Music in primary education

Greetings bloggers, today I will be looking at music in education and exploring its importance, and place in the curriculum. During my time in primary education I don’t believe my musical intelligence was fully explore, music lessons consisted of merely singing songs and tapping the table; it wasn’t till I went to secondary school where I learnt that music was actually a very strong subject of mine, both the practise, and theory of music.

Although, this is evidently not the case in all primary schools as recently I was working with St Nicholas primary school who came into our university and two 10-year-old boys from that class were teaching me how to use garage band as I have never used it before, and I saw a real passion in these boys as they were layering beats and melodies over each other, a passion I can’t say I experienced during my music experiences in primary education.

I believe my music lessons were bland due to budgeting, we didn’t have drum kits or guitars or even keyboards, so children couldn’t play around and find hidden talents. It would seem that the solution is simple, fund government, more deprived schools more so that they can afford musical equipment which sounds easy, but schools are taking more and more budget cuts and money has been budgeted, so the problem lies not only with money, but we need to prove how important music actually is so that it gets the funding it needs.

Music lessons can be much like PE in that they are an excellent opportunity to get students learning more practically, practical learning not only improves motor and coordination skills, but it can build up practical didactic knowledge that also involve questions as ‘how to’ and ‘what’ to do ( Ehrlin, A. Gustavasson, H. 2016)

A common view amongst some parents is that music is a useless subject, because there aren’t many common jobs that involve music, but what needs to be explained is that there are plenty of jobs that need the skills that music teaches you, coordination is a skill heavily used in construction and design based jobs, and it’s a skill that can easily be improved by practising instruments.

In conclusion whilst I believe funding can be an issue on creating more engaging music lessons, I believe that the real issue is promoting how important music lessons are, and explaining that learning music is all about acquiring skills, and not just playing instruments/singing.

References

Ehrlin, A. Gustavsson, H. (2015) ‘The Importance of Music in Preschool Education’ Australian Journal of Teacher Education 40(7) [Online] Available at: http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2598&context=ajte (Accessed 10/12/17)