Music Education and Wellbeing: a guest blog by Mandy Stefanakis

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Mandy is a Life Member, Association of Music Educators (aMuse), curriculum writer and sessional Lecturer, Deakin University

We will be discussing the topic of music education and wellbeing as one of our weekly online chat topics in the next few weeks. To take part join our Musical Futures chat group here

The notion of wellbeing as a part of music education can be implied in many settings including those schools using the Musical Futures approach. But it is an issue that tends not to be spoken about explicitly, and so I thought I’d have a shot at it.
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We advocate for music education for all sorts of reasons. They can tend to veer away from a focus on the music-maker. I want to reclaim the world of the music maker in education and to provide a reason for that. Firstly, I’m providing a couple of advocacy statements from the perspective of music makers. This year, the members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra have been asked to talk about what music means to them:

"The world is ever rotating and there is little meaning except for music. It’s a novel pursuit in many ways, but for me it sets the standard for everything". Satu Vanska

"Playing music is when I feel most alive. I love the joy of trying to create and communicate this, and the freedom of self-expression". Glenn Christensen

And another statement from the composer and broadcaster, Andrew Ford who presents music from every conceivable genre in his much loved Music Show on Radio National:

"Music ‘lies too deep for words’".

It is the similar experiences with music that we, as educators have, that forge our careers in music education, so that we can share those incredible experiences of music with others.

How might such deep experiences with music happen?

• Music is primarily about people’s bodily and mindful relationship with sound. At its most fundamental level it embodies our relationship with the earth, our perception of a gravitational pull to the earth and upwards, sometimes to feelings of ‘transcendence’. It works partially through both heard and felt sound, bodily resonance and through the vestibular (our mapping) network from a basic sense of groundedness to sense of self.

• We are therefore drawn to particular music in order to connect with it in whatever way we need (both consciously and subconsciously). This is one way in which music contributes to our wellbeing. There are other forms of connectedness in music.

Aboriginal people all know this. They all live this. Opera singer and composer, Deborah Cheetham says:

"For Indigenous Australians, the Arts are the most powerful way we can know and give meaning to the world around us. For thousands of generations we have passed on all knowledge of geography, the sciences, medicine and humanity through visual and performing arts. The Arts have never been a luxury, rather a necessity. Our culture is our knowledge. Our knowledge is our survival. It is ‘The Art of Belonging’ and it is for everyone".

• Music is about a holistic sense of personal identity and connection with family, clan, world neighbours and the planet we inhabit.  Individuals and communities large and small need a positive sense of identity in order to be well. These are the reasons for music’s continued ubiquity.

Music Education

• If we accept these points, they need to govern our rationale and our practices in music education. As a strong contributor to our sense of self and a means of physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, we must embrace the musical identities of the students we teach, and motivate for their growth and consolidation through exploring familiar, loved, and also unknown musical territories.

I am Musical

• Students are the subject. Music is the object. Music exists for people, not the other way around. We teach people. Music is the mode through which we teach them. When we facilitate a connection between students and music, extraordinary things can happen …

But How?
Musical Futures employs many of the strategies suggested below:
Strategise

• Know the musical needs of the students we teach

• Meet them

• Provide tasks that encourage divergent, as distinct from convergent thinking, that is, open-ended tasks

• Provide open-ended tasks that are unified in some way so that although all outcomes will differ there is a connecting point in musical pursuit. This might be via a theme, a concept, a grand idea, a musical motif or a drum beat.
• Provide avenues for a range of responses to tasks to accommodate different learning styles (moving, visual imagery, talking, writing, playing, singing, technology)
• Provide the opportunity to create, to make a personal music mark

• Assess students on the basis of where they are now in comparison to where they were six months ago, rather than against a standard based on age or other student achievement

• Acknowledge that the music students make is not ‘student music’ (this is not a genre on Spotify) but music.

Empathise

• Engage with students’ music

• Expand their musical horizons by linking their music to other musics in and beyond the school community

• Ensure that there are no activities that are exclusive of some students (based, for example, on preference for musical genre, instrument or ability)

• Empower student learning by easing the learning responsibility to student hands, backed up and focussed by a teacher/mentor

And Finally

• We must always engage students in thoughtful, meaningful, purposeful musical pursuits.

• When devising music activities always ask, ‘to what end?’ If the answer is, ‘to know what a minim looks like’, chances are it is not a student-focussed activity.

• A written note has no musical meaning until it is sounded in a context. It only has musical potential. (Theory comes with and from practicum just as reading and writing emerge from speaking.)

• If we reject students’ music, we reject students. It’s that simple.