Lifelong Learners of Music

There is a TED Talk in this lesson where Benjamin Zander of the Boston Philharmonic talks about being a lifelong learner of music. During this talk, he references percentages, stating that the classical musical community has the mindset of “3% of people like classical music. If we could move this number to 4%, all of our troubles would be over”. He combats this by saying, “What if we believed that everyone loves classical music, they just don’t know it yet?” This TED Talk has always been one of my favorites. I discovered it over 5 years ago when perusing TED Talks that I might find interesting, and I have watched it annually after discovering it. Ben Zander has a point; what if the exposure to classical music and the idea of how to listen to classical music is not something that everyone intentionally turns away from? What if the problem lies in the general public's inability to understand what they are listening to, and if we taught them how to really listen to what they are hearing, we could convert the general populace into classical music listeners. In exploring this idea, we can really understand what it is Ben Zander was trying to say; classical music teaching should extend beyond the classroom, and we should instill a lifelong love of music in our students from the beginning.

I work primarily with older choir members at the moment. My demographic lies entirely in those whose average age is 60+. In this group, I see lifelong learners. I see people who commit to using their music to uplift those around them and who understand the power of music in community service, especially in the context of the church. The flip side of this coin is that I also see adults who were not encouraged to continue music. I see those who say that they sang in the choir years ago, but haven’t done so in a number of years, or even worse, I see people who say, “you don’t want me in the choir. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.” Perfect! This notion is one of the greatest challenges, but the greatest opportunities for music educators. If we understand that someone has been beaten down in their musical ability, we unlock the chance to explain what it is we do. When we hear responses such as this, our response can be “Perfect! If everyone were a perfect singer, I wouldn’t have a job.” I try to teach my students to understand that there is never going to be an opportunity to learn everything there is to learn. The frustrating part about studying music is that we can study it for years, and once we figure out something new, it unearths a plethora of unanswered questions. By instilling this idea in our students, we can convince them to understand that we will never learn everything there is to learn, but that shouldn’t diminish the pursuit of knowledge. If anything, we should encourage them that this idea should urge on the pursuit of knowledge, and that we should pursue knowledge for knowledge’s gain, rather than for the intent of pursuing a capstone. I try to teach my students that music itself is exciting, and I try to make sure that I am excited about learning with them. I try to encourage them to bring new ideas to the table that I haven’t thought of, and I try to make sure they know when I really like an idea that they have, and to let them know that I hadn’t thought of that before. I think this relationship of being a cohort of learners rather than a student and a teacher is incredibly important in understanding and encouraging the lifelong learning process.

The second question is the scariest one: What happens if we don’t encourage lifelong learning? Unfortunately, I believe this question is already being answered. According to a study by the National Library of Medicine, the following is true;

“This study used longitudinal data from secondary school students in the UK and Germany aged between 10 and 17 years. A survival analysis was applied to investigate the trajectories of musical activities across this age span. Other factors like type of learned instrument, gender, personality, and intelligence were taken into account for further analyses using generalized linear models. Results indicate that about 50% of all students drop out of music lessons and other musical activities by the time they turn 17 years old, with most students quitting between the ages of 15 and 17.”1

This study shows that over half of music students drop out by the time they turn 17. This shows that at least 50% of the students who are taking music are not continuing to be lifelong learners. Additionally, through personal experience, I have noticed an increase in the difficulty of recruiting for my church choir. As a result, there is arguably poor concert attendance at the school level, as well as in concerts/performances for adults. However, I believe this is due to the fact that adults are not taught to understand and appreciate music, and instead are taught that there is some invisible divide between classical musicians and the rest of society.

Our profession focuses on younger musicians. You can see it printed on our degrees, in our classes and their focus, and in the career path of those who enter it. However, part of the fight is unspoken in that it involves getting buy-in from adults. There are plenty of reasons to encourage adults to participate in choirs. Engagement in the art generates interest in the art, and interest in the art generates support for the arts. Creating engagement at the adult level is part of the way to fight the music of music education advocacy. Starting community/alumni choirs, audience participation, parents' day, outreach tours, etc. are all perfectly viable ways to engage adults in the community and potentially generate support. These should not all be excluded when fighting to get noticed in the noise of the world. However, the original question was “Why do we focus on younger musicians?” In my experience, I think there are two reasons behind this. Reason number one is that it is what we are taught, and therefore, we are more comfortable teaching it. Most people who major in or become formally educated in music have been leaders in their programs before entering education. These folks may have been section leaders, accompanists, or field commanders. As such, they have been introduced to leadership roles and teaching in a K-12 capacity. As such, this becomes their introduction and comfort zone. Teaching adults carries its own struggles. I’ve discovered that hormonal changes in adults affect their singing voice just as much as puberty, particularly is menopausal/pre-menopausal women. As such, this can be an area that is particularly difficult to navigate because we were never taught it. Additionally, a lot of younger teachers can be especially uncomfortable giving directions to grown adults, and there is a certain degree of interpersonal skills that goes into directing adult choirs that are not necessarily taught as much as learned through life experiences. This can make teaching older ensembles particularly scary and uncomfortable. The second main reason that I think our society has created to encourage teaching younger ensembles is financially based. Teaching in public schools pays the bills, and teaching adults doesn’t. There are many fewer full-time positions teaching adults, and as such, teachers are more interested in finding jobs that can pay their bills. As such, any extracurricular activities would have to be stipend-based (which some people do in fact do,) or volunteer-based. This creates a need for arts councils and community programs, which is the entire premise of the issue addressed at the beginning of the paper. Unfortunately, this creates a cycle where adults are being neglected on the education spectrum, and as such, support diminishes and returns us to our original problem listed above.

Unfortunately, I think that there are a lot of issues that have set themselves up to be perpetuating cycles, and as such, they have become quite difficult to break. In understanding this, though, we should understand that becoming lifelong learners and teachers ourselves in every aspect of our lives, we can begin to fight the fight for future generations, and make things better for those who come after.

References

Ruth, N., & Müllensiefen, D. (2021, November 24). Survival of musical activities: When do young people stop making music?