How do we assess a music teacher? This is an important question for parents, who
with little or no musical knowledge themselves, are still eager for their
children to learn music. How do they
know who the best and worst teachers are?
I happen to think that it is a marvellous thing that
music education is given a very high priority in Singapore. Julie Tan, a former chair of the Singapore
Music Teachers’ Association, has said that being a music teacher is one of the
most stable jobs currently on offer here.
She’s right. History has shown
that, even in the midst of major financial slumps, parents still value music
education sufficiently highly to make sacrifices to ensure its continuity. And given the absolute obsession with graded music
exams here, once you start a child off at Grade 1, that child is effectively locked
into lessons for the next eight years, if not longer. With financial, legal and commercial organisations
laying off staff in the path of encroaching IT advances, there is as yet no
computerised alternative to the human interaction between music teacher and student.
You would have thought, then, given the centrality of
music education within Singapore and the heavy involvement of government in it,
a coherent and credible system of teacher assessment would have long been
established. But that is, sadly, very
far from the case. Those responsible for
assessing teachers have a mind-set stuck firmly in the 1940s and 1950s when
Singapore came under the colonial governance of the United Kingdom and when
attitudes saw London as the ideal on which Singapore should be modelled.
It might have been right then. It is not right now. The UK changed its approach to training and
assessing teachers decades ago; it seems as if Singapore harks back to the
heady days of colonial rule and austere judgements taking no consideration of humanity
of individuality. And what is music teaching
if it is not a very human interaction between individuals?
It is not just a political point; it is a qualitative
issue. Singapore actively (if
accidentally) discriminates against good teachers and promotes bad ones because
of its outdated and misguided approach to teacher assessment.
When I have applied for teaching jobs in other countries, I have been
assessed by the knowledge, passion and communication skills I have shown in
letters of application and interviews, by means of a practical demonstration, a
visit by an assessor to a class I have been teaching, or, more recently (I am
happy to say), by repute. That’s not how
it’s done here.
In Singapore it all boils down to an unshaking belief,
held not just by parents (who would not generally be expected to know any
better) and by some teachers, but most shockingly, by those in government service
charged with maintaining Singapore’s educational standards, in the power,
authority and musical legitimacy of a London-based organisation called the
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (the ABRSM as it is largely
known to Singaporeans). Set up in colonial
Britain in 1890 with the highly laudable intention of promoting “the
cultivation and dissemination of the art of Music in the United Kingdom and
throughout the Dominions”, the ABRSM has since grown to become a global
monolith, assessing over 610,000 students worldwide every year, of which an
astonishing 10% are in Singapore.
The ABRSM did not invent the notion of the graded
music exam – that idea had been mooted by another London-based organisation,
Trinity College, in 1874 – but they have such a total stranglehold over graded music
exams in Singapore that it has almost become a synonym; “my child’s doing her
ABRSM this week”.
In the days of the British Empire, the graded music
exam served a very valuable purpose, and it still does today. It provides a very useful framework – if not
an out-and-out full curriculum – to teachers who are not good enough to devise one
of their own, or imaginative enough to teach to a pupil’s strengths rather than
their weaknesses. And the sad fact is
that, even today, there are hundreds and thousands of bad music teachers who
exist solely on the basis of being able to follow the ABRSM syllabus and to
treat it as a stand-alone teaching curriculum (which the ABRSM would be the
first to say it was never designed to be). For them the ABRSM is a life-saver,
giving them legitimacy which is only reinforced by a society which sees music
education purely in terms of ABRSM goals.
There is also value in the exam system in helping parents
identify a child’s progress in an activity with which they themselves are unacquainted
but can recognise certification where they could not recognise ability. And the pupils themselves often flourish with
the incentive of an exam; dread it as they might, there is purpose when there
is another step on the ladder in sight.
I spent 40 years as a music examiner, 20 of them with
the ABRSM. I had my issues with the
system, of course, but I recognised the extreme good work we were doing and, for
all its flaws, I am still utterly convinced that the graded music examination
system has many benefits, particularly to those with limited teaching skills or
unambitious musical intentions. And it
has undoubtedly opened the eyes and ears to generations who would otherwise not
have been exposed to music.
The purpose of the ABRSM is to assess students. My problem is when those in authority use the
ABRSM graded examination system to assess teachers. I have often heard stories, and met those
with first hand experience of the situation, but when a student came to me the
other day bearing a letter from a Singapore school I saw for the first time the
appalling – I would venture to use the word catastrophic – damage being done to
music education by Singapore’s single-minded obsession with the ABRSM.
This conservatory student has been one of our bright
stars. A brilliant brass player and
profoundly intelligent musician, in the years to come he could realistically audition
for a principal chair in any orchestra of his choosing. Yet he has decided he does not want a career
in performing, but in teaching. I find
that a wonderful thing. Yet he has been
rejected, not because he is no good but because
he never did his ABRSM Grade 5 theory.
I have the letter in front of me, signed by a civil servant in the country’s
Ministry of Education and it is unequivocal: “We would like to request for a document to
certify that xxx has attained his ABRSM Grade 5 in Music Theory. We understand
that based on the CV, xxx is currently pursuing a degree in the Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory of Music, NUS. But due to the nature of our ITQ Specs, we will
need documentation of the qualifications that he has attained with regard to
the ABRSM grade.” (The irony that the Singapore government regards a
qualification from a London organisation over which it has no jurisdiction
regarding academic standards as more valid than one from one of its own
tertiary education establishments was not lost on the student.)
Any of us who teach music theory or history in
tertiary establishments know that much of our early time with new students is spent
disabusing them of the ideas inculcated through ABRSM grade 5 theory. The ABRSM grade 5 theory exam is not wrong,
it is just so simplistic that it loses all relevance to the real world of
professional music making. And yet the
government seems determined that teachers should not have the kind of level of advanced
musical knowledge I would want and expect from any teacher educating my child,
but that they revert to a simplistic set of sterile misconceptions which belong
more to the 1890s than the 2010s.
In a recent class discussion, a Singapore student stated
that “Singaporeans are defined by our qualifications”. How right she was. And until such time as those responsible for
assessing teachers can find their own way of assessing Knowledge, Passion and Communication
(the three key attributes to a good teacher), Singapore will remain a place
where quality is seen as a bit of paper rather than as an ability, and where
good teaching is turned away in preference to bad.