Why Vision 2020?

The philosophical importance of planning for the future cannot be underestimated. Vision 2020 focuses on the future, as the Tanglewood Symposium did in the 1960s.

Arnold Glasow once said, "The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives before we are ready for it." If there had to be one reason for MENC to have embarked upon the Vision 2020 Project and the Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education, it would be that one. Perhaps we can never totally be ready for the future, but thinking ahead to what the future might hold can help us be better prepared. The world is more complex than it was at the time of the 1967 Tanglewood Symposium. That seminal event, which was held to determine the role of music education in society, focused on better music for young people and the inclusion of music of varied cultures and genres in the school curriculum.

There are more "players" making decisions about excellence in the arts and education than ever before. Edwin Schlossberg, in his book Interactive Excellence: Developing New Standards for the Twenty-First Century, said, "Excellence, which used to be determined by a few people within a small population that was interested, is now created by a vast network of artists, producers, all the people who operate the media, and a gigantic audience."[1] With few alterations, the same thing could be said of education. Everyone has opinions about education because virtually everybody has been to school and has shared in the educational experience. Unfortunately, the public's view of a "good" education is often in terms of past experiences, not about the changes that are occurring at an ever more rapid rate. It has been said by many that the greatest challenge in educational reform is to make schools relevant to our children's future, not to our own past.

Let's examine for a moment the forces that are shaping the future. According to Price Pritchett, there are three major forces of change in the world: technology, information, and people.[2] Let's examine these and their impact on music programs. The technology industry abides by the Chinese proverb, "In going upstream, if you don't advance, you automatically fall behind." Moore's Law holds that the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip doubles approximately every eighteen to twenty-four months. This observation has held true for the last thirty years, but recently this process seems to have accelerated. We need only think about how quickly we have gone from 486 PCs to Pentium Ills and beyond to realize the speed of change. Every music teacher feels the impact of technology on how he or she teaches, whether it is through the use of computer-assisted instruction and MIDI devices to teach composition; through the ways students listen to music, the kinds of music they listen to, and their personal performance expectations; or through reporting grades and scheduling classes.

Because of our technological advances, information is more abundant than ever before. More information has been produced in the last thirty years than during the previous five thousand. In their book The Monster under the Bed, Stan Davis and Jim Botkin say, "It is essential that you master the distinctions among data, information, and knowledge."[3] Through the Internet, we have instant access to all kinds of music and can find and download just about any information we want. However, we can easily become overloaded with information. The choices we now have mean we have to make more choices. Sometimes it is easier to simply keep on doing what we already know than to take our ever-diminishing unscheduled time to make discriminating curriculum choices. For example, although we were excited to receive the NAEP National Assessment of Educational Progress data, we must now invest time in examining it. The information gleaned from NAEP will only be as valuable as we choose it to be, but we are challenged to find the time to process that data and consider the changes implied by those results.

Mobility is a huge factor that affects people and how they drive change. According to demographer Harold Hodgkinson, 43 million Americans will relocate within the next year.[4] He says that the problem with working with all the data we have about people is that none of it can be assumed to be consistently applicable throughout the United States. The issues of immigration and diversity that Florida, California, and Texas are challenged by are not statistically similar to those in Pennsylvania, Maine, or North Dakota. Because of this diversity and mobility, the common vision provided by the National Standards for Music Education is more practical and necessary than ever before.

In 1996, there were 45.8 million students, 2.6 million teachers, 86,000 schools, and 14,000 school districts.[5] Half of our schools were in the suburbs, and one quarter each were in urban and rural areas; however, one third of our students attended urban schools. More people are having fewer children, and of these, more children are raised in single-parent households. Our youngest student population is our most ethnically diverse, and now one in four households has a child in school where formerly one in three did. As an aging society, we are producing fewer children. These children have greater needs and come from diverse backgrounds. Their parents may have little time to devote to school volunteer work, but nonetheless want their children to have a caring, competent teacher.

What do these changes mean with regard to how, when, where, and what we teach in music classes? We can see the impact of some of this change already. More schools are providing course offerings such as "World Drumming" and "MIDI Composition"; there is a growth in guitar and keyboard instruction in schools; multicultural music is regularly integrated into performance ensembles; the adoption and adaptation of the National Standards within most states challenge the ways we have traditionally taught large performance ensemble classes; and most music classrooms make some use of technology to assist instruction. Some schools are experimenting with distance learning; many are trying out different scheduling models; and all are struggling to provide the resources to keep up with technology demands.

We are also concerned with the increasing teacher shortage. U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley said at the recent President's Summit on Teacher Quality, "We will need to hire 2.2 million more teachers during the next decade because of retirements and increasing enrollments."[6] This is occurring because of the prediction that, by 2004, 40 percent of the current teaching force will have retired or left education. Who will nurture all the new teachers when so many veterans have left the field? Even though politicians tout the advantages of local decision making, we find ourselves continually needing to advocate for music education in a larger sense. Most people think music is a good thing, but they are not always sure that the study of music is something we have time for in the curriculum. We seem to overcome one hurdle only to confront yet another standing in the way of quality music instruction. As music educators, we find ourselves having to battle constantly to keep programs from being cut, particularly in urban and high-need areas. We have launched all sorts of campaigns about the importance of music study in schools. One of our current debates within the music education community concerns arguing for music for its own sake versus arguing that it brings extramusical values to other kinds of learning.

To summarize, we are being asked to look at the content of music we will teach in the future and the context in which we will teach it. The Tanglewood Symposium provided the philosophical underpinnings for music education for the last thirty years. Just as those who have gone before us blazed the trail for our future, it seems only right that as we enter the new millennium, we again look ahead; that we begin the task of charting the course for music education as we would like it to be in the year 2020, not just respond to the vagaries of current political expediency and political correctness; and that we do the right things for the right reasons. These overriding concerns drive the questions asked in Vision 2020.

