Pianist, teacher, and composer Jennifer Warren-Baker writes here about her experiences with government schooling — specifically how it stifled her musical creativity.
We’re fortunate that Mozart and Beethoven didn’t have to spend their formative years sitting in a public school.
Music education is one of the last really free markets left in the US. Teachers don’t have to get a license. They don’t have to get bureaucratic permission to hold lessons in their homes. They can charge what the market will bear. They don’t have to prove that they have an appropriately “diverse” group of students or that they assign students an appropriately “diverse” set of pieces to learn. There is no bureaucracy to make sure that we don’t have too many violin teachers in an area or too few piano teachers. If parents care about a prospective teacher’s credentials, that’s entirely their business. Freedom of contract prevails on both sides of the deal.
You might be a progressive if you’d predict on the basis of the lack of government involvement that music education is chaotic, poor in quality, and rife with consumer dissatisfaction. In fact, rarely is anyone dissatisfied but when that happens, the remedy is easy: find another teacher (or pupil).
Let’s hope Obama doesn’t get the idea that we need a Music Lessons Czar.
