Christian Musicians Who Know Teach More Effectively part 2

Christian Musicians Who Know Teach More Effectively part 2

            Although the world and many Christian communities consider Christian music educators and Christian parents who attempt to pass conservative music values to the succeeding generation to be bigoted, we certainly have that responsibility.  The fact is that although it is our responsibility, we cannot teach what we do not know.  Christian education and public education has often failed students by not teaching them to know music for themselves.  I am not suggesting that knowing how to perform music is the only goal of music education, but it should be one of the most important goals of any music education praxis.

            I strongly support utilizing all of the goals presented in the US National Music Education Standards of 1974 and the new presentation of these standards in June of 2014.  It takes a community to raise a Christian musician, and it requires a number of successfully completed goals to properly prepare a person to make life-long quality decisions that are educationally, philosophically, and most importantly are in congruency with Bible principles of musicing.  Since this discussion is not a “how to” but rather a philosophical discussion, I will refrain from going into detail about how a church music director or a music educator should go about educating Christian youth in such a manner that they will be able to become, as Aristotle put it, a “good critic”.  I do, however, assert that first, Christian music education’s goals are “fine-tuned” they will be somewhat different than those of secular public music education because, as Philippians 1:10 states, “That ye may approve [dokimazo 1381] things that are excellent [diaphero 1308]; that ye may be sincere and without offence [aproskopos 677] till the day of Christ.”