The Music Curriculum Present and Future: A Symposium from Albuquerque

Abstract

OUTSTANDING among the events at the 1961 meeting of the MENC Southwestern Division at Albuquerque were two general sessions devoted to the music curriculum. At the first of these on Saturday morning, January 28, a panel of four discussed the present music curriculum and on the following day these same four persons turned their attention to the music curriculum of the future.

The panel was composed of a supervisor (William C. Hartshorn, Los Angeles Public Schools), a layman (Cloyd Miller, president of New Mexico Western College), an administrator (William M. Lamers, assistant superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools), and a teacher (Augusta Spratt, Artesia, New Mexico Public Schools). The panel was charged with discussing the total school curriculum, kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Presiding at the first session was F. Robert Hollowell of Wichita, Kansas, president of the Kansas Music Educators Association, and at the second, Albert H. Fitzgerrel of Ardmore, Oklahoma, immediate past-president of the Oklahoma Music Educators Association. Kenneth N. Cuthbert, dean of the North Texas State College School of Music, served as recorder and provided the transcripts from which the following selected extracts are taken.