How many hours do you think a degree in primary teaching has of music pedagogy in NSW universities? Not a lot.
Teachers are being set up to fail. They are expected to be able to deliver a well-rounded musical experience to their students without any of the resources of a music specialist and no wonder so many teachers are daunted by the task.
Earlier in the year I was lucky enough to participate in the Buddy "Pulley" Program at the Upper Hunter Conservatorium of Music. I sat in on a number of different musical learning experiences from community orchestras to music therapy, but the thing that stood out to me most was my experience going to a number of different schools for their music classes with Nicola Mackie (which you can read more about here). If you don't feel like reading my reflections, the general gist of it is as follows: Some general teachers like teaching music, some don't, and there are many reasons as to why this is the case.
When brainstorming for my music tech project, I couldn't get this thought out of my head of something I've always dreamed of doing: Creating a resource to both encourage teachers to incorporate music into their classroom and to show them how, step by step, addressing each problem as it arises. This is what I will be doing here for the next few months.
Recently, I've been trying to formulate a plan for how to do this and the solution I've come up with is this: Every barrier to music in the classroom will be addressed (or as many as I and those around me can think of); this website will become a platform for the project (so watch this space if it sounds interesting to you); and slowly but surely, using the valuable input of users, we will debunk the myths and dispel the mystery that is music. The first thing I will do is encourage anyone reading this to check out my 'contact me' section. If you have any ideas or opinions, I'd love to hear them. Did you have a good experience learning music at school? Do you find teaching music easy? Hard? Scary? Learner or educator, your input will be invaluable to me in this.
It's 17 by the way. Generally about 17 hours of music to be able to teach it in a primary school. Yikes, right?