Music education for social change in the United States: towards artistic citizenship through Little Kids Rock

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Dylan Smith Smith ◽  
Warren Gramm Gramm ◽  
Kenrick Wagner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Alternative Music ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Federal Mandate ◽  
Large Ensembles

Public education in the United States is often woefully under-funded, especially in the arts, despite a federal mandate to provide music education for all. Where music programs exist in US schools, they tend to focus on teacher-directed large ensembles that afford students little agency or creative opportunity, playing music that alienates a majority of young people. Faced with the volume of evidence pointing to the benefits of including music in a well-rounded education, philanthropy-funded nonprofit companies such as Little Kids Rock step in to fill the vacuum in state provision. This paper is a descriptive, intrinsic case study that describes how Little Kids Rock provides culturally relevant music making experiences for young people in schools, through a learning approach called music as a second language and alternative music classes termed modern band. Little Kids Rock builds a nationwide community of innovative music pedagogues by training teachers, donating musical instruments and sharing original curricular resources. This paper includes examples of two modern band teachers – one working in a rock band context, and the other a hip hop facilitator. The work of these and other teachers is ever more urgent in an era in which the U.S. perpetuates an intense neoliberal capitalism that oppresses and marginalizes vast numbers of its own people. Little Kids Rock aims to foster artistic citizenship wherein music makers recognize social and emancipatory responsibilities with the aim of transforming lives for the better.

Diversifying Musical Experiences in Schools and Music Teacher Preparation Programs

2019 ◽  
pp. 891-901
Author(s):  
Robert H. Woody ◽  
Mark C. Adams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
Preparation Programs ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Large Ensembles ◽  
Classical Traditions

This chapter discusses the innate differences between vernacular music-making cultures and those oriented in Western classical traditions, and suggests students in traditional school music education programs in the United States are not typically afforded opportunities to learn skills used in vernacular and popular music-making cultures. The chapter emphasizes a need to diversify music-making experiences in schools and describes how vernacular musicianship may benefit students’ musical development. It suggests that, in order for substantive change to occur in music education in the United States, teachers will need to advance beyond simply considering how to integrate popular music into their traditional large ensembles—and how preservice music teacher education programs may be the key to help better prepare teachers to be more versatile and philosophically open to teaching a more musically diverse experience in their future classrooms.

Race, the Arts, and Religion in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig R. Prentiss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Active Sites ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Arts

With the slow realization that race was not a category in nature, but rather the fruit of social imagination emerging from colonialism, scholars in the late 20th century shifted their focus to the cultural elements feeding that imagination, including religion and the arts. Although most studies in the field address fairly conventional constructions of religion and the arts (two categories that, like race, have also been destabilized), some studies reveal the potential for these three categories to be co-constituting. Studies addressing religiously themed music, including spirituals, gospel, hip-hop, and a significant portion of country music, have shed light on the ways in which these genres encode and inform racial paradigms. Portraits in theater, dance, and film of ideas and practices associated with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and other social groupings have proven active sites for the production of influential, and often competing, conceptions of race. Stereotypes linking religious and racial classifications are perpetuated as well as challenged in these artistic media. Given that the racial imagination in the United States is articulated using the language of color, painting and sculpture have been instrumental in conveying vivid connections between race and religion. For instance, many paintings celebrating Christianity’s triumph over America’s indigenous people concurrently depicted white dominance over them as well. A theological system rooting skin color in divine decree, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did in its Book of Mormon, helped assure a fair-skinned and fair-haired Jesus would populate its art. The politics of Jesus’ color continued to be played out in painting and sculpture in the United States to the present day, and exemplifies the interaction of racial, religious, and artistic categories.

The Economic Accountability of Music Education

1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-227
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Oehrle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Music Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
The Arts ◽  
United States Economy ◽  
Economic Recessions ◽  
Phase Out ◽  
Positive Effect

Music education struggles to survive in countries such as England, United States and South Africa because of the lack of financial support, particularly during economic recessions. To counter this unfortunate situation, well-written books and articles have been appeared over the years, propounding the truth that the arts do have an essential place in the balanced education of children, but these well-founded and constructed arguments continually fall on deaf ears. During economic recessions government planners and educational authorities rationalise that they can afford to do away with the arts because these subjects make little or no difference to the economic welfare of the country.Information from the best-seller by Peters & Waterman, In Search of Excellence, reveals that the principle characteristics of the managers of excellent companies in the United States are characteristics that concern the creative process of thinking, creative aspects of personality, creative products and environmental conditions. These companies have a positive effect on the United States economy. As the aspect of education which is best equipped to nurture these characteristics is the arts, then it is reasonable to argue that we can not afford to ‘phase out’ music education.Because education in the United States, England and South Africa is closely linked to the economy, music educators in capitalist countries should begin to argue for the arts from an economic standpoint, as capitalistic societies are orientated primarily toward capital gain. Failing this, we shall have to argue for more fundamental changes in political and economic systems.

Material World: Gender and the Bible in Evangelical Purity Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Moslener
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Material World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Bible

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.

