VIII Colloquium: October 1 - 3, 2000: Burlington, MA
"How do musical institutions develop, and how can their influences be evaluated?"


...on Effects of Institutions on Musical Culture
J Terry Gates
Graduate School of Education; SUNY at Buffalo; Buffalo, NY 14260; USA

"Hence when the way was lost there was virtue.
When virtue was lost there was benevolence.
When benevolence was lost there was rectitude.
When rectitude was lost there were the rites.
The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty and
good faith and the beginning of disorder."
(Lao Tzu - from Tao Te Ching, ch 38, excerpt)


"Indeed, such are the charms [of Vanity Fair] that people often affirm it to be the
true and only Heaven; stoutly contending that there is no other,
that those who seek further are mere dreamers."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne - from "The Celestial Railroad")


"Who can prove that the alphabet is in alphabetical order?"
(George Carlin - from some of his comedy monologs)

The first two of these excerpts reflect the paradox of institutionalization. The first is embedded in observations about living a successful life and makes a case for being rather than striving. The second is a case for striving rather than being. Both link people in collective acts and reflect an inside-out approach to the analysis of such acts. What binds them together is that both reflect concern for the individual as a social being and argue for the merits of bringing to consciousness the collective agreements and actions we call institutions. The third brings to consciousness the social knowledge that we call "cultural" in institutions -- the glue that binds these agreements and actions into identifiable, therefore "preservable" social entities.

I: Assumptions

If Edward O. Wilson was right, and we are genetically social beings, then George Carlin's question about social knowledge does not probe the issue deeply enough. I take the need for sociability, the human impulse that drives the development of institutions, to be more deeply embedded than the advisability of our collective agreement about alphabetical order. In this outline, I will use the term "institution" to refer to the network of agreements and social knowledge that make actions collective rather than individual only. I will use the term "agencies" to refer to aggregations of specific agencies for institutions such as churches, schools and state governments. Religion, then, is an institution preserved in agencies called churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. Education is an institution preserved in agencies called schools.

A starting point for criticism, then, is the extent to which the agencies are preserving the institutions they intend to preserve. A long line of schooling critics have treated this topic -- Plato, Quintilian, John Locke, John Ruskin, John Dewey, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Ivan Illich, John Holt, A. S. Neill, Jonathan Kozol, Diane Ravitch, Neil Postman, and many more. One relatively easy task in education criticism is to define what one means by the "institution" called "education" and use that definition as a standard to critique various school agencies. This is familiar, often tautological, ground -- tautological because most schools are obligated to define themselves and it is relatively easy to get agreement on the foundations of value that form such definitions. I will spend little time with that here, but it is reasonable to begin a critique of any agency with the purpose it makes public, including those claims that it preserves some social or cultural institution. It is also reasonable to question the institution itself: "To what extent does music meet the human need for non-discursive communication?" is a reasonable question about the institution of music.

II: Purpose

In an important sense, this outline not only takes its foundations from some of my prior work but it also picks up where Jere Humphreys, Marie McCarthy, Tom Regelski and our collective conversations left off in the Seattle Colloquium last April. Here are some core excerpts from Jere's, Marie's and Tom's Seattle papers (accessible through the Seattle tunnel in the "events" link on the MayDay Group home page.

Jere Humphreys -- "I can think of no other aspect of life today, at least in the so-called first-world countries, that operates in as a monopolistic way as do our public schools. The charter schools attract students because people want change and they want variety. This is happening despite the poor quality of instruction offered in many of those schools. If historical and current trends mean anything at all, it should be abundantly clear that our present monopolistic educational system will change radically in the not-too-distant future." (Go to this paper.)

Marie McCarthy -- "In order for the individual teacher to integrate those influences and visions into the school curriculum, she needs to work collaboratively with peers and other enabling agencies, and to be supported and guided by professional organizations and cultural policy makers who also see preK-12 music education as part of the cultural process. I'm talking then about agency originating both at the grass roots level (through teacher empowerment in studios and classrooms) and at the macro level (through a network of institutions, media and policies that advance the cause of the arts and function to educate the public). It is necessary, then, to look at the question of teacher agency in the context of music in school and society, because they are interdependent sociocultural factors in improving musical life." (Go to this paper.)