As I envisioned this process, I felt that the involvement of those who care most deeply about music education was essential. Therefore, the participation of teachers, preK through university, was critical, as was the involvement of the music industry, artists, and community arts organizations. I also deemed it vital that we call on the wisdom and expertise of those who have been and continue to be leaders within our profession. We need to explore what has happened in music education since Tanglewood.

As with Tanglewood, Vision 202.0 is our opportunity to be idealists, knowing that the future realities of education will always hone and reshape our vision. The course of events that created, developed, and presented Vision 2020 took place as follows:

• In talking with past MENC presidents and colleagues in music education during my time as president-elect of MENC (1996-98), I realized that Vision 2020, as it was originally conceived, was an idea whose time had come.
• Partnering with universities on similar projects worked well for MENC in the past. Given the leadership of Wiley Housewright during the Tanglewood Symposium when he was president of MENC and Florida State University (FSU) dean of the School of Music, working with members of the FSU School of Music staff seemed a wonderful way to honor his legacy as a leader in music education. Jon Piersol, dean of the School of Music, and Cliff Madsen, chair of music education at FSU, agreed and offered their support.
• In the spring of 1998, the MENC National Executive Board under Carolynn Lindeman's presidency gave final approval to the concept.
• In the summer and fall of 1998, a series of planning meetings was held to lay out the specifics of the project, refine the questions to be asked, and identify authors and commission members.
• In October 1998, MENC sponsored the third Music Education Summit, inviting the presidents and executive directors of all major music-related organizations to attend. The first drafts of the questions for Vision 2020 were discussed at the Summit.
• Vision 2020 authors attended the Summit so that they could hear the input of these leaders. The authors subsequently refined the questions and began writing draft responses to them.
• From April 7 to 11, 1999, the Housewright Commission on Music Education met in Tallahassee to respond to the drafts that the authors had developed. A small group of commission members focused on each topic. Commission members were chosen to represent broad intellectual, demographic, and geographic interests in music making and music education.
• From September 23 to 26, 1999, the Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education was held in Tallahassee to seek field responses to the papers. Respondents representing varied interests related to music education presented formal responses to each paper. More than 150 people attended, with forty states represented. An equal number of K-12 and higher education teachers participated, along with representatives from industry and the community.
• On March 8, 2000, Vision 2020, including the Housewright Declaration, which consists of a summation of the agreements made at the Housewright Symposium, is scheduled to be presented at the MENC National Conference in Washington, DC. (See the Housewright Declaration sidebar for the full text of this statement.)

The purpose of the Housewright Commission and Symposium was for professionals and interested parties who care about music education to come together to establish those things that we agree are important to our future (with the understanding that there would be disagreements--which means we are a healthy, vital, interested group of professionals). The attendees dealt with the following questions regarding the content of music education:

• Why is music essential for all humans? (Bennett Reimer, Northwestern University, author; Robert Glidden, president, Ohio University, respondent)
• Why study music? (J. Terry Gates, State University of New York-Buffalo, author; Sam Hope, executive director, National Association of Schools of Music, respondent)
• What instructional content will best facilitate teaching the skills and knowledge in the National Standards? (Paul Lehman, University of Michigan [professor emeritus], author; Jane Walters, former Tennessee Commissioner of Education, respondent)

These were the questions about the context of teaching music:

• How can all people continue to be involved in meaningful music participation? (Judith Jellison, University of Texas, author; Warrick Carter, director of Disney Entertainment Arts, respondent)
• What are the societal and technological changes that will influence the teaching of music? (Carlesta Spearman, Keene State College [retired], author; Sandy Feldstein, CEO, Carl Fischer Music Company, respondent)
• What should the relationship between schools and other sources of music learning be? (Cornelia Yarbrough, Louisiana State University, author; Richard Bell, executive director, Young Audiences, respondent)

This special focus issue on Vision 2020 addresses the developments in music education since Tanglewood. Michael Mark looks at key events in his article, "From Tanglewood to Tallahassee in 32 Years." In an interview of Wiley Housewright ("Wiley Housewright on Music's Changing Times"), Jon Piersol asks the leader of the Tanglewood Symposium to share his perspectives on the effect of Tanglewood and his concerns for the future of music education.

As we face the future, we are challenged by the words of Michael George, executive director of the Wisconsin Music Educators Association and president of the North Central Division of MENC: "Don't predict the future. Invent it!" Will our dreams for music education all come true? Of course not. The conditions of change are so rapid that things we have yet to imagine will be commonplace. Yet if we are to keep within music education programs those things that are dear to us and that should remain unchanged, it is vital we take responsibility for envisioning a future that is what we want it to be and begin the work of making that future a reality. A favorite expression of mine is, "There is no 'they'; there is only 'us'!" It is up to us to make our dreams of the future a reality.

1. Edward Schlossberg, Interactive Excellence (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 10.

• 2. Price Pritchett and Ron Pound, A Survival Guide to the Stress of Organizational Change (Dallas, TX: Pritchett & Associates, Inc. 1995), 1-2.
• 3. Stan Davis and Jim Botkin, The Monster under the Bed (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995), 43.
• 4. Harold Hodgkinson, "Demographics, Diversity, and Your Future Students" (speech presented at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Conference, San Antonio, Texas, March 21, 1998).
• 5. Ibid.
• 6. Richard Riley, "Keynote" (speech presented at the President's Summit on Teacher Quality, Washington DC, September 1999).