Band Discrimination

[oldbandnerd]

Would you want your child to take an english class with an inferior text book ?

[Dean E]

First, the school should have a fair and logical written policy and comply with it.

Second, the music teacher and other experts should help out the student by writing a letter explaining why the particular instrument complies with the school policy.

Any public school teacher or principal promoting a particular music dealer may be in violation of local or state ethics laws and regulations for government employees.

Private school teachers steering students to a particular store should be reported to the school's board.

[MartyNeilan]

To take this to the other extreme, I had two kinds insist on playing novelty-store Ocarina's (re: Legend of Zelda) in a middle school catch-all orchestra. After much difficult debate, I was finally able to switch them. One became a natural on the flute - he was very talented and probably would have succeeded at any instrument. The other held a violin for 2 months before quitting.
One of many problems when the inmates run the asylum.

[TexTuba]

Would you want your child to take an english class with an inferior text book ?

First off, you'd be suprised how many schools have inferior books. Second, kids don't really pay for those books. They DO have to pay for those instruments though. Bottom line, some parents can't afford these instruments and it isn't fair to deny a child the right to participate in music because they don't have Brand X. Not once have I heard kids being denied from orchestra. Does that mean it doesn't happen? No, it just means I hear about this more frequently in band. If these schools want their kids playing on a certain model horn, then they should provide them for those who can't acquire them. Denying kids the opportunity to make music is just ridiculous!

Ralph

[J Stowe]

Being chosen by the tuba, I know what it's like to not be able to afford an instrument during grade school. To me it seems very ludacris to deny a student participation in a public school organization, but then again, I live in Georgia, and I've never heard of that happening to someone in my area or even in other rural areas of Georgia. However, I'm not sure what it's like in Atlanta, but I can't imagine it being much different, since there are many underprivileged public areas in Atlanta as well. If a public school program wants to deny a student because of an instrument being "substandard," I think it's the band programs responsibility to give alternatives such as school-owned instruments or county-wide fundraisers to allow the kids to have support from the community. A used Bach-Strad is a lot less of a burden to buy for a business than it is a single parent.

[windshieldbug]

To my mind, people should not be steered toward only an approved store, but away from disapproved instruments. A slide-whistle does not belong in a school band.

If the parents cannot afford a decent instrument, then perhaps one can be provided by the district. (Perhaps such a student can be steered TOWARD an instrument that is typically provided by the school).

I do not believe that a demonstratively inferior instrument should be purchased, however, only to be sent back to such a vendor's "shop" leaving the student to sit during band with no instrument for months on end, as has been described.

The usual story...

Reasonable people seemed to be able to work this out for decades. Why can't we?

[XtremeEuph]

I think its a bunch of bullshit and angers me. A child should never be denied of music if they can help it. Maybe that denial should be changed into suggestions of a better instrument, or long term encouragement to save up, but..........wow....I dont like it.

[Tom Mason]

I do make a statement concerning certain brands of instruments when my beginning band parents meet with me.

I have a problem with instruments that are not made to a certain industry standard. A resource for repair parts is also a basic commodity. Solid construction, including standards in construction practices is a good thing.

Too many of the cheaper instruments are not up to standards that the top or second line manufacturers acheive. What concerns me more is that parents look to the cheaper instrument now without considering the costs of replacing that instrument two years down the road because the local music company will not repair those same instruments. (don't blame them).

I have a couple on students whose parents spent less on a horn. Both are now regretting the decision.

I do supply school owned instruments for those who can not afford the costs. Most of those students leave band after a couple of years because their parents don't push their kid to remain in the program. The child has no ownership invested in the school instrument, so who cares.......

The parents who invest in band are the most likely to show loyalty and push personal practice. If I had my choice, all students and parents would invest something in their band/orchestra.

Tom Mason

[zeign7]

I had never heard of something like this actually happening, it's a shock for sure! I would have to say, like many others, that's bull. It is one thing to suggest buying a better instrument, I'm all for that, but to not include a person because they own a less than preferrable brand is absolutely ludicrous.