Thomas Regelski -- "For music teaching to be a profession, then, there needs to exist a reasonable, pragmatic consensus within a community of professionals concerning the nature of the ideal curricular results towards which teaching praxis in music education is devoted and by which it is evaluated. From the point of view of Critical Theory, such common standards should be pragmatic in all respects. É Thus, critical educators function as intellectual models and philosophical leaders within a community of similarly committed professionals, not as unmindful technicians or uncritical followers." (Go to this paper.)

Marie asked us to look at both the micro- and macro-level aspects of agency, and, with the help of Tom's paper on Critical Theory and Music Education, the provocateurs and others in Seattle, we did that. I intend to look at the web that connects the macro- with the micro-, more particularly at the ways that the invisible spiders of the institutionalization process spin the web. In these processes lie the keys to understanding and criticizing the effects of institutions on musical life, including musical education.

III: Process

This outline will intend to do two things, one temporal, the other "landscape-tual", as Elizabeth Gould argued for in Seattle. That is, I'll lay out a temporal scheme for musical actions and then show some institutional influences (the landscape) on a musical impulse as it travels its way to becoming a viable institution and eventually preserved in a self-conscious and self-preserving agency. The scheme is based loosely on communication theories of institutions, that class of thought that sees humans as part of the "demos" of various levels of organization as tightly structured as a string quartet and as loosely structured as the internet. In these, people in the demos are both empowered and inhibited by the ways that values are embedded in the institution and the processes through which these values are reified in the agency. (For a good, brief critique of "demos" then and now, see Cohen 1999. For a longer critique, see Lasch 1991.)

IV: Applications

I. Without arguing for a particular view of what constitutes a musical impulse, I'll assert that it is the energy behind an act that we characterize as musical. Acting to join the school band, to whistle while one works at something else, to listen to a recording of some music, to teach a musical skill to someone else -- all of these I take to be partly the result of musical impulses. I must add here that the impulse that emerges in musical acts have other paths besides music, primarily in what we call "sociability" or "communication."

All musical acts have the potential for institutionalization and most can become analyzed at some stage on a continuum from Realization of the impulse to Commodification of the products that arise from it.

Stage 1. Realization: An impulse to act takes musical form.

Stage 2. Production: The actor refines and reshapes the form and produces sound through the processes of improvisation, composition, performance. That is, the actor embodies in sound the intentions that arise from the impulse through experimentation and manipulating the sonic/musical details of the form: "pilot-test" the form; enhance the effect; improve the result.

Stage 3. Communication: Reveal one's intentions and intuitions to others through draft performances ("demo tapes", for example), notated copies or direct teaching.

Stage 4. Collaboration: Engage others as performers and/or listeners to produce the music.

Stage 5. Group formation: Performers and listeners develop commitment to a class of products and/or their producers, become knowledgeable about the class of products.

Stage 6. Stratification: Those present in stage 5 initially form the group's leaders -- the exemplars and embodiers of the values. Others enter the group late as adherents or followers. Some become leaders (political, informational/skillful, economic, social).

Stage 7. Organization: Stratification processes are codified into rules, procedures. More importantly, producing and preserving the musical product or class of products is the focus for definitions, purposes, hierarchies of value, identification with other groups, etc.

Stage 8. Commodification: Rules are shifted from organizing adherents to expanding the support for group preservation by manipulating repertoire, musical function, framing or packaging and artist selection. By-laws, memberships requirements, policies, copyright protections, etc. emerge.

Enabling institutional influences:

* instrument production (weak and optional influence -- not necessary to produce music),

* music education (potentially),
* mass communication media,
* family,
* reference (peer) groups
Inhibiting institutional influences:

* music education (In many societies, music education policies and practices short-circuit musical impulses in advance by stratifying musical products and processes, and certifying some of them and not others. I call this "supply-side censorship" and blame it for most of the gap between musical potential and musical actualities in European-American and Asian societies. Most societies are wiser and more tolerant about impulses to literacy and numericy than they are about musicality.)

