Challenges of Rural Music Teaching

I learned an important lesson yesterday after giving a presentation on rural music education at the Mayday Colloquium 23 in Salt Lake City. I talked about the forces that maintain metropolitan privilege in music education. This included a discussion of how the modernization of rural education and, by extension, rural music education with its almost exclusive focus on large performing ensembles places rural music students and teachers at a distinct disadvantage and makes metropolitan schools look good by comparison, thereby reinforcing the view that rural folk are inherently less capable than urban or suburban folk. After the presentation, it was clear that a number of the participants heard what they wanted to hear–that teaching music in rural schools is an unpleasant job. So, I’m thinking of de-emphasizing talk about rural challenges and focusing primarily or at least initially in each future encounter on the joys and possibilities of teaching music in rural, especially small rural schools. One advantage is small class size. There are so many possibilities for small ensembles and one-on-one time is much greater than it would be in a larger school. I would be especially interested in seeing how a Country band would work in some of the small rural schools in the midwest and western United States.

Rural US Students in Poverty

Check out this interactive map from the Center for American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/rural_poverty_map.html. You can see how many public school students in each state are rural and how many live in poverty. It’s pretty significant that about a third of students live in rural places and 40% of rural students live in poverty.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Free Alliance for Rural Music Education Research (F.A.R.M.E.R)! This association is “free” in that there are no associated fees or stipulations on membership. If you are a teacher, parent, researcher, or musician interested in the formal and informal teaching and learning of music in rural places, you might be interested in joining. Just send a comment saying you would like to join . . . that’s all it takes.