Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Varsity*

Varsity, down the field,
Never yield, raise high our shield,
March on to victory for Michigan! (and the Maize and Blue)
Oh Varsity, we're for you,
Here for you to cheer for you,
We have no fear for you, oh Varsity!*

No songs for the junior varsity or the freshman squad, certainly not for the middle schoolers or beginners...

Why doesn't anyone want to teach any more? It's a fine thing to work with young people, to be sure, but at what level are you and your skill set most needed? What boxes do you check off at the end of each practice, each rehearsal, each performance, each season? How do you measure individual and group success?

I see sports programs all over the place but very few places of real learning. Ample evidence of game playing, but where is the learning about personal fitness at the earliest years?

George Cavender, long-time band director at the University of Michigan, had it right. In one talk he laid out a case for how music education should take after their counterparts in physical education in terms of marketing their product (with the all-important caveat of having steak to go with the sizzle).

If there was one place where you would find ample evidence of the truth in the saying, "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey", you would find it in N-12 music education.  Why do some high school bands flourish and thrive, while others are held together with "spit and sealing wax" (Robert Culver, Professor emeritus of Music Education, University of Michigan)?

The schools that "get it" understand the process, from top to bottom. Their teachers, parents and staff understand the value of early intervention in music literacy, what music literacy is, and what it takes to climb that seemingly never-ending staircase to excellence. They understand the value of having people who can function as adults in the "scrambled eggs" chaos (Tom Millard, retired music educator, Ann Arbor (MI) Public Schools) that is the years of upper elementary and middle school, regardless of the subject matter.

A dear friend of mine who worked for many years in the music publishing business once said, "There's a special place in heaven for elementary and middle school band directors" (Jean Anne Shafferman).  There's a hilarious story to go along with it, and I don't tell it nearly as well as she does, but I'll try.  She was attending an elementary school holiday Christmas program where the band was playing "Silent Night". The young man playing bass drum had obviously been told to make sure the audience heard the bass drum on the third beat of the second measure. So the first verse rolls along:

Si-i-lent Niiight....BOOM like a cannon shot! Jean Anne said, "I about fell out of my chair laughing", recalling the moment with unadulterated glee.

How does one make the case for differentiated instruction? For individual instruction? For teaching how to "Work and play well with others"?  It's even an integral part of NAfME's national standards for music education. Is the large-ensemble model with its foundations in the pre-WWII years still viable today?

I have so many questions but so few answers.

*--Earl V. Moore, Class of 1912 [Text: J. Fred Lawton, Class of 1911]

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