by Scott McBride Smith
The Journal of Music Teachers National Association
August/September 2004
You want to take a private music lesson. And your teacher tells you that you are required to take national standard music exams and you must pass in order to study music. You thought you just wanted to learn the instrument and have some fun. But tests? What are are we talking about here?
I found an interesting fact I never knew about Canadian and other countries' music education as I read this article. In Canada, there is a high-quality nationwide curriculum and assessment program to encourage music students to achieve a superior level of musical accomplishment. We are not talking about only public music education. It's about all music education system includes private lesson. More eye-opening facts are coming up. So keep scrolling!
In Canada, a student may receive academic credit for his or her private music study; his or her parents can deduct the examination fee from their tax bills as an educational expense. If you want to be a flute major at a Canadian university or school of music, you'll have to be a pretty good pianist. Good grades are going to be needed in music theory, ear training, sight singing, sight reading, pitch recall and rhythm recognition prior to your entrance to the school. Canadian schools won't even consider you for admission if you don't already have those accomplishments, no matter what your instrument.
Besides Canada, the author adds England and Australia for the countries with excellent national evaluation programs. Those countries run several national standard programs to lead students to higher level of learning music. Now the author wonders why the U.S. does not offer nationwide syllabus examination system despite of large population of music learners. He addresses why we need such programs for our music education system. He gives some thoughts for music educators in the U.S. The list is following:
- Establishing a fair, but challenging, standard to motivate students especially young and less-motivated.
- Developing a curriculum that trains students for a lifetime of music making. In this curriculum, it needs to include pain-free, efficient practice technique, music history, music theory, harmony, and sight reading and playing.
- Choosing well-qualified adjudicators and working with them to ensure a uniform criterion of judgement.
- Agreeing to act together to set standards for the kind of teaching we do and to educate the public about them.
- Working to challenge our students to reach a high standard, the very best of which each is capable.
- Accepting the fact that professional fee
- Participating in a program that is user friendly and does not make unreasonable demands on participants and organizers.
Smith believes that the countries with national curriculum program encourage and challenge students to study music with more serious manner. He also says that the students study music longer and they reach a higher level of musical accomplishment. He continues that a study in Canada demonstrated that students who participate in such examinations, on average, almost two years longer than the normal students.
Does the U.S. have such a program? The answer is Yes, but they are not like the programs in England or Canada. Smith believes that music education can be more effective through its assessment program and it needs to be formalized and spreaded to all music learners. I agree with Smith's view, yet I think the program needs to be user friendly and gives the learners positive impact at the same time. Yes, examinations help students because when we have something to work for, we work a lot harder. So do we need this? Yes. If we want music study to be a respected, educationally valid part of every student's life study. And I believe that when students take art education more seriously, they also will be able to learn and earn the benefits the art education offers.
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