Review: Elementary School Music Teachers

Subject: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 07:10 PM

Did you like yours? I hated mine. I learned to love music in spite of the hateful bitch.
Made you strum the autoharp with no pick til your fingers were bloody and raw. I can't think of one nice thing about her.

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Leadfingers
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 07:38 PM

Far too many schools have NO really useful , or even sensible policy on music . Thirty teenage lads sat in a room and told "This is Beerthoven , its GOOD music - Listen and appreciate it" while a Long
Play record is played on a cheap turntable is NO WAY to instill any
interest in Classical music .

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 08:17 PM

I think they tried to put you off music. It doesn't serve the capitalist system very well. Troublemaking folkies. Drunken hillbillies. Doped up Rock and Rollers. Longhaired classical sissies. Why don't they get sensible jobs? Sell insurance. Work in a bank.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Ole Juul
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 09:40 PM

I can't imagine where these "teachers" were "teaching"! In fact I wonder what century they inhabited. My experience in the 60's was quite different. I learnt a lot of music. Luckily I was taking violin lessons on the side, but even if I wasn't, I would have learnt to sing some songs and read music. Yes, I had an interest, but it was certainly taught.

Of course there were lots of students who just fooled around and didn't learn anything. I remember being stressed over my grade 4 class where we all had plastic "flutephones" and many of the kids refused to move their fingers appropriately so the whole thing sounded horrible. They just didn't have the drive to learn. I think that problem is worse in this century. Nevertheless, it has been my experience that music teachers are hard working, educated, and inspirational. It's a hard job.

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 10:35 PM

And far too many schools these days have no music teachers, though I suppose that satisfies Henry.

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 11:13 PM

I had a mad crush on my fifth grade music teacher, Sister John Bosco. She said Ronny Benedict and I were "really sharp," and I was so proud of myself. Didn't figure out until I was forty, that maybe she wasn't praising us.

She also organized us into a harmonica band, and always seemed to be doing something to get us to do more music. I loved it.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: meself
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 12:25 AM

I had wonderful, hard-working, long-suffering music teachers all through elementary and high school. I remember them with respect and gratitude.

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 02:01 AM

Specifically in terms of what works at grade school levels:

Teachers without music background often think that playing records on a list of "good music" is "music education."

For gradeschool students, I disagree.

Some school systems think that getting every student a pseudo-instrument and forcing them to make noises is "music education."

I disagree.

In my grade school, the teacher who happened to actually know something about music visited third through fifth grade classes, or brought them to the nearest classroom where there was a piano, and played simple songs while each student had a copy of at least the melody line in standard notation in front of them. We played the instrument every student already had, i.e. we sang, to the teacher's piano accompaniment. "Music class" was about one hour per week, usually, IIRC.

I could read simple music before I finished third grade, although probably fewer than half the class had acquired significant ability.

Before I got started at fourth grade I bought myself a 50-cent harmonica and learned to play familiar tunes "by ear," in part because the "first lessons" were presented as, and demonstrated to be, "something we just do."

By the time most students got to fifth grade (the one where the "music" teacher taught all subjects) nearly all students could sight-read tunes and half or more of them could read and sing simple harmony parts - on sight, and with no real rehearsal.

I don't recall that the sixth grade had formal "music" classes during the year I was there, although in some years they did. By sixth grade, "volunteers" from the sixth grade could opt to participate in a "chorus" for occasional "public performances," and some lower grade students were "optionally included" if they were prepared and willing.

Thank you, Miss Briggs.

It would appear that a majority of students from my grade school continued with choir, chorus, band, or orchestra in Intermediate School (seventh thru ninth grades then). Percentages for other schools were variable, but generally very much lower.

My dad handed me a saxophone and informed me "you're a sax player now" a couple of weeks before before school started when I was beginning Jr. Hi.. Since I had "no music training" they put me in the "Beginners Band." Three weeks later they forced me to move to the Advanced Band (there were only those two), thus permitting me to evade ever being "taught anything."

Thanks again Miss Briggs.

John

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 04:12 AM

I think music education is just as important as math or history.
But the schools seem to think propaganda is of primary importance.
Pledge of Allegiance.
Bogus history.
Social studies.
Hogwash.
(:-( P)=

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Leadfingers
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 04:16 AM

Due to family circumstances to sing I attended four Grammer Schools in different parts of UK , one of which had a school orchestra and was my introduction to the clarinet . Apart from that , only one other had a teacher who appeared at all interested , and encouraged us (All Boys) to sing 'other' than the standard light classics , and
though not taught as such , introduced me to a lot of Folk Songs .
Its another postcode lottery in UK - Some schools have a good approach and others are diabolically bad .

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 05:22 AM

I think my music teacher hated little boys.
She was nice to the girls.
(:-( 0)=

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: Mooh
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 07:44 AM

My experience is mostly from Ontario, and some from Nova Scotia, Canada.

I can't much remember my elementary school music teachers. My report cards were not flattering about my music efforts (quite poor actually), in spite of the fact that I had serious private training plus twice weekly choral experience via the church choir. It's likely that my school marks were a function of bad behavior and an unwillingness to look like a sissy to my peers.

I know a few current elementary school music teachers who are very hip and have developed a sort of cult of personality. Music class appears to be way more hip today than when I was in school.

Since I teach private music lessons for a living, I see what little music kids are getting today. Few know anything about reading or theory, or how to sing, and singing appears to be all most schools will do, instruments having disappeared from most schools. There are exceptions, and they appear to be principal and teacher driven, the school boards being disinterested.

It is my belief that rhythm can be taught to primary grades through aural and visual means supported by basic hand drums. I also believe that pitch recognition and basic reading can be taught soon after, using keyboards, pennywhistles (more managable than the current recorders that are used) and ukuleles in the absence of other instruments. If I were king...

Parents complain to me about the unimaginative programs, lack of staffing, very infrequent classes, unruly behavior, and lack of any real objective in elementary school music. I would agree.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Review: Elementary School Music Teachers
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 09:56 AM

I agree that music (and other arts) is poorly thought of in schools and is just as important to a good education as languages, social studies, sciences and trades. The answer to that for those of you who care is to get elected to your school board and damned well get the arts into the curriculum by forcing school districts to budget for programs and teachers with the skills needed to teach the arts. It is fact that the most 'poorly voted-in' elections are those for the school board, and imo it is a tremendously important position because it is there that influence--for good or bad--can be exerted.