“But I’m a Music Education Major!”

[Gandalfe]

I can count on both hands the number of performance majors I have taught regularly over the course of my career thus far. In most respects, I am happy that this is the case, as I find it impossible to in good conscience release a large number of performance students into a job market that simply does not have a place for all of them.

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[jbtsax]

That is a well written article that I agree with wholeheartedly. Even though I took methods classes to learn to play all of the instruments at a rudimentary level, including piano and strings, as part of my music education curriculum, I continued to study the saxophone through graduate school. I asked my mentor one time about my teaching private trumpet lessons even though I am not a trumpet player. He replied that the principles of good tone production and articulation are the same for all wind instruments. Excellence in musicianship also does not change from one instrument to the next. If I can't play trumpet well enough to "model" how I want a passage to sound, he said I can certainly do that on my major instrument to convey the same concepts. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It is good food for thought.

 

[hakukani]

This is precisely the reason I got both degrees. The fact is, the requirements for educators is more and more an 'add on' to a BA or BS rather than a degree in elementary or secondary education. I envision a day when undergrad degrees will not include education degrees, and graduate degrees will be in an education specialty.

Unless, of course you are in Teach for America--then 5 weeks is enough to prepare for teaching after a Bachelor's degree. /sarcasm

 

[Jeccy Yang]

I get a lot of help and information about your article. I am a junior student in my Music performance class, but I don't know what kind of work I should take after I graduate. Now, I know I need to learn more new knowledge about music instruments even though in primary level, I do take my piano class for almost ten years and now I want to learn clarinet. Hope that I can be successful.