Primary Music Magazine
Issue 3.1 Spring 2019
Curriculum Planning and Classroom Music
Professor Martin Fautley shares his thoughts on how to construct a great music curriculum. The announcement that there is to be a working party looking into music teaching and learning in schools in England is very much to be welcomed. The announcement from the minister, Nick Gibb that he has asked “…a panel of musicians and educationalists to draw up a new model curriculum which will give a detailed year-by- year template for study” (Gibb, 2019) can only be for the good. I notice, however, that very few of the panel are school curriculum theorists, and so in this piece I would like to very politely, I hope, draw their attention to some matters of curriculum theory for classroom music teaching and learning which I hope will prove helpful; this is the spirit in which I am writing this piece, anyway! One of the first things I would like to say is that in my own curriculum research thinking I have found the words of Rudyard Kipling quite helpful (Now I know Kipling is hardly the most politically correct of authors, so apologies!). These are: I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. (Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child)
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