State Curriculum Council arts framework officer
Christine Adams said yesterday that music-producing machines such as
turntables and computers were equal to the piano or violin.
"Sales of turntables are way outstripping sales of guitars," Ms Adams
said.
"In this course, the status of all instruments is equal and the turntable
is one of them."
But the course for Years 11 and 12 students, revealed in The Australian
yesterday, was condemned by one of Australia's leading music educators and
conductors, Richard Gill, who described it as "educational double-speak and
claptrap".
"It could just as easily be the curriculum for cooking as music," said Mr
Gill, a former dean of the West Australian Conservatorium of Music.
To describe turntables and computers as musical instruments was "totally
meaningless", he said.
"A computer is a computer and a turntable is a turntable. One of the
points of education is to make the distinction."
Ms Adams, who learned the flute in high school in the 1970s, has spent
the past three years working on the new music course and described it as
more inclusive than the old course, which was "very Western-focused".
"For example, if there is a student from India who wants to play the
tabla, they can - and they couldn't do that in the old course," she said.
Ms Adams said the new course placed an appropriate emphasis on theory.
Students are required to write about politics, racism and other aspects of
society that influence music in one of four subject areas called Music in
Society, worth 25 per cent of the total mark.
"It's really important to know the political and cultural background to
music," she said.
"It makes it a really, really rich experience."
But Mr Gill, who has received an OAM for his services to music and is
recognised around the world for developing young musicians, said the course
attempted to teach students how to respond to music, which was impossible.
"Reaction to music is a personal and subjective thing - you can't teach
it," he said.
"The teaching of music should be about music itself. We learn to
understand music by making music, by writing music, by performing music."
Mr Gill said the first four sentences of the new music course, to be
introduced next year, were rubbish.
"By all means define music, but don't tell tell us the role it plays -
that's up to us to determine. You can't teach the emotion of music. It's
personal."
The course introduction starts: "Music plays an important part in the
life of people the world over. It brings people together through a natural
form of communication by providing a means of expressing ideas and emotions.
"It combines words, sounds and movements which enhance the meaning of
life in world cultures. Music has unique aspects which give expression to
human experiences and understandings that cross cultural and societal
boundaries."
Mr Gill challenged this. "Who says? Where's the evidence for that? How do
you teach that? What are the ideas communicated in I Still Call Australia
Home, which is in the course, or the ideas nominated in a Beethoven
symphony?"
Mr Gill said the course read like "a generic curriculum to which the word
music is applied from time to time".
The course also requires students to study ethical and health and safety
issues of music, and asserts that "audiences construct meaning from music
according to their own values, attitudes and ideological positions".
The course has been condemned by music teachers in Western Australia, who
say students are no longer required to play an instrument and that the
course downgrades the importance of reading music.
Editorial in The Australian Thursday 25th May...."Dum-dum-dum
down"
Dum-dum-dum down
WA's new music curriculum hits all the wrong notes
MUSIC education is the latest casualty of Western Australia's misguided
foray into the world of outcomes-based education. The state's new music
curriculum will no longer require students to learn to play an instrument,
and rap songs backed by downloaded music will be considered perfectly
acceptable come exam time. Long-time music teachers are aghast at a plan
that threatens to make Western Australia "a laughing stock". But as The
Australian reports today, those involved with the new course admit that
all instruments will be treated equally – even turntables and computers –
and complain about the Western focus of the old curriculum. As with so much
of outcomes-based education – which has become so controversial in Western
Australia that the federal Government has threatened to withhold billions of
dollars in funding if introduction of the new curriculum is not delayed –
music lessons will now be more concerned with theory and sociology than
actual skills.
Sadly for the state's students, music is not the only area to suffer
under outcomes-based theory, which seeks to turn every subject into a subset
of sociology. Under the proposed new curriculum, physics students will be
asked to debate the ethics of airbags, while chemistry students will discuss
the cosmetics industry. English students will not be required to read a
book, spell, or demonstrate their ability to write continuous prose.
Needless to say, failure is not an option under the new curriculum: in a
system where everyone is allowed to achieve at their own pace, it is
impossible not to pass. This will translate into terrible wake-up calls for
many students whom outcomes-based education will allow to coast by, on the
rationale that they are being prepared for the "real world". The fact is,
the state's new curriculum does anything but. Musicians who can't play
instruments, engineers who can't get complex maths problems right and just
about anyone who can't string a sentence of correct, standard English
together will find the job market a cruel place indeed. At the rate Western
Australia is going, its music students will be lucky if they graduate
knowing how to play anything more than an iPod.
______________________________________________________
The WA form of OBE uses a system of "levels" to record
student progress.
The
Levels aren’t really “numbers” like percentages – they can be ordered and
ranked, but not added or multiplied.
Instead
of calling them Level 1, 2, 3… try calling them:
“very
cold – cold – cool – warm – very warm – hot – very hot – extremely hot”
(that’s 8 of them).
What I
call cool, you call cold, and Grandad might even call “very cold” – what one
teacher calls Level 3, another calls Level 4, or if the student is top of
her class in a weak school, maybe even 5 or 6.
The
Curriculum Council is trying to AVERAGE them, so we get results like
“WARM.2”, “COOL.5” and “HOT.8”.
It’s nonsense !
