It was a beautiful moment. The school I was visiting used their main musical performance of the year to play a piece of music from each of the 20 countries where their students came from.
It was a celebration of difference as well as a way of articulating to the students (and parents) that “we hear you, literally, we hear your music and your culture – and you all belong here”.
Expressive forms of music-making enhance social bonding, cooperation, and realisation of community (Turino, 2009; Maida & Beck, 2018). Music flourishes everywhere. However, most secondary music classrooms in the UK focus on presentational performance over participatory performance (MacGregor, 2020).
It could be that our wonderful music teachers are success stories from the “talent culture” – the most exclusionist form of music education, particularly in conservatories and universities. Such institutions can be fiercely selective and competitive, and this exclusionist model permeates even the selection/rejection criteria of maintained schools and community-based music programmes.
In talent cultures, music learning is predominantly based on a model of professionalism. Music is exceptional in that it can often weed out the “not good enough” and this begins very young, sometimes, as with many people with disabilities, even before formal schooling (Lubet, 2009).
Who better to discuss the dichotomy inherent in music teaching with than my old friend Ben Gudgeon. We started out teaching together and he is now headteacher of one of the best music schools in the world, The Yehudi Menuhin School, a specialist independent music school in Surreyfounded in 1963 by violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin.
As we read through the literature together and discussed the issues of inclusion and music and education, we realised we had opened a can of worms. This article summarises some of the big themes that music departments in all schools face and considers some practical steps we might take to harness music as a part of inclusive education while still offering tailored opportunities for more gifted students.
Special environments
Ben explains how specialist performance schools often come with a high presence of additional needs and, moreover, the students may do exceptionally well with one-to-one instrument tutoring. Put them all into a classroom to learn maths and you quickly see that an admissions policy based on musical aptitude makes for an extremely diverse intake academically.
Interestingly, Yehudi Menuhin founded his school to cater for the highly advanced musicians who, like him, found it difficult to fit into a mainstream environment. So the school, despite being musically exclusive, is also a haven of inclusivity – a special school for musicians.
In the mainstream, it is easy to imagine the music geeks clinging to the music department at break and lunchtime, perhaps avoiding social engagement.
To think of excelling in music as just being about giftedness is to be ignorant of what really happens in music departments and schools across the country.
And music is not the only talent-based activity which can make some people feel alienated: there are plenty of students who equally don’t see the point of participating in drama or sports, for example.
Of course, some students will want to avoid the spotlight for a range of reasons, be it trauma, neurological, or fear of standing out. But there’s a balance here between pushing and nudging children to experience and being wilfully ignorant of SEN.
Three types of music student
Ben recounts that when he was a graduate music student, he overheard an argument between a conductor of a musical group and an undergraduate member of his group. The undergraduate was complaining about how boring the last rehearsal had been: “Music is supposed to be fun,” she protested.
The conductor’s reply was powerful: “Music is only fun if it’s good!” The proof of music requiring hard work is in the elated faces on young (and old) musicians who had endured the gruelling rehearsal process and were rewarded with the thrill of a high-quality performance.
But how can music be inclusive if the above is true? It implies that the product is more important than any of the performers or their own enjoyment. It suggests a pure and brutal meritocracy which spits out the weak and promotes the healthy.
Ben suggests that people involved in music can be divided into three broad groups and this opens up the possibilities for inclusive approaches within each.
The first group contains people who adopt the mindset already mentioned. They take music seriously and want it to be top quality. This group includes professional musicians and committed amateurs who care about performance, presentation and artistry.
It includes children who work hard for their music exams, study music as an option at GCSE and A level, and have aspirations to be involved in music at a high level throughout their lives.
Members of the second group are more relaxed. They like to sing or play an instrument, either alone for their own pleasure or with others. Rehearsals should be fun. Still committed, but music isn’t all-important in philosophical or artistic terms. I had many such people in my choirs and orchestras at school.
The third group contains everyone else. People who have never had a one-to-one music lesson. The boy who was politely invited (and gratefully accepted) to mime in the choir. The “tone-deaf” (there’s no such thing, by the way). Willing but perhaps less naturally able. Or perhaps just not particularly interested. This group, importantly, includes untapped talent.
Promoting inclusion with group one
I think we have to accept that the first group is simply not inclusive in the now traditional sense of the word, although being mindful of representation and removing physical barriers is always a welcome inclusive move.
If the object of the group is to strive for perfection, it has to be a meritocracy, and there is nothing wrong with that. Elitism is not a dirty word when it comes to high performance, be it in creative arts or sport: there has to be a place to celebrate an art form at its highest possible level.
For this group, the emphasis is perhaps better shifted to sharing the music and putting their talents to meaningful use. Consider the following:
- Can these students spread the joy and positive effects of music? For example, Yehudi Menuhin School has a “Chance to Play” programme in which older students visit local schools to get them playing instruments.
- Encourage them to perform far and wide, exposing people to new music and share the joy.
