Abstract
The Federal Government of Nigeria has realized that low educational quality has negative implications for sustainable national development, hence her commitment to develop national policies and national curriculum for teacher education to improve the quality of education (including music education). This article observes improvement in the preparation of musician-teachers as absolutely imperative to move modern music education as a field in the direction for continued growth. It traces out a historical past and explores present-day circumstances by analyzing and critiquing the National Commission for Colleges of Education’s document—Approved Minimum Academic Standards for Music. As the document is based on exogenous paradigms, it is argued that it cannot produce the change agent in the Nigerian musician-teacher. A reconceptualization of music teacher curriculum that is socioculturally sensitive is suggested for colleges of education in Nigeria as a way of moving it toward developing sound, effective, and creative musician-teachers.
Introduction
Many Nigerian music scholars have shown intense concern about the irrelevance of modern music education (MME) to the essential needs of Nigeria and Nigerians (New, 1980; Nzewi, 1988, 1997, 1998; Okafor, 2005; Omibiyi-Obidike, 1987). The problem is, while the nation demands through her National Policy on Education (NPE; Federal Republic of Nigeria [FRN], 1977) and Cultural Policy for Nigeria (CPN; Federal Government of Nigeria [FGN], 1988) that MME be sensitive to the legitimate needs of the great masses of the Nigerian people, its theory and practice in schools and colleges remain exogenous and elitist. As it continues to induce cultural alienation for Nigerians and mental disorientation for the Nigerian society, this approach is inappropriate and irrelevant. To reorient MME to the needs of the nation, scholars have suggested enactment of music policy, improvement of physical facilities, increment in funding, and development of a culture-centered curriculum.
Undoubtedly, these counsels are apposite in moving Nigerian MME forward. But it cannot fully keep pace with the changing times unless the music teacher, the key person in the preservation and transformation of our musical heritage, is recognized and prepared as a change agent. Without his or her adequate preparation, the problems of translating music policy into action, principle into practice; the problems of developing, interpreting, delivering, and improving the music curriculum; the problems of preserving and updating musical knowledge; the problems of studying, researching, and refining the processes of music teaching and learning cannot be adequately solved. In short, the worthwhileness of any music education system, traditional or modern, ultimately depends on the quality of its music teachers.
The NPE recognizes the centrality of the teacher in Nigeria’s educational enterprise, stating, “Teacher education will continue to be given a major emphasis in all our educational planning because no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers.” (FRN, 1981, p. 38). So, the germaneness of music teachers’ quality in promoting productive development of our MME and its interrelations with our culture and society make the continuous improvement of music teacher education (MTE) inescapable.
Hence, of all problems of MME in Nigeria, one can say that none is as chronic, requiring urgent attention, as the absence of music teachers, adequate in quantity and quality, who can direct it positively. Regarding the dubious quality of music teachers in Nigerian colleges, Nzewi (1988) notes, “What transpires in music education courses in our colleges and universities is a most dishonest hoax: lame lecturers leading blind students into mental-spiritual quagmire” (p. 11). Oehrle (1991) summarizes that the training of music teachers in Nigeria “is poor and little” (p. 27). In other words, poorly trained Nigerian music teachers are leading our MME in a direction opposite to what it most needs and away from its greatest strengths.
Sourcing constantly quality music teachers who can rise above the music education system obliges a strong and effective MTE program. By MTE, we refer to all institutions that ensure that those who have to lead and develop the musical traditions of a society are well nurtured and commit themselves and others to widening and deepening music educational understandings. As a form of education, it is aimed at cultivating those who work “to assure that educational potential of musical studies is realized, wherever and whenever music is taught and learnt” (Bowman, 2001, p. 11). It seeks to prepare musicians who strive continuously to musically educate themselves and others to “develop as people, musicians, and lovers of music and culture. They gladly share the wisdom of musical traditions they have learned to treasure individually and collectively” (Jorgensen, 2003, p. x). MTE prepares persons to become the next generation of musician-teachers.
Experiencing quality MME in contemporary Nigeria requires MTE providing ample and regular supply of creative Nigerian musicians who are committed Nigerian educators. To achieve this, this article suggests a reconceptualization of music teacher education curriculum (MTEC) for Colleges of Education (COEs) in Nigeria. But first, an examination of Nigeria’s experience of MTE as well as an assessment of the present MTEC at COE level is crucial.
A History of MTE in Nigeria
The history of teacher education (TE) in Nigeria is well documented (Fafunwa, 1974; Taiwo, 1980), but little is written about the history of MTE in Nigeria (Okafor, 2005).
Indigenous African MTE
From time immemorial, indigenous Nigerian communities have had a highly structured music education system which is very effective in ensuring the continuity of their age-old musical traditions and culture. At its core are “the apprenticeship systems, initiation schools, and music borrowing practices” aimed at producing dutiful master-musician-teachers who are not to instruct, teach, or inspire themselves alone; they must musically educate others, maintain and extend the community’s musical standards and repertory too. Although this MTE system has faced immense disregard in the course of Nigeria’s encounter with exogenously spawned MTE systems, it is still operational.
Islamic MTE
Since the 14th century, the world of Muslim mosques and Islamic scholars have penetrated the territory now known as Nigeria propagating Islam and Islamic education as panaceas for sustaining Islamized Nigerian groups they have established. It is anchored by the highly respected ulama class (Islamic teachers) whose education, geared toward the study and spread of Islamic music knowledge (IMK), goes beyond the mere gaining of IMK to the living of Islamic way of life.
Emergent are fundamentalist ulama who are bent on Islamizing Nigerian music knowledge (NMK) and tolerant ulama who have been Nigerianizing IMK. The resulting dialectic has softened Islamization of NMK and invigorated Nigerianization of IMK. Some would say to the benefit of both. Others would say to the detriment of both. So, a need is to take into consideration the role of Nigerian-Islamic master-musician-teachers (NIMMTs) who are musically educating Muslims for the sake of umma as well as preserving and updating Nigerian-Islamic musical heritage in the (re)construction of MME in Nigeria to accord it with Afro-Islamic music educational principles they are spawning.
