Innovation in the Music Curriculum

Abstract

During the 1970s there were many who expressed a fear that music in education was in a state of crisis as far as classroom music was concerned. The traditional diet of folk and national songs together with appreciation seemed increasingly inappropriate and unpopular, yet the emergence of experimental music became the focus of heated debate. Adding further complications was the powerful hold rock music had developed over the minds of young people. To some it appeared that classroom music might disappear particularly in the wake of economic pressures. However, it is suggested in this third article that the real cause of the problem was a failure in some music educators to move away from an eighteenth century view of our perceptual processes. In much the same way as Tin Pan Alley did not understand the phenomenon of rock and roll, some music educators did not adjust their attitude to children much beyond a mind/body dualism, and concentrated their educational work entirely on the intellectual. It is proposed that the experimentalists did in fact offer a viable and valid approach to music education but that their reasoning was inadequately explicated.