Developing Better Musicians Through Curriculum Design
by: William W. Gourley

Imagine a student sitting in his or her ninth grade math class. For the past eight years the student never learned addition, subtraction, multiplication or division tables. The child never sat in a class doing work sheets of multiples of 2, 3, 5 etc., or had a teacher explain how we add 2+1, 3+1, you get the idea. The teachers in this district have just told the students the answers to the story problems in the book. “Two apples plus four apples equals six apples. Three baskets each containing five apples equals fifteen apples.”

The teacher hands out a story problem. “Mr. Jones is fertilizing his lawn. His front yard is a rectangle measuring 120 feet long and 90 feet wide. The back yard is 120 feet long and 100 feet wide. The yard on either side of the house is 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. If a 10 pound bag of fertilizer covers 2,500 square feet how many bags of fertilizer will Mr. Jones need to fertilize his lawn?”

The ninth grade math teacher proceeds to teach the class how to come up with the answer. “Here is how you do this. The front yard is 18,900 sq. ft., the back yard is 12,000 sq. ft., and the two side yards are 1,800 sq. ft. each. We get that by multiplying the sides. Then add all those up and we get 34,500 sq. ft. which we need to divide by 2,500 and the answer is Mr. Jones needs 13.8 bags of fertilizer. Now everybody repeat after me, the front yard is 120 feet by 100 feet and that equals 18,900 sq. ft. Good, say it again.” After ten repetitions it is on to this same process for the back yard and side yards and the final answer until the students can all respond like robots. They have been programmed for that problem.

By the end of the year the students are fluent in one hundred math problems. Unfortunately, unless they live in a community where all the lawns are the size as Mr. Jones’ in that story problem the students will never be able to figure out how much fertilizer to buy for their lawn. They have been given the skills for a select few problems and, hopefully, they will retain these answers throughout their lives. They will never balance a checkbook or be able to double a recipe, unless it is one they were taught along the way. And don’t even think about them figuring out if John leaves Boston on a train to Chicago traveling 80 miles per hour and Susan leaves Chicago on a train to Boston traveling 90 miles per hour…..

The fallacy of this math curriculum is it is not based on skills development. Instead it is based on isolated story problems. The curriculum states “At the first grade level the students will know 2 apples plus 4 apples equals 6 apples.” It should state, “At the first grade level students will be able to add and subtract whole numbers from 0 through 100,” or something like that. The story problems should be the application of the acquired skills. The students need to learn the fundamentals of mathematics, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables, formulas, etc. The story problems reflect the lessons of the curriculum they are not the curriculum.

What does this little scenario have to do with our profession? Let me ask you to imagine further. A ninth grade clarinetist opens his folder and pulls out Holst’s, “First Suite.” The band director spends the next few weeks rote teaching the passage at “C” in the first movement, the dotted rhythms in the second movement, and the last run in the third movement. He pounds it out over and over, slowly at first and gradually increasing the tempo. Each section, for fifteen minutes a day, while the rest of the band sits quietly.

In a few weeks, the band has it. They have plowed through ponderous repetition, isolated tuning of chords, had constant reminders of alternate fingerings, rhythms, etc. The concert is a wonderful performance. Parents and administrators praise those talented students and commend the director’s talents. Unfortunately, after four years the clarinetist has acquired the skills necessary to perform only eighty compositions. In the general classroom we call this teaching to the test.

As educators it is our job to give our students the skills necessary to succeed in life. For educators in music this means developing the addition, subtraction, multiplication, division tables and algebraic formulas of music. Tone, intonation, range, blend and balance, technical facility, tonguing, bowings, rhythm reading, style, etc. are the skills, the basics, which are applied to the music. The music is not the curriculum it is the story problem or physics lab that applies disparate concepts into a single project, the recreation of the composer’s music or our “story problem”.