Western-Based MTE
By mid-19th century, a wave of Christian missionary enterprises, which introduced Christianity and Western education, burst into Nigeria. Church organizations such as the Methodist (1842), the Church Missionary Society (CMS; 1842), the Presbyterians, and the Baptist (1861) brought with them a highly denominational, Christian-based music schooling for evangelistic purpose and cultivation of a new elite imbued with European musical values.
The CMS was the first mission to establish a teacher training college (TTC), CMS Training Institution, at Abeokuta in 1853 to train some converts as music teachers–catechists–evangelists. Robert Coker, who studied music there and became renowned for his music teaching and concert organization prowess in many Victorian Lagos schools, is identifiable in the literature as the first Nigerian church-school music teacher (SMT). In 1896, for expediency, the Institution was moved to Oyo and renamed St. Andrew’s College. The Baptist College, Iwo and The Wesley Training Institute (later renamed Wesley College, Ibadan), were other TTCs established in 1897 and 1905, respectively.
These TTCs laid the foundations for school music teaching in Nigeria upholding the views that African music education system is below par or non-existent; that African music is “paganistic” or “devilish”; that non-church musician-teachers are backward and uncivilized. As the content and philosophy of this MTE system methodically barred learning in any aspects of indigenous NMK, it propagated Western missionary models of music education.
Colonial MTE
Between 1885 and 1960, Nigeria served as a British colony. The colonial officials established the Nigerian state in its modern form and imposed on existing Nigerian cultures cultural progress based on a Western European elite model. Settled Christian missions collaborated with the colonialists in spreading out Western cultural influence on Nigerian society. Colonialists’ secularization policies privileged schooling, which deemphasized the religious approach. But their efforts to introduce de-Christianized school music education in Islamized Nigerian communities faced stiff opposition because of the lingering link of music schooling with Christianity.
The colonialists brought in many European musician-teachers to embed Western-styled MTE. Offered training snubbed musical-educational issues beyond those directly germane to schooling. Western art music knowledge (WAMK) gained primacy in exams that qualify teachers for formal certification.
Certain Nigerians, enabled to go abroad, mastered music teaching according to the Euro-American norms. Some others acquired such skills via overseas correspondence courses. Colonial MTE usurped the musical background of the trainees and replaced them with alien (and alienating) music knowledge. Since then, SMT have been bending the Nigerian masses’ musical knowledge, tastes, and practices to Western art music (WAM; the focus of their training) fretting little if that is meeting the needs of Nigeria and Nigerians.
After political independence, Nigeria by mistake permitted the protractions of the inherited colonial structures and institutions. Kept intact for years, for instance, was the colonial music teacher training which remained Western in thinking, studies, and practice. But Nigeria’s cultural nationalism intimately linked with Africanization swelled. Quest for a national cultural self-identity and the apprehension that music can shape and solidify it surfaced. Africanization of education began raising a consciousness that Nigerians who passed through schools need to come to understand the indigenous African music tradition. A need to base Nigerian MTE on an indigenous framework—one that addresses Nigerian challenges—arose.
MTE in Nigerian Colleges and Universities
After independence, awareness that inherited colonial models of music education were inadequate and inappropriate and needed dismantling led to the institutionalization of a bicultural model of university music education in Nigeria, which seeks a Western art-indigenous African music interaction. Inexorably, academic credibility began to accrue to indigenous African music. Those trails were blazed in 1961 when the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s (UNN) founding fathers established the first Nigerian University Department of Music. But this reform merely took the form of content addition to the dominant Eurocentric core curriculum. In 1965, the department also introduced a 3-year bicultural diploma in music education menu to meet a growing demand for well-qualified non-graduate SMT. Since then, this program has progressively attracted the attention of Nigerian elite and remained one of the most influential innovations in Nigerian tertiary music education. But, it is still being uncritically copied.
For the training of well-qualified non-graduate teachers, the FGN established Advanced Teacher Training Colleges (ATTCs), now named COE, in the 1960s. Alvan Ikoku Colleges of Education, Owerri was the first Nigerian COE to have a department of music. Founded in 1974 by UNN graduates and aimed at producing music teachers for secondary schools and TTC, its program adopted fully UNNs.
MTE and National Policies
The 1970s saw a huge educational expansion at all levels in Nigeria, which was based on the oil revenues. Education, according to the NPE, became “no more a private enterprise but a huge government venture” (FRN, 1981, p. 5). It relates itself to the overall national objectives of building a free, democratic, egalitarian, strong, just, and self-reliant Nigerian society that is full of opportunity for all her citizenry. It admits National Certificate in Education (NCE) as the minimum teaching qualification and expresses that the goals of Nigerian TE are to a) produce highly motivated conscientious and efficient classroom teachers for all levels of our educational system; b) encourage further the spirit of enquiry and creativity in teachers; c) help teachers to fit into social life of the community and the society at large and to enhance their commitment to national objectives; d) provide teachers with the intellectual and professional background adaptable to any changing situations not only in the life of their country, but in the wider world; and e) enhance teachers’ commitment to the teaching profession. (FRN, 1998, p. 39)
The federal government’s (FG’s) intention to promote the Nigerian cultural heritage as counterweight to cultural strangulation enveloping the country and a basis for national unity culminated in the publication of the CPN (FGN, 1988). It secures a place for arts and music in Nigerian education as a way of safeguarding and transforming Nigerian cultural expressions. It enjoins the Nigerian TE system to adapt the content and methods of education to suit local needs and environment and produce enough arts and music teachers with appropriate specializations to use their subjects in teaching Nigerian culture. Nigeria’s tertiary institutions respond to these demands through their programs.
