Musicing

In MENC’s February edition of Teaching Music, there’s an article about a Harris Poll “making the case” for music in the schools. I have tried to keep the posts very positive on this blog, but this article is hard to spin in that direction. Of course, the tenor of the article is that the Harris Poll’s finding that higher household income and higher levels of education correspond positively to involvement in music education is a wonderful justification for music education. Music makes you smarter AND wealthier. “‘These results are fantastic,’ says Regina Corso, director of the Harris Poll/Harris Interactive. ‘If we were trying to make them up we wouldn’t have made them this good because no one would believe us.’”

I feel a mixture of anger and nausea. Higher education and higher income actually correspond most strongly to parents’ education and income. (See the statistics put out recently by the Economic Mobility Project–http://www.economicmobility.org). Wealthier parents can afford private lessons for their children and parents with higher levels of education tend to value and encourage formal music education. In fact, formal music instruction is part of the cultural capital that allows the perpetuation of class inequalities. Rarely (maybe when someone becomes a popular music star, for example) does music education lead to social mobility. This article is very misleading.

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