At a Congressional briefing this afternoon, spearheaded by US Rep Marcia Fudge, a Democrat from Ohio’s 11th District, representatives of the National Association for Music Education and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame presented a strong case for music education, saying that “music for music’s sake” is the primary reason Congress should support music education in K-12 schools.
Chris Woodside, the assistant executive director of NAfME, presented a video with the highlights of the association’s new advocacy campaign, “Broader Minded: Think Beyond the Bubbles,” and outlined three central needs of music education:
- K-12 students should have access to music education programs everywhere, but a special focus is needed in disadvantaged areas
- Evaluations of music educators, including ensemble directors, should be germane to the subject matter
- Funding should be provided for standards-based music education during the school day, with a special focus on Title I schools
Although the second “core ask” from NAfME about music educator evaluations seems like common sense, “you’d be surprised” how many schools still use standardized test scores to evaluate music teachers, Mr Woodside said.
Before Mr Woodside’s part of the briefing, Dr Lauren Onkey, vice president of education and public programming at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, talked about providing kids with enriching learning opportunities through music.
She said the educational programs at the Hall of Fame focus on popular music, which is accessible to kids. “Kids can talk about it and have an opinion about it,” Ms Onkey explained. Once that happens, a learning opportunity—a road into a child’s mind—opens up, and all this is possible with music.
For example, she described interdisciplinary programs in language arts that link aspects of storytelling to song lyrics, in science that link music to the structure of sound waves, and in financial literacy that allow students to pose as Rock and Roll band managers with a budget.
The programs from the Hall of Fame also include, she said, project-based learning. One that has been popular with schools around the world is a project in which kids create their own Hall of Fame—in Hip Hop, in women who have excelled in politics, or in whatever—and spell out, in a speech or in writing, the criteria for selection to their Hall of Fame. She said the idea for this type of project came to people at the Hall of Fame as they noticed how kids always seemed to have an opinion about why their favorite groups didn’t get inducted. With such a project, kids can make up and defend their own criteria.
In addition to Mr Woodside and Ms Onkey, Jennifer Mondie, a violist and Orchestra Committee chair at the National Symphony Orchestra, and Paul Cothran, executive director of the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, also helped brief members of Congress in the room.