Earlier on, collaboration existed between COEs and universities in offering TE programs for NCE teachers. Music academics controlled access to the music teaching force through university-dominated examination and certification systems. The FG affirms that she discontinued because “there was no parity in standards and practices” (National Commission for Colleges of Education [NCCE], 2002, p. ii) among her tertiary institutions. For standardized practices, Nigerians began to experience the impeding influences of national policies and bodies regulating national curricula from the 1980s.
In 1989, for instance, the FG established NCCE (2002) with mandates to lay “down Minimum Standards” for the NCE programs and set out “criteria for accreditation of Colleges of Education” (p. ii). Since then, all Nigerian COEs are NCCE regulated in terms of philosophies, goals, structure, and content of TE programs required to qualify for NCE, which is now Nigeria’s minimum qualification for entry into the teaching profession (p. i). Implying that FG seeks to “identify and approve only ‘well-qualified’ teachers” (Colwell, 2006, p. 15) through the NCCE. NCE’s entrance and exit standards are regulated by Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and NCCE respectively. They mandate national curricula controlled through centralized systems of administrators.
COEs offer 3-year programs for secondary school leavers leading to the award of NCE—an equivalent of General Certificate of Education (GCE; ordinary level) plus professional training for teaching Universal Basic Education subjects. NCE holders are eligible for admissions to Nigerian universities for 2- to 3-year academic menus, leading to the award of the bachelor’s degree in education (BEd), the bachelor of arts degree in education (BA Ed) or the bachelor of science in education (BSc Ed), and bachelor of arts or science (BA/BSc). COE pre-service TE programs have many similarities.
By 2000s, 60 COEs had been established, with 16 of them involved in MTE programs due to FGN avowals that “in order to encourage aesthetic, creative and musical activities, Government will make staff and facilities available for the teaching of creative arts and crafts and music”; that “in order that these functions may be discharged effectively, a cadre of staff is required numbers and quality at the different operational levels in the local, State and Federal institutions” (FRN, 1981, pp. 13, 44).
Perhaps, to evolve a Nigerian model of MTE and improve the existing one, NCCE mandates a national music curriculum (NMC). So, it is pertinent to do an assessment of the current NCCE’s MTE program in terms of its relevance to the contemporary Nigerian society—a society whose musical interests and practices have continued to witness striking changes occasioned by unavoidable continuous Nigerians’ interactions and Nigeria’s unbridled encounters with extra-Nigerian realities; whose expectations of music educational practice are expanding; whose music teachers face new demands on their knowledge and responsibilities. This article begins such an assessment by viewing the NCCE’s NMC as an administrative, intellectual, and pedagogical document as well as a political text.
The NCCE’s NMC—A Critical Assessment
In 1993, the NCCE accredited COE programs to determine their relevance and quality, and reviewed its minimum standards twice in 1996 and 2001. Since then, NCCE’s NMC has witnessed many periodic reviews. As it appears, while NCCE is doing her reviews, she reflects little on Nigerian music educational experiences and aspirations. The NMC seems to be conceived as a static body of knowledge, periodically reviewed on bureaucratic whims than in the light of Nigeria’s musician-teacher educational needs. So, the NMC’s conception and role in music studies is not radically different from what it was some five decades ago when academic MTE began at UNN. It is vital that MTE is grounded on Nigerian experiences and aspirations and reflects Nigerian masses’ wishes, hopes, dilemmas, and predicaments.
The NMC commenced through government policies. Barresi and Olson (1992) identify three types of policies: imposed, endorsed, and advocated. “Imposed policies require constituents to comply under penalty of sanction, either economic or professional”; “endorsed policies motivate constituents to comply through a desire to receive some benefit from the policy-making body”; “advocated policy is characterized by completely voluntary compliance . . . (in which) constituents must be in philosophical and/or practical agreement with the policy in order to actively support its tenets” (p. 761).
The NMC strides imposed and endorsed policies. NCCE imposed it on COE without the trials and retrials that usually follow the development of curriculum materials to determine their appropriateness. Music teacher educators have had to endorse it because without such support their programs will be invalidated. So, COE has become “no more than an administrative service” (Touraine, 2000, back page cover) in which music teacher educators’ autonomy is reduced, their initiatives constrained. But what Nigeria needs is a democratic MTE system in which its stakeholders’ voices are equally heard.
To see the NMC as an intellectual document, to see the music knowledge that it defines as culturally significant, would reveal that it is “Western and African music” knowledge it officially recreates as such. But scholars have noted that Western music knowledge (WMK) and learning are more embedded in it than African’s. But Western music (WM) is just one of the music knowledge(s) being constructed in Nigerian life. Emphasizing it as the most culturally treasured is constricting our SMT intellectual developments. A realization that Nigeria’s historical experiences, cultural contacts, and recent technological innovations have revolutionized the scope of culturally meaningful music knowledge in Nigeria, as elsewhere, is vital. That the NMC is yet to follow this trend makes it rigidified intellectually. So, challenging our conventional bicultural MTE thinking is now to widen the scope of music knowledge that is culturally prized in Nigeria and make our music teacher knowledge (MTK) consistent with Nigerian cultural thrust and material contexts.
A view of the NMC as a pedagogical document, that is, as a tool for music teachers and students to develop their own pedagogical praxis shows that it is only “African and Western European music” (NCCE, 2002, p. 46) that provides pedagogical advice and support as well as sets guidelines for teaching and learning in our COE. What can be called the “NCCE-endorsed music pedagogy” avows an unequally stressed pedagogical models that honor a loss of creativity and inspiration in our COE’s music classrooms. It has little pedagogical freedom. And for its pedagogical functionality to rise, our MTE needs ample autonomy to develop its own effective pedagogical practices, which are cognizant of the demands of both the Nigerian economy and society, of Nigerian musical life and culture, but subservient to neither.
