The Introduction of Popular Music in School Music Curriculum Essay

The Introduction of Popular Music in School Music Curriculum - Essay Example In most societies in human civilisation’s timeline, there has been a great regard to various art forms, and these are often included in the daily lives of these peoples. Music is considered to be one of these important art forms that not only serve an aesthetic purpose, but also as part of the community’s culture, traditions, and spiritual living. While music is not something that everyone must do in any given society, it has been a universally-accepted truth that aside from all other humanistic artistic pursuits, music is a key universal feature in human civilisation (Green, 2003, p. 263). Such is high regard for music that long after modernisation and expansion of science and technology, there is still room for the inclusion of music in nearly every aspect of human society and culture from business (i.e. showbiz and merchandising) to social stance (i.e. music in defining political standpoint), thus it is still included in nearly every school curricula from the past to the present. Music education among various levels of schooling has been the norm for most educational systems and often lauded as a strong means of empowering and changing students and teachers (Abrahams, 2005, p. 12). Positive effects of music learning like instilling different virtues and attitudes among music students such as discipline and teamwork and improving literacy rates and increasing social awareness within the musical context are included in the many reasons why music is still a strong part of educational curricula in all levels of education despite a world-wide decrease in funds allotted for education in most nations (Philpott & Plummeridge, 2001; Tagg, 1982, p. 40). Aside from music as a universal concept and idea, it is considered a part of tradition and culture, giving people their unique identity amidst a fast-paced modern life (Lamont & Maton, 2010). Music’s importance and relevance is still recognised, and as a strong component of aesthetics music educati on remains to be integrated in most schools’ current curricula. At present most schools’ music curricula focus on traditional teaching music through the use of different scales, notations, sight reading, harmonisation and other musical concepts associated with traditional music lessons, along with musical styles of church hymns, orchestral and solo instruments typical of the early European classical pieces (Swanwick, 2002). While there has been observed advanced developments in other curricula such as science, mathematics, literature, and sociology, teaching methods in musical education have not changed much since the introduction of the public schooling system, making it lag behind from other fields of study. Because of this, lessons appear to focus on music that most of the younger generation consider â€Å"church music†, â€Å"old people music† or â€Å"archaic†, making them care less and deem these to be of lesser regard as opposed to say, musi c from the 1970’s and beyond (Jorgensen, 2003, p. 4). This way of thinking pushes the need to include other aspects of music that the present generation has greater appreciation of into the school curriculum, to increase the interest of the students in learning music and to improve their perception in learning the important principles of music as a whole (Frith, 1998). However, the fact that most academicians have less regard on popular music makes it harder to integrate this kind of music genre into an academic setting, as popular music has often been considered to be unimaginative, has lesser variation in style, timbre, etc., highly-repetitive, and comparable to mass-produced items (Lebler, 2008; Serra, Corral, Boguna, Haro & Ll. Arcos, 2012). Stigma associated with popular music does not give it justice to be taught formally to younger generations, which makes it difficult to integrate it into formal music curricula. Thankfully, there were changes in this viewpoint recentl y, and it is possible that through a compromise between the introduction