It's not supposed to be about having the best band. If a band director is such a @@@@@ that he/she will keep students from playing in the band for financial reasons then I think each and every musician out there should personally write them a letter telling them to kindly #(*&! No, seriously, I think that they should be told that they have lost sight of what it means to be a musician if they are denying music education. Isn't it their JOB to teach everyone without bias about music and to aid them in participating?

I for one, started on the world's worst trumpet, I couldn't even tell you what brand it was. It looked like it had been ran over by a mac truck, its sound was terrible, and I can only imagine what the intonation was like, yet here I am 9 years later playing euphonium at Ohio University as a music performance and composition major. It's true that my parents did not invest in my instrument but perhaps they couldn't? Has that not crossed these band directors minds? Or are we so indifferent that only the rich deserve to make music?

I want to remind everyone that I am not upset over promoting one brand vs. the other, one store vs. the other, I couldn't care less really. It is the fact that people are being turned away because they have "inferior" or "cheap" equipment that really gets me going. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but that definitely lights a fire under my arse.

[windshieldbug]

... And, said in a very Oprah kind of quote,

"You go, girl!"

I think that everyone supports that! I know I do!

[Tom Mason]

I would like to pass along a certain thought, even though I agree that all kids should get the chance to play in band...........................

Band has never been a right of students. Neither has football, basketball, cheerleading, or other activities. A student and the parents/legal guardians have to have a desire to step beyond the requirements of the state for the just and equatable education that one is entitled to in order to succeed.

I do have a limit on what I can give students, and that limit is usually defined by my budget. My budget gets used to repair instruments that get mistreated, (usually by students who had parents who would not invest in band); a few new instruments, music, training, and supplies. With no joking intended, many of my students come from families that are so poor, that my budget helps pay for reeds and other materials that students usually buy.

Where I don't have a problem supplying what instruments that the school does own, I WILL NOT go into the business of supplying an instrument for every student. School law does not require it, and I have better things to do with the school's money.

Tom Mason

[MikeMason]

Charity cases almost never work out.In my experience,chronic poverty is a character issue which reflects in all parts of a person's life,including getting kids to rehearsals/performances and taking care of school owned property.There are always exceptions which i will go out of my way to help,but poor parenting is VERY hard to overcome for most children.This sounds harsh,but teachers' time and resources are very limited and must be spent wisely to have a successful program.Just ask any teacher what they think about"inclusion".If a child truly wants a musical opportunity,every effort shold be exerted,but only to the extent the child is willing to do his part.

[Mitch]

/rant/
I think tubalawlisa has brought a significant discussion to the forum. Where I differ from some of the other respondents is in what I believe to be the real root of the problem.

Education in the US is way off course, be it music, reading, art, etc.

Administrators amaze me in their ability to remain upright, given their apparent lack of a spine in the face of varied and numerous situations.

So many programs, in so many places, are not teaching.

Schools are operating not from an instructional direction but rather from affect-influenced feel-good bunk.

I have a 7-year-old neice who has been accepted to and participated in programs at a major university. She can't spell for crap. She probably can't spell "crap." The school she attends believes it's more important that the children "feel good about what they're doing." What a load of bunk. Schools are failing to teach children that their success or lack thereof is not the sole foundation for their self-esteem. Their worth is not determined by how they spell a word. The word is spelled correctly only one way (in most cases). There's a right answer and a wrong answer, and each has absolutely nothing to do with a child's value as an individual. This "feel-good" spelling crap only sets a child up for failure. Tell children it's not important how they spell and congratulate them for putting letters on paper. Instill in them that there's "no wrong way" to do it. Well, at some point, should they encounter a responsible teacher, somebody's got to tell those kids they're "wrong." Somebody's got to say that "congratulations" is NOT spelled "kungrajulayshuns." So how does that kid feel at THAT point? They've been told they only need to feel good about spelling and there's no wrong answer. All this system does is set the kid up for a crash.

The same crap is present in band and orchestra programs. Most every method book is absolute crap. It's the same crap as 100 years ago, regurgitated and regurgitated, with some twit adding "their twist" to what some other twit added his "twist."