- Inclusion for this group is still required but looks different perhaps, such as finding them opportunities to experience music at an even higher level.
- Use your older students to inspire younger ones and actually play or rehearse together. It is just as valuable for the older, or more gifted student, to learn how to support and encourage someone at an earlier stage.
- Use your superstars to play or accompany the beginners. Teach them to pay it forward from an early age.
Illustrating this final point, Ben once had the honour of watching one of his pupils perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The pupil had a solo and it was a source of huge pride. But what happened after that was even more magical – he went to sit in the back row of the violins, playing in the rank and file of the orchestra that he grew up in, with musicians far more junior than him taking the lead. A truly moving act of giving back.
Promoting inclusion with group two
Here are some reflections on promoting inclusive practice with our second group of musicians.
- Promoting even higher expectations by exposing them to great musicianship outside of the school. The idea is to make the experience more rewarding for those who are already good at/into music. This could then be harnessed to give them something to work towards. We can then celebrate their achievements.
- Invest time and energy into creating projects to be proud of. This is arguably the bread and butter group for most music teachers, but the challenge for them is finding ways to engage musicians who might not necessarily fit into a natural group, such as squeezing saxophones into an orchestra and how do you involve the pianists? Togetherness and music-making is the key. Invest more resources into arrangements that can include all students – think percussion!
- Celebrate all forms of music equally and create opportunities to unite musicians wherever possible. It doesn’t have to be Mozart for it to be excellent. Cross-curricular fertilisation could mean exploring Spanish music with the language department. I still remember going to a university lecture when I was 15 on the physics of the didgeridoo!
- Remember that for some people, the rehearsal is as much fun, if not more fun, than the performance and this could actually be a goal in itself. It is often ignored as an outcome and thought of purely as a means to an end. What if the end was to enjoy spending time together making music?
- Music is a great leveller – it is an opportunity for a year 7 performer to sit alongside a year 13 and all kinds of mixed students and even those from different types of schools.
Promoting inclusion with group three
Group three is about that “everyone together” experience. This is the time that the headteacher is singing alongside the student and the parent. A togetherness and community experience is the goal.
I think many a school would benefit from saying “we come together to sing”. I visited a school where after assembly, the students walk through the school singing the same song – loudly! This is quite literally filling the corridors and classrooms with song and a sense of togetherness.
They laughed when they said that they initially did this to keep the rabble down when they sprawled out of the hall but chanced upon a most beautiful thing. Whole-school singing is a really accurate barometer of the community spirit.
Final thoughts
A survey of more than 650 state secondary schools (Daubney & Mackrill, 2018) revealed worrying changes between 2012 and 2016, including reduced teaching hours, falling staffing levels, and fewer schools offering GCSE music.
But at the top, a space occupied by children “who are exceptionally talented” (Henley, 2011) provision has flourished. The issue is not affordability or provision when reaching the elite level. Rather, it is how children get there in the first place.
The many barriers preventing children reaching the top tier – including the lack of provision in state schools, affordability and access and parents simply being unaware of the benefits of an early musical education – are certainly complex and beyond the scope of this article (Griffiths, 2020).
I said to Ben that I’m not sure I could ever have been as good a musician as him, but that wasn’t really what I was looking for anyway. What I needed was the opportunity to join in the experience, which I was fortunate to find.
He said similarly, that he never aspired to rise to the top of the performance game, but what he gained most from musical rehearsals was the sense of belonging and being a part of something far bigger than himself musically.
So there’s two words which tie together everything to do with these sometimes contradictory ideas of elite music and music for all – that all children are included with “opportunity” and “belonging”.
I hope that this article somehow helps persuade all those in schools about the benefit of music education not just as an academic subject but as one of the best agents of inclusion.
- Daniel Sobel is founder of Inclusion Expert, chair of the International Forums of Inclusion Practitioners, author, speaker and advisor to local and national governments. Find his previous articles for SecEd via http://bit.ly/seced-sobel
- Ben Gudgeon is the head of Yehudi Menuhin School, a specialist music school in Surrey. He has enjoyed a long career in education before which he also spent 10 years as a freelance musician.
Further information & references
- Daubney & Mackrill: Changes in secondary music curriculum provision over time 2016-2018/19, University of Sussex, 2018: https://bit.ly/3lrUb28
- Griffiths: Playing the white man's tune: Inclusion in elite classical music education, British Journal of Music Education (37,1), 2020.
- Henley Review: Music Education in England, Department for Education and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, 2011.
- Lubet: The inclusion of music/the music of inclusion, International Journal of Inclusive Education (13,7), 2009.
- MacGregor: Participatory performance in the secondary music classroom and the paradox of belonging, Music Education Research (22,2), 2020.
- Maida & Beck: Introduction: Towards global sustainability and communities of practice. In Global Sustainability and Communities of Practice, Maida & Beck (eds), Berghahn Books, 2018.
- Turino: Four fields of music making and sustainable living, The World of Music (51,1), 2009.