Tobias, E. S. (2013). Toward Convergence Adapting Music Education to Contemporary Society and Participatory Culture. Music Educators Journal, 99(4), 29-36.
For the most part, I really enjoyed reading this article. I think it really shed light on important issues that music educators face in today's technologically advancing world. I would definitely say that the way people learn has changed over the past 10 years. With the introduction of new technology, children today learn in a very different way than I did when I was their age. This article really spoke to the idea that the way people interact with music is very different than how it was before. Gone were the days when you had to learn about music from a teacher, such as going through the RCM grades. Now, it's easy to just look up a guitar tutorial on YouTube and basically teach yourself. One of the biggest problems I've found with this new phenomena is how people describe a "musician"? Are we only allowed to be called a musician if we were classically trained? Do I need to have my RCM grade 8 in order to consider myself a "singer"? But then again, what does it even mean to be a musician or a singer, if there are set guidelines in place like that? Before I came to Western, I was simply someone that did music for fun. I didn't have any significant formal training in music. Was I somehow not a musician then? I think that because people can now learn on the internet how to play an instrument a sort of "elitist" hierarchy has been put into play between the formally trained and the self-taught. Though, I think this article did a great job in tearing down that barrier. The article seeks to incorporate every day interactions with music into the music curriculum. It wants to abolish that hierarchy by teaching that every day interactions with music (covers, mashups, etc.) are equally as important as learning how to play classical trumpet in band class. What I appreciated the most was the emphasis on convergence, not replacement. The goal is not to replace what is already in play in the curriculum but to continue adding to it, in order to create the best learning experience possible for students. I find that a lot of the time we think that we need to abandon the old ways and replace them with new ideas, but I think that new ideas can support old ideas. It wasn't necessarily wrong to teach in the old ways, we just have to continue to update them with new ideas to keep them relative to the society we live in now. It's a similar idea to a musician in general. We are never "at the top of our game", aka, there's always room for improvement. I think it's the same idea with music curriculum. One last thing I really appreciated was that the article didn't suggest "we need to incorporate new material into the curriculum" without any guidance as to how to do that. I think they phrased a lot of questions that would be helpful for teachers trying to change how they teach music. For example, they gave 3 situations in which these new ideas of teaching could be used, and they gave teachers an idea of how they should approach it. When they were using the example of having kids rearrange their favourite pop songs in situation 1 they said "music educators would play a key role in helping students reflect on their musical and creative engagement by asking their students questions". They go on to list many questions teachers can use to base their teaching off of, instead of leaving them in the dark, telling them to let kids learn songs and engage the way they want to, not the way the teacher wants them to, but then not knowing what to do as an educator. Long story short, they gave practical examples and guidelines that make me believe they really considered how these theories they are presenting could actually be used in practise. It gave the article a certain amount of relevancy, in that I could actually use this information in a classroom, which kept me interested and engaged in it.
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Carole PalattaoI'm an 18 year old studying classical voice at Western University. I'm also a hardcore mental health advocate, and I do creative writing on the side for fun!
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