DBrown
Member
Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Midwest
Posts: 232 |
I'll approach from three sides.
Side one... Both my parents were music teachers. One sister is currently teaching music in the same school district. Two other sisters are music directors in the churches they belong to. Naturally, I have a love for music. Naturally, I think general music education belongs in the school system.
Side two... (why they close music departments) Having a college degree in music alone is a very hard thing to sell. Why? Because the majority of "school" musicians, while clearly talented, will never make a living with it. The music teachers in my family have degrees in education. A music degree alone would not qualify them to teach. If you are not talented enough to be a professional musician, then you'll need another degree to find a good paying job. If you ARE talented enough to be a professional musician, then you probably don't need a college degree in it. Just lessons to improve your skill. Most professional musicians succeed without degrees in music. Even if you want to know the "science" of music, you can figure it out without going to college. Want to teach music? Get a degree in music, then get one in education. Want to PLAY music? Practice, Practice, Practice. Get together with other musicians and practice some more.
At my college the music department succeeds because the football team does, and they need marching and pep bands to perform at games. The great musicians that have come from my college (sorry, but I can't think of any to name) will have succeeded despite their time in college.
Side three... The college department (interior architecture) I teach in went thru a phase of threatened elimination. The state failed to recognize our uniqueness and the value of our graduates to society, and assumed we were identical to other programs at other universities in the state and thus could be closed. We survived because our students and faculty and staff marched (stomped) through the administration building and around campus. We survived because we contacted every alumni and supporter and employer of our graduates, and every politician we had ever done a favor for, and every newspaper we could think of. We let them take pictures of our students laying prone in rows on the front lawn of the administration building with T-Squares planted as headstones above them. We published a list of all the awards and publicity we'd brought to the university. We ran administrative and political FAX machines out of paper with letters admonishing the recipients for their bad judgement in closing our department. We made their decision and the reaction a national news item. It became a national embarassment for them, since they could not well defend it.
In the end, the college president publically apologized, claiming he'd been mis-informed about our value to the university. Several thousand onlookers cheered. There were a total of 95 people (students and faculty) in the department at that time.
My point? No matter what the real worth of a program, the only way to keep it is to fight. Fight loudly. Fight hard. Don't give up. We had failed to make it known how worthy we were, so they tried to close us. We don't make that mistake anymore.
Dave
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02-27-2001 02:58 AM
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