An examination of the NMC as political texts (social realities), to see whose decisions about music knowledge is made “official” (Apple, 1993), reveals that musical knowledge choice of the Nigerian elite, or to be less provocative, the school-educated Nigerians, is promoted while those of the Nigerian masses are sidelined. The Nigerian elite are culpable for the WMK’s dominance, because they control our modern education system, dominate our policy-making bodies, and take special interests in WM. Their cultic music knowledge is WM. Nigerian music teacher educators (NMTEs) are implementing tamely this cult’s WMK because they are part of the cult via schooling. In practical terms, WMK is treated as the official MTK, a sine qua non, for educating Nigerian SMT for national development. With the narrowness of its prescribed MTK and because it fails to recognize sufficiently and utilize wisely accessible music knowledge(s) in Nigeria, the document is less capable of producing SMT as agents of social change.
A way to challenge a status quo is to force it to change by encouraging some committed and radical NMTEs as well as young people to spearhead critical alteration of our conventional attitudes to MTE. We must rededicate ourselves to vigorous pursuit of change in the interests of our musical heritage, national needs, and current as well as future students.
MTE Goals
The six common goals for all MTE students in Nigeria at COE level as presented in the NMC are as follows: to offer courses in African and Western European music; to produce well-qualified NCE teachers capable of teaching music at preprimary, primary, and junior secondary school levels; to produce teachers for the private sector—churches, mosques, armed forces, media houses, advertising companies, and so on; to produce NCE teachers who are prepared and are capable of benefitting from further education in music; to promote cultural continuity; and to make NCE teachers acquire skills in music for self-reliance. These could be given a threefold summary: (a) preparation of musicians to teach African and WM, (b) employment of music teachers who are committed to sustaining the musical vibrancy of Nigerian society, and (c) preparation of NCE music teachers for university entrance and self-reliance.
Preparing students to teach African and Western European music as a stated goal dictates our COE’s music instructional content and method. While it makes the teachers’ and students’ interests lie at the margins, it is music-centered and coerces us to view knowledge of the two musical practices as prerequisites for producing effective music teachers for a musically diverse Nigeria. It forces us to imbibe biases and dispositions that distort perception and persist in the reductive view of our prized music knowledge systems.
But the NMC’s biculturalism is based mainly on philosophies of indigenous African and Western art music—in line with the 1960s UNN model which seeks to prepare music teachers for bicultural classrooms that are rare in Nigeria. In practice, it involves learning how to teach WAM with what we might call an “African flavor,” even when what constitutes an African flavor in music teaching/learning has been ill-defined. So, the real goal is quite different from the stated one. As Okafor (2005) notes, An examination of music education in Nigeria presents the observer with an immediate and glaring anomaly. The focus of music education itself appears to be on Western music—music transplanted or introduced into the culture of the indigenous Nigerian from an outside culture. The syllabus of the educational system, the curriculum content, and the philosophy and thrusts of the institutions which teach music, lay strong emphasis on Western music. The student and even the Nigerian teacher of this type of music will, therefore, have to grapple first with an understanding of the music, an understanding of the culture, and an understanding of the method of teaching it.
The primacy of WAMK in Nigerian MTE, as Okafor observes, implies that the unique indigenous African music educational ideation is stifled. Our COEs are training our students with contents, pedagogies, and within contexts that undervalue their cultural experiences, respective musical heritages, musical histories, and contextual meanings, resulting in cultural alienation.
This WAMK centeredness is indirectly conditioning many of us to look to Europe and America as our music teaching idea base. Producing SMT who are out of touch with Nigerian music educational realities, the kind of music teacher Nigerian masses find difficult identifying with is our MTE’s real goal. Arisen is a situation in which the SMT, whose training is paid for by the Nigerian masses, have been trained away from them. Such an inapt end must stop if we desire a strong Nigeria that speaks with her own music teacher educational voice. Yet rejecting or ignoring exogenous MTK coming into Nigeria is unreasonable. Reflectively drawing on them in conjunction with equally valued MTK that is rooted in the historical and contemporary Nigerian scene is a crucial end to pursue. Enabling music teachers to come to an understanding of how to teach our diverse music knowledge should be the goal of our MTE. Our music teachers must emerge to preserve and transform our music educational heritage.
Although what is meant by “African and Western European music” (whether traditional/art/popular at grossest levels) is ill-defined in the NMC, Okafor (2005), while reflecting on what our academically trained music teachers have been able to do apropos their commitment to sustaining the vitality Nigerian musical life notes that . . . it is interesting that the impact of the many highly trained and qualified musicians on the musical life of the society is much less than that of master musicians and popular music makers most of whom are untrained (in schools and colleges) and often illiterates. (p. 258)
Leaving aside the disputations about what Okafor meant by “untrained” and “illiterate” musicians who teach music with educational end-in-view, whom ethnomusicologists learn from, the total effect of our academically trained music teachers tends to be light. This is because our COE departments of music have stressed preparing teachers for schools more. Academically trained music teachers have filtered more only school music knowledge. Although there is nothing deeply wrong in doing this, and in fact, it is basic to do so given Nketia’s (1997) remark that school has become . . . a unifying institution, for it brings together children from different ethnic groups and contexts of music-making. It is here more than anywhere else that the diversity presented by Africa (Nigeria) can be assimilated by the individual into an integrated experience that allows him/her to relate with understanding, insight and pleasure in aesthetic and creative terms to encounters with the music of Africa (and music from elsewhere). (p. 16)
School is just an aspect of our national life, albeit an important one. While our COE should rightly be concerned with the provision of SMT, limiting her goal to that is flawed. For, to the extent that we continue to do this rather than making our COE sites for preparing music teachers for the complexity of our contexts of music educational practice, sustaining a robustly musical Nigerian society will remain unattainable.
The NMC is quite innovative making one of its goals the preparation of music teachers for the next level of education. This is basic to having continually professionals who devote their lives to music teaching/learning. But our real goal has been the production of certificated music teachers based more on exam successes and paper qualifications at the expense of mastering certain music teaching/learning skills, attitudes, and insights. As Nzewi (1988) notes, “Music departments have so far been converted into a refuge for people in search for cheap certificates, whereas music is such an exerting discipline that only the truly industrious if not talented can cope” (p. 10). And notably, an average COE’s music department trains the SMT in an environment that hardly fosters positive attitudes toward learning basic MTK as condition for deserving an educational certificate. Poor resourcing causes this.
