One of the most important documents for a music educator is his/her philosophy of music education. This 1-page paper goes along with the resume to the possible employer. It is basically a portrait of how we feel about music education. It's very short and I have about 17 drafts accumulated during my years as a student.
My first one was a bunch of crap. I was aiming to please. They became gradually worse until today when I read my most recent abbarition from August 2007. It is nice to see that I have improved as a writer in the last three years... this paper was just silly.
I am writing an outline of important points to be included in my newest one and I have about 4 pages of material. To sort all this out I decided to take a peek at some examples from other universities. As I am reading all these I find that people fall into 2 main categories:
1) The textbook told me what I needed to write here
2) I lost my textbook so I'm going to fake it... music classes are pretty easy.
I have read about 20 different papers from undergrad and grad students and it looks pretty bleak. Everyone seems to miss the point. They might mention something about their own passion with music, or open with an anecdote about how they lost their virginity in the band locker room while Claire de Lune was playing in the background but they completely miss what seems to me as so simple: 'I love music and I want to share it with everyone'.
Why should we continue to fund music programs? Music can make you cower in a corner (The Ring soundtrack), start riots (Rage Against the Machine), pounce your lover (anything George Clinton), or trick you into thinking your chest is going to explode (Doctor Gradus...). My goal in music education is to introduce new music to the students that will elicit these different responses. All you sheeple (yeah I said it) will continue to pay for it because you can't get enough of it. We sex you into loving this stuff we love. Well... at least some of us do.