The Oxford Handbook of Preservice Music Teacher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Music Education ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Music Teacher Education ◽  
Education Faculty ◽  
Song Writing ◽  
Faculty And Administrators

The Oxford Handbook of Preservice Music Teacher Education in the United States aims to work from within the profession of music teacher education to push the boundaries of P-12 music education. In this book, we will provide all of those working in music teacher education—music education faculty and administrators, music researchers, graduate students, department of education faculty and administrators, and state-level certification agencies—with research and promising practices for all areas of traditional preservice music teacher preparation. We define the areas of music teacher education as encompassing the more traditional structures, such as band, jazz band, marching band, orchestra, choir, musical theater, and elementary and secondary general music, as well as less common or newer areas: alternative string ensembles, guitar and song-writing, vernacular and popular music, early childhood music, and adult learners

Impact of the 2020 crises on the arts and culture in the United States: The effect of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement in historical context

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-465
Author(s):  
Stanley N. Katz ◽  
Leah Reisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Sector ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the arts and cultural sector in the United States, placing the 2020 crises in the context of the United States’s historically decentralized approach to supporting the arts and culture. After providing an overview of the United States’s private, locally focused history of arts funding, we use this historical lens to analyze the combined effects of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement on a single metropolitan area – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We trace a timeline of key events in the national and local pandemic response and the reaction of the arts community to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that the nature of these intersecting responses, and their fallout for the arts and cultural sector, stem directly from weaknesses in the United States’s historical approach to administering the arts. We suggest that, in the context of widespread organizational vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the United States’s decentralized approach to funding culture also undermines cultural organizations’ abilities to respond to issues of public relevance and demonstrate their civic value, threatening these organizations’ legitimacy.

scholarly journals Systematic Review of Arts-Based Interventions to Address Suicide Prevention and Survivorship in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 53S-63S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Kelley Sams ◽  
Jane Morgan-Daniel ◽  
Andres Pumariega ◽  
Faryal Mallick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Suicide Prevention ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Study Objective ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Arts

Study Objective. Suicide is a serious health problem that is shaped by a variety of social and mental health factors. A growing body of research connects the arts to positive health outcomes; however, no previous systematic reviews have examined the use of the arts in suicide prevention and survivorship. This review examined how the arts have been used to address suicide prevention and survivorship in nonclinical settings in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Design and Setting. Ten bibliographic databases, five research repositories, and reference sections of articles were searched to identify published studies. Articles presenting outcomes of interventions conducted between 2014 and 2019 and written in English, were included. Primary Results. Nine studies met inclusion criteria, including qualitative, quantitative randomized controlled trials, quantitative nonrandomized, quantitative descriptive, and mixed-methods studies. The programs studied used film and television (n = 3), mixed-arts (n = 3), theatre (n = 2), and quilting (n = 1). All nine interventions used the arts to elicit emotional involvement, while seven also used the arts to encourage engagement with themes of health. Study outcomes included increased self-efficacy, awareness of mental health issues, and likelihood for taking action to prevent suicide, as well as decreases in suicidal risk and self-harming behaviors. Conclusions. Factors that influence suicide risk and survivorship may be effectively addressed through arts-based interventions. While the current evidence is promising with regard to the potential for arts programs to positively affect suicide prevention and survivorship, this evidence needs to be supplemented to inform recommendations for evidence-based arts interventions.

scholarly journals Toward a Culture of Health in the United States: Introducing the HPP Arts in Public Health Supplement

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 5S-7S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Lourdes Rodríguez ◽  
Melissa A. Valerio-Shewmaker
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

The arts—and the arts and culture sector—offer fertile ground for achieving a culture of health in the United States. The arts and artists are agents of change and can help enable this vision and also address the most critical public health issues we are contending with, including COVID-19 and racism. The arts provide means for engaging dialogue, influencing behaviors, disrupting paradigms and fueling social movements. The arts uncover and illuminate issues. They engage us emotionally and intellectually. They challenge assumptions. They call out injustice. They drive collective action. They heal—making arts + public health collaboration very relevant in this historic moment. In this special Health Promotion Practice supplement on arts in public health, you’ll find powerful examples and evidence of how cross-sector collaboration between public health and the arts can advance health promotion goals and impacts, and make health promotion programs not only more accessible to diverse populations but also more equitable and effective in addressing the upstream systems, policies, and structures that create health disparities. You will see how the arts can empower health communication, support health literacy, provide direct and measurable health benefits to individuals and communities, and support coping and resilience in response to COVID-19. This issue itself exemplifies cross-sector collaboration, as it was created through partnership between Health Promotion Practice, the Society for Public Health Education, ArtPlace America, and the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and presents voices from across the public health, arts, and community development sectors.

Serious Games as a Complementary Tool for Social Skill Development in Young People: A Systematic Review of the Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 104687812110312
Author(s):  
Lucy R. Zheng ◽  
Catherine M. Oberle ◽  
W. A. Hawkes-Robinson ◽  
Stéphane Daniau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Skill ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Serious Game ◽  
Social Skill Development

Background The use of games for social skill development in the classroom is accelerating at a tremendous rate. At the same time, the research surrounding games designed for teaching social skills remains fragmented. This systematic review summarizes the current existing literature on social skill serious games for young people ages 5 to 19 and is the first review of serious games to note the demographic and geographic component of these studies. Method This review included papers that: evaluated a game designed to teach social skills; included measurable, quantitative outcomes; have a translation or be published in English; were peer-reviewed; date from January 2010 to May 2020; and have a nonclinical study population between ages of 5 to 19. Keywords were obtained from the CASEL 5 framework. Results Our findings are mixed but suggest that serious games may improve social skills when used alongside in-person discussion. We also found potential effects of the length of time of gameplay, intervention, and follow-up on social skill serious game effectiveness. Although this review found promising research conducted in East Asian countries and with minority samples in the United States, the majority of social skill serious game research takes place in the United States and Australia, with unreported demographic information and white-majority samples. Conclusions Due to the limited number of published studies in this area and studies lacking methodological rigor, the effectiveness of using games to teach social skills and the impact of background on social skill learning require further discussion.

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