So, the scurry to get NCE (music) as collateral against unemployment and for access to the university is spawning immense demands that exams be passed at all cost. Coercing teacher educators to make courses lecture-oriented and teach merely for semester exams, and making many music students to memorize and regurgitate academic contents for exams successes and qualifications, which simply attest to mere completion of the NCCE-stipulated period of music study. Thereafter, they only proceed to study bachelor of arts (Music) rather than bachelor of education (Music).
Evolving then is not mere disruption of Nigerian SMT’s professional development. The “diploma disease” syndrome is real. The NCE which many Nigerian SMT carry about are, in essence, manifestations of what Dore (1976) refers to as “the qualification-escalation ratchet” and “the diploma disease” (p. 5). The stress on NCE as providing access to university entrance, which COE’s music students had missed hitherto, is making obtaining the NCE a life-and-death struggle. This is an inappropriate end. Making our COE places for fostering a culture of lifelong music teaching/learning is a more fitting end. As Jorgensen (2003) admonishes, “ . . . education is a lifelong process. Becoming a music teacher is a vocation—a life’s work” (p. 136). This view is vital in abating concerns about the end-of-career labor.
The NCCE’s Conception of Music Teaching and Learning Processes
A look at the NCCE’s minimum standard shows that it discretely defines general aims, content, and specific assessment criteria for each subject area. Music, like other subjects, has its area, implying that the document’s teaching/learning organization is subject-based and prescriptive. It stipulates all things that teacher educators follow strictly in their daily operation. The music aspect includes 48 core courses and no elective. This tends to show that it has the requisite breadth; that music instruction in any of our COE is academically and musically rigorous.
But its encyclopedic nature makes it “a set of pre-packaged technical interventions intended to bring about a pre-defined outcome” (Eade, 1997, p. 24), that is, the SMT. Its content ordering authoritarian ways of music teaching seems excessively academic-oriented. Meeting our students where they are sociomusically requires giving places to elective courses. We must base our MTEC on our students’ everyday music educational experiences in making what is academically oriented practically focused.
The document’s academic bearings honor a process of transmitting what is musically (absolutely) known, not of exploring what is musically evolving or new. MTK, dumbed down, is treated as “given” and an external reality existing outside the teacher/learner, embedded in curriculum. Its educational values and methods are primarily those of “banking education” (Freire, 1970) that entails music educators putting “stuff” (music) into “vessels” (students; Bereiter, 2002). It inevitably confines music learning mainly to the COE’s classrooms. Transmissive, its content is memorization prone.
Alternatively, we need favoring interactive music teaching/learning, so that music teachers/learners can co-construct their own understandings of music, scaffolding upon pre-existing musical understandings (or misunderstandings). This is akin to the process of music teaching/learning in traditional African communities where scholars have noted that music teachers/learners actively participate in and engage with sociomusical communities and their contextualized activities. Connecting music knowledge to life inside and outside the COE and enriching our MTEC by making it less textbook- and teacher-centered is crucial.
Making MTE in Nigeria transactional and transformational (Elliott, 1995) requires informing MTEC with African philosophy, modes, and models of music education and others compatible with it. For, it is only when teacher educators develop an awareness of African music dynamics that they can adapt music programs to the special needs of local cultural settings or specific learners. Needed is a MTE system that is committed to the transformation of extant African musical system based on African ethical and moral ideals.
Toeing Freire’s (1970) line of counterbalancing “banking models” of music education with dialogic, libratory ones so that defined ends are dovetailed into ones that can never be fully determined is vital. The idea of MTEC as a purveyor of all-needed musical knowledge is one we need to learn to get along without for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its tendency to limit rather than encourage encounter with other and others’ musical knowledge formations.
As in many other countries, the structure of MTE program in Nigeria consists of four components: teaching subject (music [double major]), foundation studies (principles and practice of education courses), general studies, and teaching practice. Steeped in liberal arts education, the courses ostensibly have ample knowledge necessary to develop the musician-teacher who is intellectually and culturally well rounded. The music aspect, expected to gain synergies from the other components, is meant to make students musician-educators. Program completers are deemed well-qualified SMT.
But in reality, the four components are widely treated as discrete disciplines, organizationally isolated in separate schools and pedagogically sequestered from each other. Their objectives are solely defined in the context of each part. Component courses, often taught by non-collaborative educators, coerce students to view courses discreetly. Seldom placing of music knowledge amid other understandings leaves students unable to integrate the knowledge and breeds “algorithmic thinking” (Saba, 2000) that often leads them to separate the educational from the musical. This is alien to reformers’ holistic conceptualization of MTE. We need an interdisciplinary approach in which singly, each of the four parts might be seen as singing a different song. But collectively, they are brought together harmoniously.
In the NMC, 118 semester credit hours (SCHs) are required for graduation (NCCE, 2002). The four components are allocated 64 (54%), 30 (25%), 18 (15%), and 6 (5%) SCHs, respectively. With the music component having the highest percentage, the program tends to be music-centric. But the subject of music is vast, and for many music students who are usually having low formal music knowledge, that chunk seems meagre. Yet, viewed in terms of Zeichner’s (1983) and Feiman-Nemser’s (1990) classifications of ideologies, or conceptual orientations in teacher education, the program is highly academic. Because it emphasizes teachers’ subject expertise and views the quality of music teacher’s own education as his or her professional strength.
About the TE courses, colleagues complain that too much stress is on making music students excel in foundation studies; that many teacher educators identify teaching competence with pedagogy alone by creating a sharp distinction between content (music) and the pedagogical process. Meaning that we are less conversant with Shulman’s (1987) “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK). A cause is lack of educational research appropriate to the Nigerian context. As scholars have noted, the development of a PCK base is an integral part of indigenous African knowledge systems. We need to legitimize indigenous African ways of teaching-learning music in our MTE. For, “we are yet to see a systematic and aggressive assault on the falsification of traditional African ways of (music) teaching and understanding in our universities” (Agawu, 2001, p. 193).
