WHAT MUSIC CAN TEACH US

Quotes of the day: “All good things must come to an end”
“Even the longest night must end” (English proverbs – select whichever suits your opinion of the experience of reading this series of blogs !)

We come to the end of this journey.

My contention is that the Music exam system suggests to us how we can reconcile
various contrary positions in current comments on education and examinations.

I believe that the State school system provides (or should provide) mass education. I think that the school Music exams play a part in giving us a more cultured and cohesive society. But these exams are also part of a system that wishes to divide students according to previously laid out quotas, instead of allowing for a high proportion of success among motivated and well taught students.

There are certainly problems in the School system. Those suffered last year by the children taking SATs were one of many incidents which illustrate dramatically how the farming out of education to companies whose aim was purely profit-making was a total outrage. In that enterprise and others, such as the training schemes for the over-16s, the companies paid peanuts and so got monkeys to process an experience crucial millions of people. Those responsible should be ashamed, but as it is unlikely that they have any capacity for such remorse, the public needs to demand change.

I also accept that the criticisms made by universities have much validity. But in this case I ask who is to blame? They talk as if it were the fault of the students – who neither devised the system, nor had any choice to but follow its dictates. Or they blame the teachers, who have carried out their responsibility to get the best possible results in the system they are given, even when they have often disapproved of what they were having to do in the name of targets and accountability

The Grade system in Music doesn’t have these problems, and has the flexibility to allow students to move to their own goals in their own time. It is more finely graded. And yet it allows students to reach a very high, in fact professional, standard if they wish and when they are ready,

But it does not aim to substitute for other means of making the selection which has to obtain, when there are limited places in colleges and even more limited possibilities in the working world of music. This is done by audition, which only applies to that minority who have that aspiration and that skill. This is not imposed on the wider population.

I have suggested how the various concerns may be reconciled. This does of course presuppose that there is the will to do so. That is another question. I am inclined to believe that those who argue for standards, talk of dumbing down and the like, are really asking for the return of the traditional system. It was one was which for a minority, and was meant to keep it that way. If so, such critics should be honest and admit that they neither like nor want a system of mass education. Indeed, to give this viewpoint a favourable interpretation, one may say that such critics may truly believe that the aims of mass education are fundamentally misconceived, and ignore the natural hierarchy into which human beings fall. Also such critics typically believe that the money would be better used in another way, such as reducing taxes, so that individuals can choose for themselves how to spend their money (haven’t I heard this somewhere before...?)

I want to end with a series of assertions:

Music as a part of education has huge benefits. We would do well to remember the esteem in which it was held in Hungary, as a result of the work of Zoltan Kodaly, and the reasons for that: it has the advantages of being a technical subject, a physical skill and an emotional and creative expression. It is by its nature an activity which brings communities together, and requires, like a football team, that those taking part set aside egocentricity in favour of working together with others towards a common purpose.

I have also argued that its assessment system – the GCSE/A Level system and the Grade/Diploma system shows us how the wider world of education might be structured. These are exams which are open to all, and which all in principle can pass. They are personally and socially beneficial. But the Grade system allows the maximum flexibility, so that those with the least skill and those with the greatest can both find their own level at their own pace. For that tiny, needed elite who can go even further, the examination system ceases to be a suitable vehicle – they must face the tests of the real world of composition and performance, with all its intense competition.

The Music exam system also highlights the fact that there are elements which can be measured and objective and that there are elements which can never be so. The assessment of the latter relies on judgment. We should not try to impose on it a false sense of “scientific objectivity” but to put in place the necessary checks and balances to counter the dangers of human error and prejudice.

There are now theorists who argue that music was the leading force in enabling humans to develop language and with it abstract thought. Oliver Sachs has shown how music can often break through apparently impossible barriers for the mentally ill. There have always been those who believe that music is the greatest of the arts in its power to express and move our emotions, and to lift us out of ourselves. Perhaps music now has a role to show us how better and more fairly to order our society.

Final quote: “Heaven is music” Thomas Campion, Laura


This series of articles may be duplicated for educational use on condition that the author’s name is acknowledged and the website address is given.