the craft as a way to teach creativity, problem-solving and cultural
harmony truly 21st century skills, for artists and engineers alike. If we do so, the demand
for music will return stronger than ever.

David Sall, a student at Oberlin College and Conservatory, is associate director of theMusic
Access Project of Portland, Ore.