An analysis of the music aspect of the document reveals that courses in music, comprising the study of principles of harmony/counterpoint, African music and appreciation, ear training, music history, elementary technology of music and music education (66%), are too theory-orientated. The explicit practical aspect (Applied Music and Ensemble Music Studies; 34%) tends to be marginal. Music education courses are about 5%, suggesting that we deem music teaching simple.
For the NCCE Approved Minimum Academic Standards for the Music Curriculum stress areas, see Table 1.
The NCCE Approved Minimum Academic Standards for Music: Stress areas and Credit Units.
Presumably, most of those 64 hr of music courses are to be spent on the development of musicianship, because of the students’ poor prior formal musical knowledge, suggesting that musicianship constitutes sufficient qualification for school music teaching. But Bowman (2001) cautions, “Crucial though such abilities and understandings are, they do not in themselves constitute outcomes that are educational” (p. 11) because they merely train than educate musically. And musical training without educating concurrently only “creates and sustains dependency, thwarting the imagination and creativity that are music’s life’s blood. What it can produce are technicians—highly skilled and knowledgeable technicians” (p. 12). Sustaining the vitality of Nigerian musical life requires attending more closely to how our music curricula and instructional practices can lead to the development of attitudes, capacities, and disposition characteristics of the musically educated. As Bowman maintains, “It is upon the dispositions characteristic of the (musically) educated person, independence, flexibility, comfort with change, leadership, and so on—that the continued musical vitality of the country will ultimately depend” (p. 15).
A look at the music aspect in the document shows that it is replete with courses on how to become technically competent in playing one musical instrument or the other; in conducting choirs and bands, and “in learning to read music: to cope with notation, learn musical theory, and pass written (not just practical) music examinations” (Finnegan, 1988, p. 125). The focus is on theory instead of practice as music learnings are hardly situated in productive contexts. As Jorgensen (2003) admonishes, Musical training is of first importance in the preparation of music teachers. Personality and pedagogical preparation cannot substitute for limited musical preparation. So I emphasize the notion of musician-teachers, teachers who are musicians and makers of music rather than just knowers about music or takers of it. (p. 90)
An aspect of the document touches imaginatively and tokenistically on dance but provides no course(s) in the other arts. This implies that the exploration of the interrelationships among the arts is still foreign to our curriculum planners. MTEC as such divorces itself from the broader educational-artistic perspective. Given that the arts are conceptually treated as intertwined in African thinking, their compartmentalization needs prevention in future programs to meet the requirement of “musical arts education” (Nzewi, 2003) and “Cultural and Creative Arts” (FRN, 2004). For SMT to make music an effective force in the lives of the vast majority of Nigerians, they must understand music as an interdisciplinary knowledge.
Toward a Reconceptualization of MTE in Nigeria
Wideen, Grimmett, and Andrews (2002) identify three ways of understanding (music) TE rationalization. The first approach, “rationalization without reconceptualization,” is top-down, often politically motivated. The second, “rationalization in advance of reconceptualization,” assumes that rationalization must be imposed, but that its purpose is to provide opportunities for later reconceptualization of program and practice. The third approach, “rationalization emerging out of reconceptualized practice,” is a collaborative, bottom-up approach, structured to strengthen and reinforce practices that have issued from reconceptualization.
As the current MTEC is officially mandated, it leans toward the first approach. It favors restructuring than reconceptualization, although such restructuring may lead to reforms in certain ways. But the innovativeness Nigerians expect of MTE is unattainable with mere spurious changes, without a fundamental reconceptualization that results from a researched definition of Nigerian MTE.
Reconceptualizing what is meant by MTE and knowing why we need it require averring that music teaching is possible and can be effective; that education of musician-teachers is also possible and can be effective and efficient in our country; that knowledge of a body of music educational wisdom Nigeria is heir to needs to be transmitted methodically from one generation of creative musician-teachers to the next. Crucial is observing MTE as a requisite disciplinary field for knowing what Nigerian music educational traditions are and how to draw life from them.
This requires accepting that education is “the aggregate of all procedures by which a child or young adult, develops the abilities, aptitudes and other forms of behaviours which are of value to the society in which he (she) lives” (Fafunwa, 1974, p. 17). “There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead, 1957, p. 6). Music education takes place “wherever and whenever music is taught and learnt” (Bowman, 2001, p. 13). MTE prepares musicians for whom the role of educator is an essential component of practice.
So, three major forms of MTE, indigenous or traditional Nigerian, Afro-Islamic, and Western or academic (cf. Mazrui, 1986) and their interactions, are discernible in Nigeria. The indigenous African way of getting music taught and learnt is age old, still existing in rural and semi-urban Nigerian communities but encumbered with colonial influences. The Afro-Islamic form, ongoing, predominates in Islamized Nigerian communities, while the Western or academic form, a legacy of colonial past, which enjoys more government barking and thereby hegemonic, is findable and generally encountered in schools and colleges.
These forms of MTE are contemporary because they are constantly evolving and adapting to changing Nigerian circumstances. Each of them, crucial and pertinent to forming a Nigerian MTE tradition, has its own unique ways of educating teachers musically and needs to be understood in its own terms. We need to relate them to each other, understand them as a whole as well as the constituent parts in their own terms within their sociocultural contexts, if we want to understand that the needs they meet are different, complimentary, and intersecting. Valuing only one of these MTE forms in Nigeria is limiting and unprofitable, because the vitality of Nigerian musical life stands or falls by their collaborative beings.
