Do you remember awkwardly learning how to play the keyboard during high school music lessons? Over in the UK, there’s been a serious drop-off in recent years in terms of students studying music in school, falling below 20 percent. But teachers are actually turning to the cutting-edge realm of electronic music as a new way to inspire learning.
“With free YouTube tutorials encouraging extracurricular education and a new scheme giving production hardware to schools, electronic music could become a way in which schools can engage a new generation of musically curious students,” The Guardian reports.
The report examines a particular educational initiative in the UK that was driven by leading software and hardware manufacturer Ableton , where the company offered a rebate discount to DJ/producers when they exchanged their old machines for new equipment. Ableton went on to distribute 6,000 of these old machines to schools around the country.
“The idea materialised slowly, around two years ago, when we accidentally stumbled across teachers doing stuff in the classroom with our products already, and we spoke to them about it and observed some of the lessons,” Ableton Communications Director Chris Woods told The Guardian.
“We started looking at what it would take for us to support this. We found that some teachers had the desire, but not the money to do it. Others don’t know how to use the technology, so we’re offering training to them.”
Taking electronic music into high school classrooms is still a work in progress. One of the main obstacles is the fact that curriculums have traditionally been classically based, with schools needing slow encouragement to widen their syllabi to embrace the new frontiers of electronic music.
Check out “Can electronic music revolutionise school music lessons?” over at The Guardian to read the report in full.
