Teaching of Music in Nine Asian Nations

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Year:
Pages:216
ISBN:0-7734-5871-9
978-0-7734-5871-0
Price:$179.95 + shipping
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Feeling dismayed instead of inspired by much of the traditional professional scholarly literature in music education, the author undertook what he called a “music teacher journey,” a music education adventure and discovery from an exotic perspective. The result is this narrative research based on meeting and observing fascinating and unusual music teachers throughout China, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

This work encourages music education majors and assists them in embracing, often for the first time, the possibilities, pleasures, and promises of a life of music teaching. Within a uniquely multi-cultural perspective, this text offers inspiration and ideals to help motivate and sustain the beginning music teacher and to assist the experienced music teacher in recapturing an enthusiasm for a life-long career of challenges, difficulties, and joys of music teaching. Scholars in music education have, at last, a splendid model of narrative research offering a penetrating analysis of music teaching and an insightful understanding of the music teacher’s beliefs, role, and contribution to humanity.

Reviews

“ ... The field of music education has matured and developed over recent decades. Along with this evolution, however, our discipline is so fragmented and, at times, overly self-absorbed that we have become lost. This book helps us find our way. Within cross-cultural contexts, Dr. Brand shows us that we music educators are bound by shared eternal truths about the value of music education and the art of music teaching. His keen observations, splendid writing, and sense of humor and drama make for delightful excursions into literally the world of music education ... This is an important book for everyone interested in music and music education …” – (from the Foreword) Professor Gary McPherson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“ ... Dr. Brand had two broad objectives in writing this book. First, how could he teach his music education students to see music teaching in a more expansive way rather than be limited to methods and materials? Second, how could he help his students acquire the soul of a music teacher? ... College music educators and students will, indeed, find the case histories of these fifteen teachers to be inspiring, energizing, and compelling. Experienced music teachers will also find these stories valuable in reminding them why they chose to be a music teacher in the first place.” – Professor Diane Persellin, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

“Refreshingly candid, Dr. Brand’s book is an enchanting mix of intriguing perspectives, cultural adventure, and substantive music education insights, all ordered, personalized, and bound together by a novelistic structure. Recorded conversations and reminiscences mesh to create a rich panorama of Asian music teaching, styles and approaches, resulting in the most fascinating and special texts on music education ... Within these pages, Dr. Brand has captured the very art of music teaching with reverence and eagerness. Its well-thumbed pages will prove a rich source of invaluable advice, and inspiration, helping us all to recapture that early sense of wonderment of the possibilities which exist between music teacher and learner.” – Professor Kevin Thompson, Director, The Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Hong Kong

Table of Contents

Foreword by Gary McPherson
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction – Finding One’s Place in the World of Music Teaching
1. Home is Where the Music Is
2. Music Teaching, Black Magic, and Good Versus Evil
3. The Music Teacher of Mai Sai
4. The Erhu Man from Shenzhen, China
5. My Students Tortured Me
6. The Cave Music Teacher
7. Saying Good-Bye to a Music Teacher
8. The Music Teacher without a Name
9. The Music Teacher Who Whispers to the Black Oxen
10. Karaoke School
11. A Music Teaching Space – The Preservation of a Culture
12. If You Teach Music to My Son, I Will Kill You
13. Music Teacher in Pain
14. Wooden Phalluses on Top of Piano Books
15. Hopelessness and Despair in Yangoon
16. A Journey of What Matters
Bibliography
Index

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