MCA MEMBERS' OCCASIONAL BULLETINFrom the Executive Director, Music Council of Australia |
Dear MCA members MCA is stepping up its advocacy activities for the improvement of music education in schools. We are distributing this letter to our networks. There are right now some specific places that you would be able to utilise it. Please check it on the Music: Play for Life website.
10 November 2011 An open letter to the Australian community We are concerned that the great majority of children in the public and Catholic schools, especially primary schools, are not getting an effective education in music. Research has shown that only 23% of public schools are able to offer a music education that would meet the recommendations of the National Review of School Music Education. Many offer none at all. Most of those 23% of schools are secondary schools. The opportunities in the developmentally crucial primary school years are even lower. This inadequacy is even more startling when it is considered against the fact that 88% of independent schools offer a music education that fulfils the National Review recommendations. 23 to 88 is an enormous inequity. The independent schools can only do this because the parents are willing to pay. So willing are they to pay that the independent schools use their music programs as one of their main selling points to attract students away from the public systems. Many public primary schools in affluent areas have fine music programs paid for by the parents. No such luck for public schools in less affluent areas. According to an extensive survey by the Australian Music Association, 87% of Australians over the age of 12 believe that it should be mandatory that every child be offered the opportunity for a music education through school. That lines up with the percentage of independent schools actually offering a good music program in response to parent demand. The implementation of the National Curriculum in music is not far away. However, we fear that it will be written but not implemented in public primary schools because the classroom teachers have not been provided with education in music and music pedagogy and so are not really able to deliver any music curriculum. Research shows that the average mandatory music education in the undergraduate degrees for classroom primary school teachers is 17 hours – say 3 days in a four year course. With this, they are supposed to be able to go forth and teach music at seven grade levels – years K to 6. This is unfair on them and absurd. If their qualifying degree is a two-year postgraduate degree, as is increasingly the case, their mandatory music education will take only an average 10 hours. Could you teach music if you had had just 10 keyboard or guitar lessons? The best solution for primary school music education is that it is provided by specialist music teachers, as is the case in the public schools in Queensland and Tasmania. The practices of those states demonstrate that this is financially feasible. Music-making can be a deeply satisfying experience. It builds cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, highly nuanced physical dexterity and self-confidence. The direct benefits in lifetime satisfaction and skills development are a sufficient argument for music education. But a well-taught continuing education in music-making can have much wider benefits. There is a great deal of research showing that it accelerates learning in academic subjects, builds self-confidence, develops abilities to have social relationships. It stimulates brain development, especially crucial in the early years. It can reduce truancy, rehabilitate students who have been alienated by the rest of the academic curriculum or are poor academic performers. It can combat the increasing incidence of depression and suicide among children. A good music program can strongly influence the morale of a school and enhance its place in its community. Music is a universal cultural phenomenon. In traditional societies, the ability to make music is passed from generation to generation. But in our society, we are consumers, not makers of music. Recent Australian research has shown that many young mothers do not know any lullabies. They don't sing to their babies. Generation to generation transmission has broken down. Many children are dependent upon schools if they are to develop music making abilities. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has a right to an education and to participate in their own culture. We interpret that to mean that everyone has a right to a music education. The need felt by schools to show good NAPLAN results has resulted in a diversion of class time and resources away from other subjects, including music, so that children can spend more time learning reading, writing and mathematics. No-one disputes the importance of literacy and numeracy, but do we not want more than those narrow skills for our children? Research has been undertaken in which music classes were substituted for literacy or numeracy classes – and compared with control group classes, the experimental classes actually achieved higher, not lower, literacy and numeracy scores at the end of the experiments. The NAPLAN obsession is counter-productive. The PISA rankings are issued each year. They compare countries on the basis of their educational outcomes in reading, maths and science at high school graduation. In 2011, Australia’s scores were significantly exceeded by those of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Finland, Singapore and South Korea. In every one of these countries, there is a developed primary school music program giving considerably more class time than do programs in even Queensland and Tasmania; the music education of teachers far exceeds that received by Australian primary school teachers. Music education in those countries may have improved their ‘NAPLAN’ results! Every level of music education in Australia is seriously under-supported. Music is important to individual citizens, makes a significant contribution to the social order and is overall worth about $7billion to the economy. It is time for governments to wake up and take music education seriously. Our call is on Federal, State and Territory governments to use the opportunity presented by the National Curriculum to entrench meaningful music education in ALL Australian schools, not just the wealthy ones and to equip our primary school teachers to deliver the curriculum subject which research shows makes a unique contribution to students' development. Music. Yours faithfully
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