Our COE have a twofold calling: to maintain a music educational identity that is essentially Nigerian while reconciling our music educational traditions with innovative needs of the time. They need be agents that embody many of the changes and transformations that are occurring in Nigerian musical life and sites for absorbing other music (teacher) educational traditions that are compatible with Nigeria’s. To ground MTE in Nigerian wishes, hopes, and aspirations and musically educate their students to face it as well, they must stick to these callings. Their music teacher-students should embody Nigerian music teacher educational traditions through their bodies. They must acquire methodical understandings of valuable contributions to the cause of Nigerian music education being made by the three sites.
As MTE need be agent of change that enables individuals to meet the needs of an ever-changing world (Ballantine, 2001), Nigerian COEs should be places of liberation for music teacher-students to use their embodied music teaching-learning skills in functioning as agents of change for themselves and others; places where music teacher-students can freely express their feelings and perspectives on Nigerian musical life and reflect on their own experiences and assumptions as part of MTE discourse and enquiry. MTEC renewal in Nigeria needs to facilitate this fundamental change in direction.
Researched knowledge and clear delineation of our MTE traditions are important to Nigeria to be a society, a society of those present and those past, a society with distinctive identity. The Nigerian musician-teacher needs such knowing. Without it, she or he may cease to know our MTE traditions and feel any identification with them. His or her disposition or ability to give them meaningful progressions may remain phantasmal. With it, the Nigerian musician-teacher can draw life from our MTE traditions to beget needed music teacher educational transformation.
Such expectations require conceptualizing MTE as a discipline concerned with studying, researching, and refining processes of music teaching and learning. As Bowman (2001) suggests, music education, as a discipline, is first and foremost “a site for theorizing, researching, and improving musical teaching and learning; or . . . a discipline whose responsibility is to assure the educational potential of musical studies is realized, wherever and whenever music is taught and learned” (p. 13). For our MTE to “serve the purposes of more effective, useful, and relevant teaching and learning of music” (Reimer, 1992, p. 25) in and for our country, it must be “a research-oriented and research-guided discipline, whose students and professors are actively engaged in and deeply committed to the advancement of our understandings of music teaching and learning” (Bowman, 2001) in and outside Nigeria.
Music educational research is needed to evolve a sound theoretical base for MTE in Nigeria. Constructing methodical knowledge of the unique Nigerian music educational traditions requires it. Privileging research is vital to an understanding of what musical heritage Nigerians really wish to preserve and transform. Departing from the act of forcing Nigerian masses to practice, listen to, and appreciate the music “we” want them to commands research.
Our MTE need be research-based, if we want Nigerian music and Nigeria’s MTE traditions to ride the crest and help lead the way in sustainable cultural development. Wanting music to become a basic required subject, influencing popular tastes and activities in significant ways and meeting the needs of all Nigerian students, requires research. Moving away from musical elitism and hierarchical stratification of music teachers and students requires research. It is vital to knowing which music is educationally promising, and discerning what is morally or aesthetically acceptable, viable, and enviable, in Nigeria.
Requiring music educational research entails educating music teachers to “see their job as that of researcher, explorer, and experimenter with the community as their field and the classroom as their laboratory” (Flolu & Amuah, 2003, p. 138). Stenhouse’s (1982) definition of teacher research as systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers is apt here. “Systematic” refers to ways of collecting and recording information, documenting experiences inside and outside of classrooms, and making some kind of written record. “Intentional” means that teacher research is an activity that is planned rather than spontaneous. “Inquiry” means that teacher research stems from questions and reflects teachers’ desires to make sense of their experiences, to adopt a learning stance or openness toward classroom life and other learning contexts. We need Nigerian musician-teacher-researcher who engages in activities such as reflection, deliberation, and decision making and incorporates these into his or her scholarly discourses.
Thus, Nigerian COEs must be sites where musician-teacher-researchers are trained, where those who see no gap between music teaching and research are continually nurtured. This is in line with Adler’s (1993) admonition that teaching is research and research is teaching. Teaching is more than simply the observable behaviour; it is thought and action and the interaction of the two. The best teachers are researchers, able to systematically reflect their research on their own teaching. (p. 160)
Nigerian COEs must produce musician-teachers who use research as a tool to understand what the interrelationship between music and education in Nigeria was, is, and should be.
Basically, MTE is for those seeking to become musician-teachers, that is, musician-teacher-to-be, while still students. As students, they are engaged in a lifelong process of mastering things requisite of becoming musician-teachers. That is, the ideas and principles of music teaching, things that drive and shape musical practice—what musician-teachers do and should do. Becoming a musician-teacher is an unending task of coming to understandings (and misunderstandings) of MTE, which Bowman (2001) observes as a . . . discipline whose concern is the preparedness of musicians to teach and communicate about their art, meeting the pedagogical, instructional, curricular needs of all musicians, and of amateurs and non-musician listeners as well . . . (It) is fundamentally concerned with what one knows and can do as a result of musical instruction; but it is concerned just as importantly, or perhaps more so, with the kind of person one becomes through that process. (p. 12)
So, MTE’s concern is beyond mere development of musicianship, even when that is very important. It is concerned with the production of the musician-teacher—a person who engages “in music instruction with explicitly educational intent: of assuring that instructional and curricular arrangements develop the attitudes, dispositions, and capacities characteristic of the educated” (p. 13). Nigerian COEs must graduate musician-teachers who can use music education as a direct means of coming to know Nigerian music educational traditions and move Nigerian masses to full participation in Nigerian music culture and beyond it to the unknown ones.
So, MTE in Nigeria must not be seen as the hermetic domain of academic musicians, but as an endeavor in which all, who can work to make music studies and experiences educational at any level and in any setting, have a vital role to play. This is not to demean the good work the academic musicians have been doing in our COE. Rather, it is to assert that MTE in Nigeria should draw on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of educationists, teacher educators, and creative musicians who are committed educators from backgrounds in and outside the COE. The academic musician/teachers need to be mediators between/among themselves, the non-academic musician-teachers and community members, who are really seeking genuine rapport with how to teach/learn the creative dynamism of Nigerian music traditions.
