Seven thousand in Israel

A dear friend of mine just announced that she and her other full-time music faculty colleagues are being dismissed. The reason given is that music faculty just don’t produce enough teaching credits for the university to continue to consider them viable. And that is true – we music teachers spend a lot of time one-on-one with students. We teach about 10-15 students per week, while classroom teachers all across campus teach upwards of 50-200 students per DAY. Therefore, it has become a regular occurrence for our administrations to have to defend to upper administration the art of music and its expenses. Yes, music is expensive. It requires instruments, instrument maintenance, huge spaces for rehearsal, many small spaces for practice, individual teaching offices, and a climate-controlled building that is exempt from any cost-cutting measures deemed necessary by the university to save on heating and air conditioning, not to mention what is required in the way of humidity control. Then add in full-time salaries and benefits for all this one-on-one instruction, and the numbers just don’t add up with the other departments across campus.

This has always been the case. And perhaps it was only a matter of time before questions began to be asked about it. And so here we are. The questions are being asked, mostly by accountants and university boards of governors. In the case of my friend mentioned above, it was asked by an outside consultant, who then convinced upper administration to take that big step toward balancing the music credits taught with those all across campus, to get rid of the full-timers and their benefits and have all the teaching done by adjuncts and part-timers. It’s all about the bottom line, and the bottom line here is that universities save lots of money when they don’t have to pay full-time salaries and benefits. They’ll blame the economy. They’ll blame a lack of philanthropy. They’ll blame the Department of Education for forcing their hand. But the real problem lies in a growing misconception that music is universal and therefore universally acceptable, no matter how amateurish it is. But this doesn’t start at the university level. It comes from the high school and primary school level, too, where arts and music are routinely gutted from shrinking budgets and curricula. But it doesn’t stop there. It also occurs at home, where children are encouraged to play soccer rather than practice the piano. It occurs at home, where children are told that the halftime show at the Super Bowl was one of the finest performances ever produced. It occurs at home, where children are told that arts and music can be enjoyed any time and don’t need to be studied by non-musicians and that science and accounting are much more important in today’s economic climate, before China overtakes us. What nonsense.

This has been only one story told by one blogger. There are plenty more horror stories that could be told about this. But what do we do? Honestly, I don’t know. But I know that there are still students out there wanting to come study with me, and so I’m going to keep showing up for work until work tells me not to. I’m not going to give my art and work away, and I’m going to train others to be the very best they can be. Meanwhile, I have removed my friend’s university from mention in my bio (I used to teach there), and I shall quietly rejoice if that university sees a firestorm of protest that purges either its donor base or its entire upper administration; I don’t care which. And I shall continue to hope that in the U.S., there may always be “7000 in Israel, knees which have not bowed to Ba’al,” people who miraculously believe that people are more important than money.