This is partially the fault of the university system and the requirement put upon faculty to publish. Well, I'm sorry, but the way you play a first-line g on a BBb tuba is pretty much the same f&^%#* thing it was a hundred years ago. How many freakin' method books do we need??????

I went to grad school at a major university. While there, a member of the Ed. faculty put on a show about his "new method." What a f@#$%^& pile of @!*$!!!! It was the same old crap that's been around for 50 years! But HE put HIS name on it and that somehow meant it was new. So again I say, the fingering for low C on an oboe...um...still the same! The way you make a sound on the clarinet...still the same! Music notation?...still the same! The pitch of an f#? ... still the same! Dynamics?!?...STILL THE SAME! Violin strings?!?!...STILL THE SAME! VIOLIN FINGERINGS!?!?! ...STILL THE SAME!!! THE WAY YOU MAKE SOUND ON A TUBA MOUTHPIECE?!?!?!?! ...STILL THE $^&*#*@ SAME!!!!!!!!!

Music (removing composition from the discussion) has remained fundamentally entirely unchanged for the last 100 years. The notation, the instruments, the way sound is made on the instruments...it's the same. The way a saxophone works hasn't changed, so why do people need to complete reinventing how you tell someone to play the saxophone? To me, it's like, "Well...I'm inventing the wheel. Well, sure, there's already a 'wheel,' but my wheel will be different. My wheel will be round! But not round like 'round,' see, but rather a different kind of 'round.' My 'round' is going to be totally different! You've never seen 'round' like this! In fact, I've applied for a patent for my 'round,' and I intend to trademark, servicemark, and copyright it as well. 'Cuz my round...damn! It's really round!"

I've always thought the imposition of ridiculous rules and/or conditions by any classroom teacher or administrator is the first sign of incompetency. If you're really doing the job, teaching what you're supposed to teach, you don't need all the other crap. Where am I coming from? I taught for four years before I went back to grad school. Every principal who observed/evaluated me told me that mine was without a doubt one of the best classroom environments he/she had ever seen. And I didn't have to deal with all kinds of rules and regulations, and I had virtually no discipline problems ever. Because I taught the subject matter, all the other crap fell in line. And everywhere I taught, the same administrators told me that they never thought so much could be accomplished in so little time. I say this only to serve as a reference, that I know how it can be done, versus how it's usually done.

Any teacher saying that a kid has to play a particular horn is likely to be incompetent, unable to instruct the student on how to make a good sound on an instrument. Sure, some instruments have minute limitations, but they're always minimal if the instrument is otherwise correctly functioning. Anyone coming up with all this other crap is making busy work because they don't know how to do the job. They know how to push paper, but don't know how to teach.

Very little "teaching" seems to be happening these days. I take it as a sign that educational discussions rarely include much about education.

2+2=4. Always has, always will. I don't give a rat's *** how anybody feels about it. Any feelings, positive or negative, are completely irrelevant in the discussion of 2+2=4. Crap is spelled c-r-a-p. Again, it doesn't matter how anybody feels about it. It's spelled c-r-a-p and affect has no place in any discussion about how you spell it. Affect has no place in education. It has everything to do with creation, but nothing to do with education. The fundamental facet of learning is absorption. Receive the information as it is. It's a one-way transaction. Doesn't matter what you think about it. What you do with that information is the creation side. A student has to learn the Pythagorean Theorem. Doesn't matter waht they think about it, it hasn't changed in a really long time, no point in fighting it. Now...if a kid takes that information and figures out the mathematical expression for String Theory, great.

Time to get back to basics. Drop the crap, drop the b.s. rules, drop the affect, do the job.

/rant*/

[rwiegand]

Speaking of crap...

While I don't see a lot of great spelling, rote regurgitation of factoids, well memorized times tables, or good penmanship what I do see coming out of our schools are kids who are much better prepared to think than I was 40+ years ago.

