Klarinet Archive - Posting 000708.txt from 1998/04

From: Ken Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: Illinois Music Teachers
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 15:34:10 -0400

On Tue, 14 Apr 1998, Karen Miner wrote:

> Illinois General Assembly has passed a bill that is going to eliminate
> music education as a major or career choice. It says that in order to be
> able to teach music, one must get a degree in either elementary or
> secondary education with a teaching specialization in any subject other
> than the arts, PLUS an endorsement on his or her teaching certificate. This
> will cause the quality of the arts to plummet.

How reassuring to know that SOME state legislatures, at least, are
consistent in going out of their ways to prove that H. L. Mencken
was right when he described a "booboisie" directing a "Sahara of
the Boze Arts." I really thought that this vocational school crap
had been jettisoned years ago: that you had to sit studying
education theory (but NOT, God forbid, those intellectuals like
Piaget!) in lieu of mastering your subject matter, be it literature,
history, music, or the fine arts. You had to be an ED major; you
needed just enough subject matter knowledge to become dangerous.

I guess I was wrong about things improving. Ostensibly knowing
how to teach is more important than WHAT you teach. Thus, everything is
technique, very little is substance. It's rather like trying to teach an
impotent man to make love to a woman.

Back at Hunter College, circa 1963, the surest way to a quick A was
a 3 credit course in Fundamentals of Education. You spent a semester
watching movies of chimpanzees masturbating. Sounds rather like the
Illinois Normal School system....

Ken