Early Public School Music in the State of Ohio - Sanders

Britt Beil
MUSIC 23241
January 19, 2011

Early Public School Music in the State of Ohio

               It took many years for schools to accept music education into their curriculum plus a lot of convincing from people who understood the impact of music. Music educators faced many hardships and complications while trying to establish music in schools. This article starts out by explaining some of the issues music educators dealt with while fighting to provide music to schools. Most music education programs started out just with vocal skills and only about three schools provided instrumental music education. Some schools only taught music to certain age groups so not all students in a school district would get music classes. The article then shows examples of schools from all over the state and how music education started in that particular city. This is mainly done to show that it wasn't just the big city schools being offered music education.

               I really enjoyed that article showed how a lot of schools got their start in music. It was interesting to read how long it took a school to finally recognize music into their curriculum. Most of the schools would have music involved one way or another and, in my opinion, the schools were far to slow in accepting music. I can't even imagine how frustrating it must have been for music educators back then to have to go around and justify why music should be in schools and then get turned down for years. I have a lot more respect for music teachers because of this article.

Sanders, Paul D. (1996). Early public school music in the state of Ohio. TRIAD. 37-39