Bridging the Creative/Critical Divides

Any time ArtsJournal adds a new blog, you can bet there will also be new additions to the list of things music schools don't teach but should: criticism, business, marketing, fundraising, tax law, non-profit management, and now IP policy. I think those are all worthy fields of study, but I don't think they belong in music school, at least not as required courses, which is what's often implied.

There are those who believe that the endgame of higher education is employability, that the value of an education is directly proportional to how much the graduate is able to earn after entering the workforce. One music professor I know calls this "hire" education, and he is not alone, even among musicians, in endorsing it. The problem is that in a world where "hire" education rules the day, the arts would not be taught in college at all; this is a world not only without art, but also without the idealism that makes it possible. We sell out this idealism at our own peril.

I'm not arguing against a well-rounded education. I took as many non-music electives as my school would let me get away with, and I wish they'd have let me get away with more. However, I did not go to music school to become an entrepreneur, a scholar, or an activist. I have a natural affinity for all of those roles, and have played them to varying degrees since graduating, but that's still not why I went to music school, and it won't be why I go back, if I ever do. When I was 18, all the older people were impressed with my "commitment," "dedication," "ambition," and it won me allies and favor; sometime in the last 10 years, it became "isolated," "specialized," "self-referential," and now I get into arguments about it. In any case, I can't see the benefits outweighing the drawbacks here: simply forcing more of these classes on a bunch of young artists guarantees nothing in the way of change, all the while putting them in the "hire" education box that us artists ought to be loathe to inhabit.