Our schools (I can only speak of the ones I know well) seem to have figured out that kids need to be prepared to learn their entire lives, not just get loaded up once and sent off to cruise. So time that was once spent on endless spelling lists now seems to be spent on writing to convey ideas--spelling gets corrected, because bad spelling inhibits communication, but the emphasis is on writing sentences that make sense, put together in paragraphs that convey ideas, with the serious critique and teacher's effort placed on whether or not that was accomplished, not on how well spelled nor how neat the paper was.

As a scientist I'm ecstatic about two changes I've seen in teaching over the years. In science the focus has changed from answers to questions. Coming up with answers in science is essentially trivial, 99% of it is crank-turning. Formulating the hypothesis--indeed, thinking to ask the question in the first place-- is where the insight and brilliance happens. The kids, both graduate and undergraduate, I see coming into the lab today are vastly more sophisticated in their thinking than my cohort was. They probably can't add long strings of figures in their heads as well as I could, but who cares--that's what computers are for.

The other change, related to this, is a new emphasis on estimation-- asking "Does the answer make sense?". Thinking through the problem in advance and getting a feeling for where the answer ought to be so that you can look at the result on the computer (or longhand notepad) and say 'this doesn't make sense" is one of the most valuable skills anyone can have. When I went to school it was all about getting the exact right answer, it didn't matter if you were off by 0.1 or 10,000. Now my kids are routinely asked to first estimate an answer and then calculate the exact answer. I think it gets them to the right answer more often and certainly avoids order-of-magnitude errors much more often. Can they do it in their heads? Why should I care?--that's why we have calculators.

I can't say so much about music. Somehow our middle and high school bands, chorus, and orchestra are putting out much better music than I ever even knew existed in HS, so I'm going to assume they know what they're doing. They seem to be producing kids who play well, have fun, and take their music forward in life. I'm not sure what else to ask for.

[rwiegand]

I've never heard our kids talk about contests, so I don't know whether they participate or not. The concerts they put on have a lot more than three pieces, and a lot of the kids play in several differnt ensembles (band, orchestra, jazz band, chamber groups). I don't see any evidence of "teaching to the test" (though it does show up elsewhere-- don't take what I say as saying all is perfect!)

[Rick Denney]

The fundamental facet of learning is absorption. Receive the information as it is. It's a one-way transaction. Doesn't matter what you think about it. What you do with that information is the creation side. A student has to learn the Pythagorean Theorem. Doesn't matter waht they think about it, it hasn't changed in a really long time, no point in fighting it. Now...if a kid takes that information and figures out the mathematical expression for String Theory, great.

Aw, Mitch, tell us how you really feel.

I teach short courses quite often. The people who pay me to develop those courses make many demands, based on "adult learning" principles that they read out of a book written by some adult-learning researcher. They mean well. And when they are talking to people who can't teach, their methods serve to minimize the damage, perhaps.

But they want us to provide a large share of the time for listening to the students. And a few of students sometimes complain that we don't spend much time learning about what they do.

It makes me wonder why they are taking the course, or why my clients are paying to create and deliver it. If the students want to teach me, I should be taking the course, and they should be teaching. It's okay if they want to disagree with me, and the discussion will help everyone learn, but at the end of the day, they are there because they want (or need) to know what I'm going to tell them.

Generally, I can tell if people are getting it just by looking at their facial expressions. I don't need all the "planned interactions". One of the courses I'm asked to teach wants me to be the host of a mock Jeopardy! game. It's embarassing for everyone in the room, and everyone is usually so uncomfortable that it distracts from learning rather than enhancing it.

Instead of that sort of thing, I lay content on them. If they drift away (painfully visible to any teacher), I simplify or backup to bring them back into the subject. If they aren't getting it, I try it from a different angle. Sometimes, I work a problem. Sometimes, I let them tell me how to work a problem so that they can expose their own misunderstanding (to themselves--I already know about it, thank you). These are techniques that are applied by teachers who are paying attention, and cannot be "planned" into the curriculum or applied as a formula.

