Date of Award

5-2009

Type

Thesis

Major

Music

Degree Type

Master of Music in Music Education

Department

Schwob School of Music

First Advisor

Deborah Jacobs

Second Advisor

Roberta Ford

Abstract

In the early 1600's, the Pilgrims and the Puritans brought their musical traditions with them to establish a new life. The survival of their families depended upon their ability to provide food, shelter and clothing. Despite the challenges they faced, the colonists recognized the importance of educating their children. In 1642, the Massachusetts School Law was passed. It required town leaders to require parents to provide their children with an elementary education. Music training was not part of this newly required education. Due to the demands of life, the colonists were unable to nurture their musical abilities. Those who had developed musical skills did not pass their training on to others or to their children. For close to a century, the worship services consisted of the same tunes that had been brought with them from England. In 1721, Reverend Thomas Walter wrote ''the tunes are now miserably tortured and twisted and quavered in our churches, into a horrid medley of confused and disorderly voices. Our tunes are left to the mercy of every unskilled throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely diverse and no less odd humours and fancies. . ." (Mark, 1996, p. 4-5). Fortunately, music teachers began to travel from town to town to teach music classes. Adults and children could participate in the classes for a fee. It was in 1838 that music became part of the public school day.

In 1869, local Boston businessmen realized that American craftsmen needed training in art. This need became apparent as local businessmen noticed that imported European goods were superior to American made goods. They realized that they were competing against European countries that had centuries old artistic training available for their craftsmen. Realizing the American need for training, a program was set up to teach art skills to local men, women and children. By 1 870, Massachusetts instituted drawing as a required subject in education (Purnell, 2004, p. 154). Since that time, we have learned that instruction in the arts teaches children invaluable lessons related to life. Eliot Eisner, in his "Ten Lessons the Arts Teach" said:

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevails.

2. The arts teach children that problems can havemore than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form, nor number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source, and through such experience, to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe are important. (2000, 14)

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