My Philosophy for Music Education

“Where words leave off, music begins.” Heinrich Heine

I believe that music is an integral component of what it means to be alive. Music is a major instigator of not just the ability for someone to express themselves, it also stimulates group bonding and personal development.

When someone teaches another music, they are providing a student with many of the skills and resources that will allow them to not just enjoy life more fully, but be better citizens of our world. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche “without music life would be a mistake.” As an upcoming music educator, I believe that my role is not to only teach my students about music theory and history but to help my students to realize their own personal musical goals.

I also believe that I should show my students how to not just meet, but to exceed their goals; and above all, how to accomplish this for themselves without my instruction. Moreover, I will also continuously strive to teach my students how to apply everything that they learn in my classes to every different type of situation they may encounter in their lives. I firmly believe that learning must be an active process on the part of the student and that my role is simply to be the one to do them into the process of learning, not simply give them facts to memorize.

My teaching philosophy, for the most part, most closely aligns with the philosophical School of Existentialism. This philosophy was developed by Soren Kierkegaard, who was a Danish minister and philosopher. This school of thought generally sees reality as purely subjective, and that the nature of reality lies within every individual. Most of its emphasis is placed on the students having freedom, choice, and ultimate responsibility for the outcome of who they are. In my classroom, this could be simplified to me simply giving my students a large amount of personal choice. Many teachers who do not abide by the School of Existentialism see their students as entities that must confront and conflict with other points of view in order to develop their own character through that conflict. Existentialist teachers like myself are generally very against this way of thinking that students can be measured and tracked in such a standardized manner. We want to spend more time focusing on ways to create many different types of opportunities for self-actualization and self-direction for our students. In this fashion, my classroom management will encourage mostly individual thought and many opportunities for student leadership. While my teaching curriculum will most certainly be addressing the basic skills and concepts that must be learned in order to make good music, my students will also have numerous opportunities to present their own ideas of how they feel they should learn a certain concept more easily.

Two music education philosophies that also shape my teaching beliefs are philosophies of American music educators and philosophers, Bennett Raimer and David Elliott. Their philosophies around how music education should be conducted have many similarities but are also very opposed to one another. They both see music as an important mode of cognition, but the way they implement this is quite different. They both firmly believe that all people should have the opportunity to learn music. As they see music as a higher function of learning, however, their views differ drastically in how they reached their conclusions. Reimer sees music as “characterized by sensitivity to symbolic, expressive form embodied in a musical work. Good music is expressive music.” He believes music is mostly a mental exercise. His main goals in music education are to make students learn the theory behind how the music works in order to produce good sound; he does not place as much emphasis on the practicing of the music by the ensemble. Elliott, on the other hand, describes his philosophy as “praxial.” He believes that music should be centered on practicing and that good music comes from the act of playing that music. Personally, I agree more closely with Elliott than Reimer, but I think they are equally important. While I believe that theoretical knowledge is extremely important for students to know, I also believe that the actual act of practicing how to make good music is what will inevitably create beautiful art.

It is absolutely imperative that as an upcoming educator I thoroughly understand how I am teaching my students to develop as people. Erik Erikson established nine stages of psychosocial development. His stages are referred to as, Stage One: Trust vs Mistrust (infancy), Stage Two: Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt (early childhood), Stage Three: Initiative vs Guilt (play age), Stage Four: Industry vs Inferiority (school age), Stage Five: Identity vs Role Confusion (adolescence), Stage Six: Intimacy vs Isolation (young adulthood), Stage Seven: Generativity vs Stagnation (middle adulthood), and Stage Eight: Ego Integrity vs Despair (late adulthood). Music educators in schools will generally work with students from school age, to adolescence. College professors will work with those in young adulthood, but we will focus on the stages prior to this. In the School age students, a child will develop what we call industry, or inferiority. Here it is incredibly important that I encourage my students to strive to be productive and that accomplishments are something to be praised because this will lead students to become more self-confident, develop better study habits, and become industrious and self-driving individuals. In adolescence, however, students are faced with Identity vs. Role Confusion. I believe that music can be an excellent means of developing a students sense of identity and self-worth. All the way from their ability to function in an ensemble, to their specific instrument and their skill playing it, there are endless opportunities for students to feel confident in their own abilities. As an educator, it is crucial that I provide space that will allow my students to grow in this way. As for how my student’s brains will develop, I turn to Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, who claimed there are four stages of cognitive development: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. In age, my students will span from the Concrete to the Formal Operational stage. My students in the concrete will be mostly hands-on work and classification; while my students in formal will be tasked with much more abstract thinking. During the Concrete stage, I must strive to try to push my students to begin thinking beyond only what is in front of them. From there, I can begin to have them work in more abstract ways so as to allow them to develop and move to the formal operational stage.

The National Association for Music Educators (NAfME) is by far the major organization of music educators in the United States. This organization has been the main say for all current standards of music education, which are: Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. Each of these standards comes with a detailed outline that provides music educators nationwide with a set of guidelines for how to teach their classes. I will always strive to teach my classes by following these rubrics.

As an educator, I must always strive to improve myself not only as an instructor but as a musician myself. I will do my best to continue performing when I have the chance and will do my best to attend various music conferences like the Oregon Music Educators Conference every year. I plan to continuously work on bettering myself and my teaching/professional skills while expanding upon my current knowledge through regular attendance of various professional conferences and workshops.