I'm not sure how this relates to preventing band membership because the parents can't afford this or that. But if I as a teacher can tell by looking whether my students are getting it, then I figure any good band director ought to be able to tell the difference between the interested kids and those seeking band to avoid doing something they like even less. And the teachers should have the discretion to act on that perception. The problem is that they are not allowed to exercise that judgment.

But it must be noted that the reason they are prevented from exercising judgment is that so many of them have abused that exercise either thorugh incompetence, snobbishness, or malice. And this seems to have been more true in band programs than in other academic pursuits.

Any parent who tells me they can't afford to buy a student-qualilty trombone for their kid is lying, in my opinion. You can buy a passable Conn Director on ebay for uner $100, and for another $100, put it in reasonable playing condition. I paid $25 for one that even I could have returned to playing condition (I wanted the case). Any parent who can't afford that better show me a house with no color TV (let alone a big-screen), and an old car that they bought with cash.

Trombones are probably the cheapest of all band instruments, so maybe that's not a good example. But even with higher prices, I submit that even the poor of this country have enough discretionary dollars to be able to decide how they will spend it. And that decision will reveal a lot about their commitment to their kids (and to their kid's involvement in band).

And charging a uniform fee seems reasonable to me, and that fee should include the cost of maintenance plus the amortized cost of acquisition. The alternative is for the band to undertake fund-raising activities to close the gap. Again, most parents can afford basics like this if they care to, even poor parents.

But that doesn't excuse the snobbery in many schools. Snobbery is one of the worst aspects of our current culture, and it seems to be getting worse in general. Wealthy kids are taught to be "nice" to the poor, which is tantamount to being told that they are better (that is different from being taught generosity, which implies that wealth means responsibility). They are not taught to be responsible to standards of behavior that should apply to rich and poor alike. So, they learn to draw lines. Children can be openly quite cruel about those lines.

They learned it from someone. When the band booster program decides to support the spring trip, it's usually the most financially capable making the decision, and often without regard to the capacity of those with less. We've had this discussion before. The poorer parents in the booster club are embarassed to have to tell the richer parents that they can't afford $2600 to send their kid to some far-off location when that will mean the rest of the family doesn't get a vacation as a family. Richer parents don't want their kids to be bored by going to the sorts of places poorer parents can afford. Sheesh.

And it happens with instruments. In the old days, if someone showed they were deserving but incapable of affording something they needed for school, others would pass the hat to help them out. I don't recall ever judging a kid by his instrument, and in any case I wouldn't have fared well myself, since I was limited to the school's plastic sousaphone. But now we expect the school to provide it so that we can drive our BMW's back to our suburban McMansions--the ones with the master suites so self-contained that we don't have to even interact with our kids who are in "the other wing".

So, some band directors are corrupt. Some are led around by their nose by the snobs in the booster club (or they are themselves snobs). Some are so driven by a sports-minded performance ethic that they forget that music is supposed to be an academic pursuit. They push away kids who they think will, for whatever reason including cheap instruments, hold them back at contest. All of these faults can lead to discriminating against poor kids who can't keep up materially with the rich kids. But solving those problems by imposing rules that prevent a wise band director from acting on clear perceptions will not work, despite that we keep trying to do it.

When I was in school, the district authorities declared that the schools could not require students to spend money on anything. The English teachers could not require their kids to buy books for reading assignments. Thus, my advanced English class was no longer allowed to buy the great works of literature that were part of the teacher's curriculum. We were limited to the tripe that was in the "literature" textbook--usually a collection of desultory and often depressing short stories written by English academics and not by the proven great authors of the past. Did that serve the poor kids who claimed (falsely) that they could not afford a paperback version of Wuthering Heights?

Rick "whose strong feelings have been unloosed by Mitch's strong feelings" Denney

[Rick Denney]

As a scientist I'm ecstatic about two changes I've seen in teaching over the years. In science the focus has changed from answers to questions. Coming up with answers in science is essentially trivial, 99% of it is crank-turning. Formulating the hypothesis--indeed, thinking to ask the question in the first place-- is where the insight and brilliance happens.

