Abstract
“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self . . . the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”
Teachers faced with the challenges of prescribed curricula, tight time constraints, mandated testing, and the effective “mandates” of contest-driven performance evaluation may find themselves focused on preparing students to demonstrate knowledge and skills that are easy to document while excluding the much harder to assess experiences that lead to deeper artistic engagement and meaning-making. In these situations, the codification of education, rather than practices that represent the unique work of musical artists, is positioned as a priority. This allows the nature of music to be forfeited and its value greatly diminished for educators and students alike.
To help students find the deeper meaning and value of music within the educational boundaries of contemporary schooling, teachers must engage students in the authentic work of exploring what it is to be human as it is understood through the art and practice of music. The quote that opens this column suggests that the very conditions that seemingly offer constraint can be reframed and used to focus work in new ways. Adopting this perspective allows teachers to explore their professional creativities and pedagogical imagination in the pursuit of optimistic practice.
Igor Stravinsky viewed constraints and freedoms as a necessary balance in his work. Similarly, teachers might find their professional creativity enlivened as they consider the constraints that seek to hamper their work. Challenging school environments, inadequate budgets, conflicted schedules, the interests and influences of multiple stakeholders, and material and financial resources can all conspire to limit some aspects of music education while advancing others that may be less desirable. Yet, each of these factors may be recast as opportunities to do something new, try something different, or explore something familiar by adopting a different perspective. These practices can allow teachers to set forth a new vision that purposefully attends to the most relevant goals of music education with increased purpose and intention.
The precision of execution that Stravinsky aspired to can be echoed in the work of educators as they reframe the challenges before them to help students build their understanding of music and the musical experience. Learning activities must be designed to draw teachers and students into an authentic partnership where they explore together the musical unknown. These types of learning engagements allow students and teachers to join in the discovery of music’s uniquely expressive potentials as they consider how music is shaped by and shapes the experiences of different people within a variety of social, cultural, political, economic, religious, and other contexts. The use of such lenses allows students and teachers alike to grasp the vast potential of music to capture what it means to be human and share in common human experiences.
The success of these endeavors rests on the teacher’s ability to adapt and embrace multiple roles while inviting students to do the same. Teachers must maintain their musical and pedagogical flexibility and responsiveness in meeting students’ needs and interests. Teaching and learning in this type of collaborative environment require a mindset akin to that of an improviser in that general parameters are recognized and honored while new ideas, connections, and relationships are explored to advance musical understanding.
As teachers activate their pedagogical creativity to pursue these goals, it is important to remember that students are individually engaged in both the musical journey that is curated for them and the creative process of crafting themselves as musicians and unique people in their own right.
These students will make different meanings of their experiences within their music classes, and these meanings will travel with them for life. The opportunity to be creative within the study of music is one of the most precious gifts we can give our students—and it must also be the gift we give ourselves, because we are the stewards of music’s future.