Alternative Methods in Music Education
I stumbled upon an interesting article from The New York Times that discusses a different approach to teaching music classes, developed by an organization called Little Kids Rock. Instead of strictly teaching classical music in school, they get kids learning pop/rock songs to arouse more interest from students.There seems to be a lot of debate whether this is having a negative impact on the education of classical music traditions and whether the music that’s being taught is too simplistic and not intellectual enough.
In my opinion, I think you can’t force someone to listen to music that they don’t enjoy. By learning any genre of music, it heightens your awareness and appreciation for it to then develop and explore new musical tastes.”Let kids start on the kind of music they enjoy, at that time in their lives. I did, and now I listen to almost every form… The only possible error, repeated often, is to force a style of music onto a child for which they have no pleasure.”
The article also talks about how some people think that music education overall, is meant to train students to become professional musicians, which is definitely not the case for the most part.
I definitely suggest reading the full article, it has some great points about approaches to music education and how it can influence children’s appreciation and love for music.