Why Music Schools Must Change Now, Or Die!

Why Music Schools Must Change Now, Or Die!

Kelvin Sholar U.S. Embassy Berlin

Music schools exist to address three basic problems: How can I learn music? How can I teach music? and How can I host musical education? These problems are directly addressed by music schools because they provide a curriculum or schedule of teaching, investigation and testing that relates a repertoire to basic musical concepts, techniques and historical facts- and a place to socialize while implementing the curriculum.

Despite being a world traveller, I am an introvert. I socialize much better online than I do offline because I can interact globally when I have the time. On my computer I can visit about 30 or 40 different friends a day on social networks like Facebook or Twitter, no matter where they live in the world. This makes me wonder: For travellers or introverts, people like me, why not use the internet as an educational tool for music, solving basic musical problems for free or by subscription?

In addition to the three basic problems I cited, online music schools could address other problems too; like the growing dependence on analogue and electronic materials, outdated information, the limitations of copyrighted works, prescribed curricula, the dogmatic attitudes of teachers, unmotivated students and soaring prices for schooling.

Information Theory and The Digital Revolution diminishes the need for physical and electronic materials; who needs cds and books composed of atoms? With the digital language the cost efficient and more effective manufacturing, storage and distribution of information is possible. Traditional media is expensive and it takes time to be produced, published and distributed- and this makes them easily out of date. New media online is instantaneous and global, connecting nearly two-thirds of the human population. The need for current facts cannot be met with slow print media.

Memorizing facts is no longer as important as memorizing algorithms for processing facts that output sums, inferences and justified beliefs. With sites like Wikipedia leading the way, why not create unique wikis for students on specific subjects that replace textbooks? Today, knowledge of how to make music of any kind is not a scarce resource when internet users can directly contact each other, watch videos, share media and correct each other- for free.

Schools are too expensive because they are selling scarce places in the classroom, limited access to a small number of teachers and a closed curriculum. The isolated musical classroom is no longer scarce when social media brings the musical classroom to you. Why charge or spend lots of money for limited seats in a classroom when any teacher and any eight students can meet on Google Hangouts for free? This eliminates part of the high cost of education stemming for a physical location with seats for students.

Music schools have a mass marketing approach to education. Why continue this one-size-fits-all curriculum where every student is identical and learning the same facts and taking the same tests? It is totally insensitive to prescribe a schedule of what facts, concepts and techniques a student should learn, and decide what materials are needed to do so when that student’s specific psychological, physical and economic means, need and wants are unknown beforehand. Music schools are failing to teach music well because they have a mass marketers attitude, all students are the same as long as the can pay the high admission price. What a waste of time!

Music schools also create a false scarcity of authority. Of, course there are only so many Julliard or Berklee educated music teachers old chap! But, If we are honest, no one actually needs a degree from any school to learn, teach and share knowledge. That’s a myth perpetuated by the education industry and big schools to maintain a scarcity of “official” knowledge. Remember, families came before schools. Despite the demand for paper certificates, many of the music teachers I know cannot play well professionally, compose original music or critique music with any level of originality. Music teachers need to be challenged by their students to prove why their dogmatic stances on historical issues are valid when they cannot demonstrate facts or elements in contemporary music. I’d rather a street musician that makes me cry from emotion, than a PHD who can’t play his traditional blues, and every culture has the blues in some form.

All of this boils down to a simple message for the future of music education: if music schools, and knowledge groups of any kind, do not change to meet the needs of the contemporary HUMAN BEING online, no matter where they are and who they are- they will die out. Just like the books, newspapers, records, television, radio, and magazines that represent the Old World of Knowledge preservation. Don’t try to control and sell what’s not yours to begin with, we have enough agents for natural resources. The ignorant fund your existence, don’t sell to them, teach them way to find and demonstrate fundamentals so that they never need a school again.

How can existing schools change to meet the new demands? One alternative to the old form of education, to going to a school and memorizing official prescribed structures of facts for a huge sum of money, is to form networks of free knowledge and collaborative education. In terms of music, such a network might be defined as a group of internet users and social groups who act like teachers, aggregators of musical content and students. They would share responsibility for education in terms of collaborating on what historical facts are learned, defining the state of the art, and creating logical or scientific methods to test new theories.