Developing and improving on the music teaching/learning skills of all musician-teachers, not just those preparing for careers as SMT, should be the commitment of our COEs. Their role is to bring together musician-teachers from wide-ranging musical-cultural backgrounds who can lend their expertise to the education of well-rounded Nigerian musician-teachers, because nurturing the Nigerian musical life is too precious to be entrusted to only one group of musician-teachers.
These require that our music teacher-students make themselves members of various communities of Nigerian musical practice, so as to gain knowledge through creative interaction with Nigerian musician-teachers of all types. Our current sole reliance on academic musicians who isolate MTE and treat it independently negates this collective responsibility to preserve and transform our Nigerian music heritage.
Fullan (1982), as well as Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002), has encouraged us to view “teacher as learner” within four aspects: technical skills, reflective practices, collaboration, and teacher as enquirer. This concurs with Lundquist’s (1998) view that teachers are first of all learners. Following that they transmit culture in social interaction with members of the culture. Instruction is interactive, and with their feelings, capabilities, thoughts and actions, teachers interact with students, whatever the cultural setting or curricula content. They also play a number of roles in the course of instruction. They align content and students. Through interpersonal rapport, instructional organization, stimulation and engagement, and two-way interaction with students, they connect themselves and the subject matter with their students. They act as a co-player with a student, as a practice partner, a facilitator, and a demanding transmitter of knowledge and skills. (p. 43)
Visioning the Nigerian music teacher as learner involves preparing him or her as one who sees other music learners as resources and makes himself or herself available music resources for others. He or she is a person who strives to improve and expand current music educational practices and seeks to grow music educationally continuously. Improving and expanding current practices in music education in Nigeria necessitate creating an MTE oriented around a vision of music teacher as music learner and music teaching as music learning.
Reconceptualizing MTE in Nigeria also requires rooting it in Nigerian music educational heritage—the mechanism through which Nigeria has generated her sociomusical meaning and her scale of values. Nigerian music educational heritage consists of, at the grossest level, the indigenous African music education system, the transplanted Islamic and Euro-American music education systems, and systems of music education in Nigeria in which there are indigenous African elements in the Islamic and the Euro-American, and vice versa.
Each of these, with its own perspective, presents partial understandings (or misunderstandings) of Nigerian music educational heritage. Taken them together, we suggest that there is under way the Nigerian music educational heritage, a part of a wider human heritage of music educational wisdom, knowledge, values, and skills, the Nigerian musician-teachers need to explore, come to understand, preserve, pass on, cross over, challenge, contribute to, and transform to enable a continuous development of Nigerian masses’ creative-musical abilities to the highest level possible. Focusing on it is a way of enabling Nigerian musician-teachers to participate in and engage with Nigerian sociomusical communities and their contextualized activities; a way of helping them to embody the requisite musical knowledge, values, and skills to musically educate various Nigerian music learners in a variety of settings with efficiency and effectiveness. It is a way of preserving and passing it on to the next generation.
But coming to know, preserving and passing on the Nigerian music educational heritage is not enough for the Nigerian musician-teachers in the age of information and communication technology, globalization and modern transportation, wherein music educational heritage is often juxtaposed and mutually influential. Certainly, the Nigerian musician-teachers cannot avoid being influenced by music educational ideas and practices of other nations of the world. So, MTE in Nigeria must be innovative and bold enough to expose Nigerian musician-teachers to other nations’ music educational heritage that is compatible with Nigeria’s, so that they can reconcile the latter with the innovative needs of the moment. It must produce musician-teachers who can play an important role in shaping for Nigeria “new” Nigerian music educational heritage drawn out of the old and current, the local and global, music educational heritage. This is to argue that Nigerian music educational heritage be the point of departure for dynamic MTE in Nigeria.
Conclusion
A conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that MTE at Nigerian COE level tends to play a less visible role in our quest for national development because it is less in tune with our national goals. It has witnessed some timid reformism. It is now a national enterprise with a regulatory body and a national curriculum. Although SMT, products of our COE, can be somewhat said to be well educated with the offered broad NCCE’s NMC, an analysis of the document here shows that it is less empowering in enabling them grapple efficiently with issues that require them to handle what matters music educationally to Nigeria and Nigerians.
Preparation of teacher-musicians who can collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines and with individuals and organizations within and outside the school settings has received scant attention. This is because we have continued to emulate exogenous MTE philosophies, paradigms, epistemologies, curricula, pedagogies, and practices that are barring our COE from producing a change agent musician-teacher for a Nigerian society aspiring to having a distinctive music teacher educational identity in an ever-changing world. It is not helping the Nigerian musician-teacher carve a niche for himself or herself in his or her chosen profession.
Toward relevance, necessary is having a MTE that can provide musician-teachers who are musically well educated to cater to MME for Nigerians individually and collectively, who are committed to meeting the distinctive music educational needs of a culturally vibrant Nigerian society, who are to preserve and transform Nigerian musical heritage. Our COEs need to be integrated into our nation’s musical life, need to be moved beyond training bicultural SMT to the cultivation of change agent musician-teacher-researcher-learners who can contribute to sustaining the vigor of Nigerian musical life and see to the suppression of contradiction between music teachers inside and outside Nigerian schools. We must provide a dynamic MTEC that can make musician-teachers adjust to a rapidly changing Nigerian society, so that they can become active, socially responsible, and critical citizens contributing to its building.
Needed is a research-based definition of the Nigerian music educational heritage to serve as the springboard for our MTE. Our MTE must honor the musical experiences, concerns, and diverse histories and contexts that give expression to the multiple music educational traditions that challenge and engage Nigeria and Nigerians. Its programs should prepare musician-teachers with musically diverse Nigerian students and society in mind. It should embody MTK that enables musician-teachers to give appropriate support to MME in Nigeria; to make the Nigerian society more musical; to attend to the health and vitality of Nigerian musical life. Anything short of these shall continue to make Nigeria’s MTE not only contextually irrelevant but also culturally and spiritually insensitive.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.