We are so involved with the making of music and the enjoyment it brings that we can overlook the processes it takes to masterfully recreate all music, not just Holst’s, “First Suite” or Grieg’s, “Holberg Suite”. This is achieved through the systematic pedagogical development of the students beginning the first day they take their instruments from the cases through graduation. It is the result of a carefully designed curriculum of clearly defined assessable goals and instructional objectives designed to teach these goals.

A significant portion of each class period needs to be devoted to the development of the individual student’s musical skills in accordance with the curriculum. It isn’t enough for music educators to tell students they need to practice long tones, scales, tonguing or bowing exercises, and rhythms. The reality is today’s students have so many other activities, homework and entertainment options that, with few exceptions, students rarely work on these basic technical tools. If they practice at all it is probably the music for the concert. Even if they do practice the basics, they may just go through the motions. The vast majority of the students do not study privately so working on technique in the class is the only place where they are going to receive the evaluation, proper repetitions and encouragement private students receive.

The student teachers I supervised were always amazed (or shocked) at the time I spent in rehearsals on skill development, as much as 25%-50%. They questioned how I would ever teach the music in the folders. It didn’t take long for them to realize that these skills transferred to the music enabling the students to more efficiently master it. There was less need to work on blend, balance, rhythmic precision, technical facility, intonation, etc. since the students had developed these skills in the warm-up or pedagogical development part of the rehearsal. This time would vary, but there was no reason to go on to scales if the ensemble could not play long tones with good tone, blend and balance, attack and release. If they could not play the right notes and fingerings in a scale with facility there was little use in trying to play the music that includes these technical demands. If the students have mastered the technical aspects of music making they will be able to focus on making music when they play Greig or Holst.

Creating a curriculum does not have to be an overwhelming task. In a couple hours one can establish goals for each year. These should include: tone, blend and balance development, playing range, scales at defined tempos, tonguing or bowing expectations, rhythms and musical terms appropriate to each grade. Much of this can be derived from the method book you use, the literature performed, the MSBOA proficiency requirements, the national standards(www.education-world.com/standards/national/arts/index.shtml), state standards (www.michigan.gov/documents/ARTS_Standards_11402_7.pdf) and your personal standards.

The key is to be realistic and appropriate for the grade level. First year students may not need to know all twelve major and minor scales, in two octaves, played in sixteenth notes at mm=120. It is important to have goals in your curriculum that can be applied to the literature the students will perform. And, it is important to include literature that will draw on these goals so students have an opportunity to utilize them and make them relevant.

Think of the student’s development as a five year process. If you start in the sixth grade the students will have attained the skills necessary to perform the music of your top ensemble by the end of the tenth grade. This requires the entire music staff in larger districts to appreciate their role in the overall development of the student as a musician. In those districts where there is only one teacher the curriculum will help with continuity of the students’ development in the event there is a change in teachers.

Once a curriculum has been created the instructor can create a series of instructional objectives to lead the student to the attainment of the goals. Instructional objectives deconstruct the goal into the fundamental skills needed to accomplish the goal.

For example, your goal is the student will be able to count and perform rhythms including whole, half, dotted half, quarter, dotted quarter, eighth notes and rests in 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 2/2 and 6/8 time signatures. The first instructional objective is developing the ability to maintain a steady pulse. Once this is done you can move on to the permutations of quarter note combinations in a measure, then half and quarters, dotted half and quarters and whole notes. When these are mastered you add the rest equivalents of these notes into the same patterns so the students understand that a rest is just a rhythmic note of silence. By the end of the year the student has achieved proficiency in basic rhythms.

Creating a curriculum puts emphasis on the development of the student’s individual musical growth instead of on the ensemble’s performance. Granted, playing Holst’s, “First Suite for Military Band” or Greig’s, “Holberg Suite” is a rewarding experience. A greater reward is teaching our students the skills to play all of Holst’s, and Greig’s music as well as the great music of other composers of the past or the music of Gillingham, Cesarini and Boerma still to be written. The beauty of this is it improves the overall performance of the ensemble. The band or orchestra is able to play more literature because the students possess the skills necessary to play the composition allowing more time to devote to the artistic aspects of music. And that, after all, is what music making is all about.