XII Colloquium: October 11 - 13, 2002:
Hampton Inn and Suites, Columbus, OH
"Music Curriculum Challenges in Post-Secondary Education"

Several organizing ideals emerged from the discussion in Columbus:

The problem -

1. There is a need to develop better grounds for an appraisal of music as a curriculum in tertiary education than currently exists (accreditation standards, etc.).

2. There is a need to raise curriculum to awareness in the minds of faculty and students before such an appraisal can have an operational effect.

3. The meaning of the diploma can be defined in much more flexible terms than merely the passing of courses on a list. One ground for a curriculum re-appraisal would be the definition of what "having graduated" means in personal, musical, operational terms.

Curriculum orientations -

1. A flexible, multi-musical construction/reconstruction of the musical self can orient the substance of the new curriculum.

2. Music in the curriculum should be defined actively - as a verb, as posse, as process - even with "dead" musics and in analytical contexts.

3. An organized but flexible approach to music will serve the non-music major best, one that is oriented to psychological health, self-awareness, self-expression. Commuter and "non-traditional" students are coming to dominate student demographics in most large colleges and all community colleges. The curriculum is currently neither serving nor taking advantage of the multiple musical lives they live.

4. The curriculum needs to make permeable the walls of the institution on behalf of all students' musical education. Not only do the musical actions within the institution need to be true proxies for music in the society, but also students and faculty should be musical inhabitants of and contributors in the surrounding community. In addition, the curriculum leaders should make constant use of tradition-bearers of the musics in the region and from other places.

Curriculum change -

1. To accomplish much of this, we need to be (and recruit) aggressive but skilled advocates for a new view, and, at the same time, develop better curriculum discrimination skills in both students and faculty.

2. Change requires both skilled consensus building in a variety settings and a flexible approach to applications. One example is to name courses with malleable titles to take curricular advantage of the many kinds of musical resources that reside in and surround most tertiary institutions. Another is to link the musical actions of students in the community to course and/or degree credit.

3. Music schools are faith-based communities and that is why so little curriculum critique and grounded development take place there. If that is true, and if we want a different set of guiding principles, then it might be more efficient of our time and effort to create an alternative faith than to attempt to co-opt the current one.

Action steps -

1. Over the next two years, concentrate our efforts on creating flexible but well-grounded curriculum alternatives and hold a day-long co-session on curriculum alternatives at the 2004 MENC meeting in Minneapolis.

2. Clone the MDG colloquium model locally and include the students. Have informal student-centered colloquia on topics of importance to their development as professionals, preparing them for the kind of inquiry that moves the topic forward.

3. Include in required course readings: ACT, the MDG web site, and other publications of MDG papers (CRME 144, Finnish Journal 5/1-2, U. of Maryland Fowler Symposium, papers by MDG members in other venues).