How can you shine a light into darkness when you don't know where the light has already been shone? In my own scientific pursuits, I have discovered that the surest path to creating something new is to achieve a completely transparent understanding of all that has been done before. The crank-turning comes before the flash of brilliance, too.

I find that students are not taught basic theory in my subject area. I'm not sure it's any worse than it was, but it's bad enough. If they stay in school long enough, they are taught advanced theory, but I don't know how they understand it, because it was not built on a foundation of basic theory. Thus, when I talk to Ph.D. traffic-flow theoreticians about the kinematic wave theory, or the Two-Fluid Model, they stare blankly at me. Thus, the "new" things they learn are further derivations of the methods they were taught, not the theory. There has been very little theoretical development in my field for a long time because of that.

And the practitioners only know how to run computer programs, and they don't know the objectives on which those programs optimize. They are taught methods, not principles. In that metric, we are MUCH worse than we were 30 years ago.

So, I'm glad that the new scientists you see in your field are more creative, but the ones I see just pretend to be more creative, while usually just creating the same old thing, not realizing that it's been done before.

I was once playing in a brass quintet. We were playing a Canadian Brass arrangement, and at the conclusion of it a trumpet player resisted my suggestion of playing in the same style the CB played. (We were bonehead amateurs, not music majors.) He asked why we couldn't develop our own style. I told him that had not yet earned the right. If we can't play it the way the CB played it, then how did we think we could do better? You can't venture into the unknown until you know where the boundary is.

(I'll add that the use of calculators has been a great boon to science, but it has also made students lazy about such critically important topics as significant figures. And I'll add that, yes, high-school bands sound better than they used to. But community bands sound worse. That tells me that band kids are not embracing music as a life-long avocation the way they used to. And that tells me that band programs are not instilling a love of musical performance, the same as my English teacher was trying to instill a love of literature that is the hallmark of educated people.)

Rick "who thinks creativity is based on lots and lots of plain, basic learning" Denney

[rwiegand]

How can you shine a light into darkness when you don't know where the light has already been shone? In my own scientific pursuits, I have discovered that the surest path to creating something new is to achieve a completely transparent understanding of all that has been done before. The crank-turning comes before the flash of brilliance, too.

I can't disagree, understanding one's field is very important, as is the incremental work that pushes knowledge in a field to the point where the inconsistencies with theory start to pop up and someone eventually realizes the need for a new theory. But, in my experience, teaching of either critical thinking or creativity was pretty scarce in the past, at least before graduate school. I'm excited to see our high school kids graded on their ability to come up with a testable hypothesis and experiments with proper controls that will answer their question rather than just on their ability to crank through a cookbook exercise in the lab book and produce the cookbook answer. Part of that process is putting the experiment into the context of what is known, which means learning some theory and facts, but I think I'm seeing efforts to go beyond just theory and facts into the discovery thought process.

It can't be either/or-- but given the choice between a student who can think but is ignorant of a lot of facts and one who has the literature down cold, but doesn't think constantly about the associations and inconsistencies, I'll take the former every time. Ignorance is readily cured given motivation.

[Dan Schultz]

I can't single any one previous post but I can tell everyone this:.... when I started playing and old Eb Conn upright tuba in 1956, all I got was a horn and a fingering chart. There was a little discussion about counting but for the most part, I learn no theory all the way through high school. What I learned about music I basically learned on my own. I don't think public school has change very much inasmuch as no one is forced to learn. About the musical instruments available today... I can't blame the band directors for giving out a list of 'acceptable' instruments for students to buy. Just yesterday I got a call from a young girl who asked if I would fix her piccolo if she supplied the pads. It seems as though her dad had made an attempt at fixing it already. The brand name was 'Victory'. The piccolo is currently selling for $59 on Ebay. I told the girl I could probably make her piccolo play but wouldn't guarantee that it would next week. Someone's got to let parents know the truth.

[Dan Schultz]

didn't First Act sue Mr. E's or something somewhere because they said those instruments were terrible and they couldn't service them? and win like $50 million?

From what I've read, First Act sued Brooks Mays and won a settlement from B-M's insurance company for in the range of 17 million (I think).