Current trends in public school education have seen the development of academic standards for every discipline.  MENC’s national standards for music includes nine content standards that pertain to singing, performing, improvising, composing and arranging, reading and notating music, listening and analyzing, evaluating music, understanding music in relation to other art disciplines and to history and culture.

In the article “MENA, The School Music Program:  A New Vision,” teachers are asked to recognize that children bring their own unique interests and abilities to the study of music.  They have diverse backgrounds and listening experiences.  The youngest students should not be encumbered with the need to meet performance goals.  For them, play is their work.  Musical creativity is best fostered in an environment that is child-initiated, child-directed and teacher-supported.  The teacher’s role is to “create a musically stimulating environment and then to facilitate children’s engagement with music materials and activities by asking questions or making suggestions that stimulate children’s thinking and further exploration.”  Effective music teaching should consists of learning activities and materials “that are real, concrete, and relevant to the lives of young children.”

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Academic Standards for the Arts and Humanities, there are Elements and Principles in each art form that teachers need to address.  The Elements of Music are:  Duration, Pitch, Intensity and Timbre.  The Principles of Music are:  Composition, Form, Genre, Harmony, Rhythm and Texture.  Students are to learn to use the Artistic Processes of imagination and craftsmanship and to be familiar with the Organizational Principles of unity and variety, tension and release, and balance. 

Teachers are to challenge their students in age-appropriate ways.  Through grade 3, children should know, use and recognize the Elements and Principles; by Grade 5, they should be able to describe them.  Junior High students learn to identify, explain and demonstrate, while high school students are expected to integrate, analyze, evaluate and apply them.

Students should also be exposed to developing critical response to the arts.  Formal criticism is the discussion and evaluation of the Elements and Principles essential to works in the arts and humanities.  Contextual criticism involves the consideration of factors surrounding the origin and heritage of various styles.  Intuitive criticism looks at one’s own subjective insight to works of art.

Students should learn to apply these concepts to a broad range of contexts:  traditional style, contemporary style, including Broadway and Musical Theatre; geographic regions, including Africa, Asia, Australia, Central America, Europe, North and South America.  They should be familiar with the philosophical beliefs behind various styles such are classical music, rock music, Native American dance, Gregorian change, TV ads, and cont4emporary American musical theater.  They should be exposed to cultural differences in ethnic music, such as Irish dance or the use of pentatonic scales in Korean and Indonesian Music.  They should examine the traditions found in American culture such as work songs, blue grass and patriotic songs.