* a priori definitions of expertise (Skillfulness is defined by certifying exemplars and stratifying others, the hegemony of an outlook that ascribes boundaries to expertise.)

II. (comprising a conclusion of sorts...) What follows is a set of open criteria that can be useful in linking institutionalized views of music education with an agency, without using the agency's own definition as a criterion. These should work with any organization that puts itself forward as a music education agency, from nursery school through doctoral programs.

Are music in the organization and in the society connected?


What evidence is there that:

1. the curriculum uses music which has cultural importance?

2. the students' musical experiences have societal examples, both in roles played (composer, performer, listener, critic) and in structure (audience, conductor, solo, small group, large group, etc.)?

3. all important musical traditions are represented in the curriculum or in the life experiences of the students?

4. a sense is being formed in students that musical genres have histories as well as current developments?

5. students can identify ways to continue their musical growth outside of school?

6. the program promotes contact with adult musical models in addition to the teacher?

Are music teachers leading the curriculum effectively?


What evidence is there that:

1. the curriculum guide suggests successful teaching procedures?

2. students' tasks are logically related to the objectives?

3. there is a progression (not merely a sequence) of skill levels, conceptual complexity levels, and evaluative insight levels being planned for by the teacher and being achieved by the students?

4. the teacher's leadership position and experience are valued?

5. sound learning and perception principles are foundations for the program's educational tasks?

6. the program's structured motivators are effective?

Is music produced and heard by students expressive?


What evidence is there that:

1. the music used is of high quality within each stylistic tradition?

2. performances promoted as examples are authoritative and expressive?

3. students' level of affective life experience is being used well in the selection of listening and performance music?

4. listening tasks include audience-type situations, and that these are producing a mature level of individual skill in setting up conditions for good holistic (aesthetic) listening?

Are musical performing, analytical, and evaluation abilities being developed systematically?


What evidence is there that:

1. students are being led to increase the accuracy, speed, dexterity, strength, flexibility, and consistency of their performance technique to an acceptable adult level, consistent with their intended adult musical involvement?

2. students are decreasing their reaction time and increasing their accuracy and expressivity in performing from musical notation?

3. the program purposefully expands the variety and number of musical terms to be used by students, and that the students are using using them appropriately to form principles about music?

4. evaluations of music and performances are solicited and expected of students at all levels in the program, and that these evaluations increase in the degree to which the evaluator uses musical evidence in support of their judgements?

Does the program deliberately reinforce independence as well as interdependence?


What evidence is there that:

1. all major program activities (units in general music, performing ensembles, etc.) have goals which students can remember and repeat in their own words?

2. each student is led to identify his/her own current musical interests and future musical involvement(s)?

3. students recognize that the teacher is providing musical assistance to the students?

4. independent, individual student action in support of his/her own musical growth is recognized and rewarded by the teacherboth individually and through the program?

5. student action in support of group goals is expected and reinforced?

6. students who are contributing both to their own and others' musical growth are protected in these pursuits from preventable interference from others?

Does the program constitute a system, with integrated subsystems?


What evidence is there that:

1. the student's musical growth in each teacher's program is planned, deliberate, and takes into account musical learning from the past, concurrent, and possible future musical involvements of all students?

2. the curriculum's effectiveness is being evaluated through a planned use of assessment instruments related to each objective in the curriculum, and that the results of these assessments are used, along with a review of goals, in the planning of curriculum changes?

3. the written curriculum reflects the curriculum experienced by the students?

References

Cohen, Jean L. (1999, September). "Changing paradigms of citizenship and the exclusiveness of the demos." International Sociology, 14(3), 245-268.

Fidler, Roger E. (1997). Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media. London: Sage.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lasch, Christopher. (1991). The true and only heaven: Progress and its critics. New York: Norton.

Mannheim, Karl. (1936). Ideology and utopia. Trans. by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

McAllister, Matthew P. (1996). The commercialization of American culture: New advertising, control and democracy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

McLuhan, Marshall. (1970). From cliché to archetype. New York: Viking Press.

Sumner, William Graham. (1906/1969). Folkways. New York: Dover Books.