Such an International Secondary School Of Music would take place on an open internet platform that can be linked into and searched because it makes finding, storing and distributing musical information much easier. Such an musical information network would not be centralized in or controlled by a single musical school or state somewhere because it is totally counterproductive to centralize control when the point is to network across centralized borders.

The advantage of a new form of music school that is decentralized and distributed into as many parts as there are members on the internt is that student and teachers from different places and with different levels and sets of knowledge and skills would participate in a common structure. Then, members are all equal as components of a greater instruction system. Such a music school encourages internet literacy, as well as linguistic, mathematic and computer literacy.

Why should the knowledgeable musicians, who make good money in the current system, give it up for a free business model? Music teachers, the experienced and the skilled should join such a music network because they have an opportunity to guide the development of students with personal expertise, without the additional interests and control of  content that outside parties enforce in school. And they could make more money without middle men. Google and Wikipedia might bring students a sea of facts, but teachers should guide students on how to investigate those facts, and teachers should demonstrate basic musical elements with an actual repertoire- using personal examples and experience.

Music schools and teachers can regain a human voice in the educational market by not selling and teaching prescribed information for the mass market of students and not sounding like an advertisement for pre-approved educational sources. Why should students join this new school of music? Students should join such a school of music because they would be the most powerful people in the organization. The needs and wants of students are the single most important concern of teachers and schools. Students actually have the power to take responsibility for education, not only leave it up to teachers and schools. Students are so powerful that they can tell schools what they want to learn, learn from each other, coalesce around bad schools and teachers (and shut them down) and promote the best schools. They have that right and they are learning how to use it in social media online. Schools and teachers better catch up fast.

How is money made in a Free Educational market? Money on a user-run information network is generated the same way that it is now, with participation. Targeted paid advertising from music organizations and paid subscriptions to teachers and networks. It would work because there is always a need for better and more current values, products and services which an online school and teacher would provide to interested parties. And an open competititon for fair prices, as on Amazon, would inspire a more ethical educational environ. This is good because students and teachers can draw the line between capitalistic interests and educational. We are primarily here to share knowledge, but we can buy and sell good content when we want to.

Money would not determine the quality of education. That is determined by how well teachers and students collaborate on picking out the information, products and services that was most relevant to the music learned. What are textbooks and other learning media but aggregated information that is marketed to students through an educational organization? All musical materials that are out of print and copyright should be digitized and offered online for free. Teachers and student should consolidate unique musical content on individual portals and distribute aggregated content to the network via blogs. Independent, collaborative and group designed curricula should be made available for free and they should be peer-reviewed to be sure that popularity and dogma does not dictate what is accepted as truth, goodness and beauty of music. All content should be free, digital, linked and made available for search.

Private consultations by subscription will replace typical tuition procedures and music lessons. The student can then pay in increments over time. Subscription to a teacher on such a network should mean unlimited access to the curricula that he or she generates over a certain period of time; including new systems of composition, syllabi, tests, algorithms of problem solving, research problems and repertoires to study and perform. Subscription should also benefit the students by offering negotiable rates, or even barter for money-free education in exchange for other goods and services.

Educational institutions provide centralized areas for socialization; but, the internet is a better social networking tool for keeping in touch with those that are not nearby, not in the contemporary circle of family, friends and acquaintances, and not directly known. For proof of this I site the success of various platforms like Google, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn- all of which connect us for free and is available by search and link. Local performance spaces around the world start to offer live-streaming, giving musicians the chance to observe living masters without needing to be in the same physical location, not to mention the scores of performances already available for free on Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo and other platforms. Traditional institutions are centralized in geophysical locations, like musicians, and local music scenes; but, this limitation has long been transcended by telecommunications media.

Music schools center around an age-based dichotomy of the old musician teaching the young musician; but, education is not only the responsibility of the young musician. Where educational institutions generally offer four-year programs to young adults, intended to be completed at the legal age of adulthood, there should be no set timeframe for completing any course, or an entire curriculum on the network- because music education is a lifelong responsibility of musicians.

Conclusion

As the needs of more music students and teachers are met online, Music schools must become online platforms of training or they will die. The centralized school will be replaced by a global infrastructure because it will make reaching the goals of education easier. The result of addressing the given problems of the traditional model of education and practically implementing solutions online allows the contemporary musician to take full advantage of the available wealth of music, information and technology in new ways.