The Straits Time, Friday, 27 August 2004: Forum (Pg 24)

"MUSIC OFF-KEY, ART DRAWS NO INTEREST IN SCHOOLS"
By SATISH K. KHATTAR

I applaud Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's insight into some of the education woes and certainly hope his speech at the National Day Rally will create a stir within education circles.

I was reminded of a well-known fact: our kids hate music lessons and even art - but only in school.

Can anyone really hate music or art? The person who has no music in him, Shakespeare once said, is dangerous.

My kids detest music lessons in school, cursing the recorder as an instrument of torture. Yet they gyrate to music at home, sing songs for family audiences and are even keen to learn to play the piano or tabla. Same kids.

I remember, during my school days, one of the students even feigned a stomach ache during music lesson and remained in the toilet throughout, terrified by both the music teacher and the recorder (yes, we too had the dreadful recorders then). Surely, this should not be the case?

My kids also go for art lessons every week outside of school and come back with really inspiring drawings. In contrast, they turn in drab pieces of artwork in school. Same kids, different results.

Surely, music and art are worthy of better respect and appreciation in schools as they bring out a nobler humanity in us all. Music, after all, as Shakespeare so eloquently put I, "can tame the savage beast" in all of us.

I think part of the problem is that we do not have (or have not nurtured) enough quality music and art teachers who can inspire a love of the arts. This stems form an even-larger problem: we are giving the arts a low priority in schools.

Can we fault our "savage" kids then, who grow up without a passion for the arts?

Also, what does this say of us as a nation: that we are only superficially engaging in the arts, preferring instead of focus on the money-making aspects of life and business?

Perhaps PM Lee's speech is a good starting point to re-assess ourselves and the kind of education that we want for our kids.

Beyond the undeniably important academic thrust, let us give our kids a fair balance by inculcating an active joy in music and art.

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I've always deplored the way most music and art lessons are conducted in schools.

In music lesson, you sing songs, play the recorder, learn how to read a bit of notation, learn a bit of rhythm and some ti-ta-tika-ta whatsoever thing.

In art lesson, you do a variety of activities, but what you think is good may not always be the case form the teachers' point of view.

The finer aspects of music are often left unappreciated. Usually kids go and discover their Jay Chous and A-meis and Linkin' Parks form recommendation by their friends, or when they go out to Orchard Road and come across street muzak. Tell them about Mozart and Beethoven and Bach (usually mispronounced as "batch") and Chopin (again misread as "chopping") and you get a variety of responses: (1) they will draw inverted McDonald's signs in the air using their fingers, while singing "di-di-di-dah"; (2) Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee . . . sian arh; (3) ? ? ?

Everybody talks about music education. But what in the right sense, and in the right way, is truly "music education"? Are we supposed to formulate that "music = recorder" and "music = singing"? And is Classical music (a term which I seriously dislike, and disapprove, of using; serious or concert hall/chamber music would sound much better since "classical" refers to a specific era in the history of European music) really limited to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin? There's more than meets the eye. Consider the Americans, who fuse jazz, country and cowboy influences in their pieces. Consider Bartok, Brahms, Grainger, Britten, Vaughan Williams, who quote elements of folk music in their works. Not to mention the nationalists, i.e. Sibelius, Grieg, Dvorak, Smetana, the Mighty Fistful et cetera. There's enough music out there to fit one each to every Singaporean. Not to forget works for the stage, including ballets, musicals and operettas (operas are much too long and difficult for younger people to appreciate).

Go further form the Western tradition. How about music form the South Americas, Africa and Asia? Some of them have influenced the way modern writers score out their pieces.

What approach should music education take? Listening. Exposure. Hands-on. Children, especially those in Primary School, are impressionable. Take a piece of music, play it to them without introducing anything about it to them, and watch their response. Finally, reveal what piece it is. If they like it, play more of that particular composer's works. There are also videos to serve as educational models, such as the highly-regarded Young People's Concerts produced by Leonard Bernstein. Or why not the conductors of our various orchestras make a trip down to the schools to conduct lessons, and carry their wide knowledge of repertoire to share with everyone? They could bring their band along to show off to the kids.

My music teacher in Chung Cheng, Mr Chua Ying Hwee, used to show us videos of musical performances in Secondary Three. We watched Riverdance, Anchors Aweigh!, the Wizard of Oz and the Prince of Egypt. By then music lessons were reduced to a half-hour session per week. We simply cherished those moments, and craved for more. Now, this is what music education should be. Think of it: most of my classmates are the kind of people who enjoy heavy metal rock and pop music. You wouldn't find them at a symphony concert, let alone a musical.

There ought to be creative leeway in the approach to art education. Each individual should be allowed to develop his or her style, be it sophisticated, or just simple, more like a child's scrawl. There shouldn't be marks given for artwork, because the mark reflects the teacher's biasness or opinions about the work presented to him or her. What matters is self-criticism form the artist. Even a primary school kid should be asked: "Do you like your drawing? If you were to draw it again, how would you do it?" There should NEVER be: "how can you improve your drawing?" It simply means the work is fucked-up in the eyes of the teacher and he or she is trying to CHANGE the individual artistry of the person. To take it further, this is how you create a society of non-entrepreneurs: people who are too afraid to be different or to step upon a place where no one has gone before. What an art teacher ought to focus on is technique, i.e. the basics in handling different medium. Then the kid should be left alone to do what he or she wants with the skills that he or she has acquired.

The point about music and art being "worthy of better respect and appreciation in schools" draws a close link to the movie "Mr Holland's Opus", where Mr Holland, the music teacher in a school, tries to fight for the school's music programme to remain despite cuts in the budget, but looses the battle in the end. A quote by the principal of the school which still lingers on: "If I were to choose between music and long division I'd choose long division." Although the principal feels sorry for Mr Holland, you can still see that he doesn't give a damn about music education. Maths and science are considered "priorities" that everybody should set their sights on; in Singapore schools they take up a majority of the weekly slot on the timetable, while art and music lessons are relegated to one hour per week. If nothing is going to done about this, I don’t understand while the government pumps in so much money for the Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay. Your children are not going to spend their time inside there. Instead, they're probably heading for the Indoor Stadium where they'd find more solace in a gig by some Taiwanese boyband.