Keeping Christian Music Education Academic part 3

Keeping Christian Music Education Academic part 3

Each grade level must be taught musical principles, as Isaiah states, “precept upon precept and “line upon line”.  In modern times this educational method is of course known as “curriculum spiral sequence”.  Philosophically what this connotes is that in elementary music education the instructor teaches the same musical concepts from the “national standards” each year but at a more advanced level.  As you know this not a “how to” book but rather a discussion of some of the philosophy that should enshroud the whole of music education. So, I will not discuss how the Christian music educator should approach the process of curriculum spiral sequence.

Furthermore, I do not want to imply that the use of Orff instruments is not an excellent resource for the elementary classroom.  I would like to point out that “Orff-Schulwerk” was first developed in the 1920’s in Bavaria Germany to be used with adult music and dance students.  Philosophically, as far as the record shows, Carl Orff never intended for the use of these instruments to become a complete music education system.  What I am saying is that using these quality instruments should not circumvent the process of teaching mid and upper elementary students how to utilize conventional methods of counting rhythms.   Again, I want to stress that there are a host of musical concepts that can be effectively taught through the use of Orff instruments. However, somewhere in the spiraling music education process the transition to conventional rhythmic and tonal reading must take place.

At the kindergarten and lower elementary grades counting with little nonsense syllables used in the Kodaly system is an intellectually honest way to teach rhythm.  However, when sixth graders are still utilizing only these syllables and do not know how to systematically count and subdivide beats, I believe that the music instructor has a faulty education philosophy and praxis.  When students enter beginning band and cannot utilize conventional methods of reading notes and counting rhythms, including some subdivision of beats, something is philosophically wrong with what has been taught in the elementary general music classroom.  Perhaps elementary general music instructors should consider themselves to be in charge of a “preparatory department” for musicing in adulthood.