Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale.israele
Titolo: Una società senza musica

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380723.html
L'articolo si lamenta che in vent'anni l'educazione musicale in Israele (che
non ha prodotto soltanto i grandi solisti e direttori d'orchestra noti in
tutto il mondo, ma un'ampia base di cantanti e suonatori di ogni livello) si
sia spaventosamente deteriorata.
Ciao.
Rapidly building a society without music
 
By Noam Ben Ze'ev
 
 
 
There was an era - around ten years ago - when music education in Israel was
highly praised for its excellence. That's a thing of the past.
 
 
 
 
Even the early Zionists, although much too preoccupied with revolution to
have time left over for the arts, instinctively sensed something the
ancients already knew, that music has a unique and holistic influence on
children - physiologically, cognitively, intellectually and emotionally.
They knew that playing and singing sensitize children to beauty, and that
music gives them something other school subjects cannot. It teaches them to
rely on their intuitions, to listen well to others, to think non verbally,
and to be open to their emotions.
By the 1980s, the Jewish community in Israel had developed a music education
system that was by no means perfect, yet could indeed be called "splendid."
Music classes were obligatory in elementary schools, and additional study
was available after school in the conservatories.
Only a broad base like that could have produced - from development towns - a
girl who would play tuba in the IDF orchestra and a boy who would play
timpani in an international orchestra assembled by Daniel Barenboim. Only
such a broad-based pyramid could have produced Israeli children's choirs
that sang to international standards.
This was what also gave Israeli musicians their reputations as significant
figures at home and abroad for playing, singing, conducting, composing and
teaching. What is the source of these recent attempts to uproot a music
education system that was so painstakingly developed with such loving
effort?
Maybe today some answers will be forthcoming, at a seminar devoted to the
conservatories in Israel (9:30 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. at Heichal Hamusica in
Jaffa). Under the banner "Empowering Excellence through Professional Music
Education," student ensembles from conservatories across Israel will appear.
The audience will discuss the bond these special institutions have with the
educational system, and with the nation's cultural life and the community at
large.
National music education supervisors and directors of academies,
conservatories, and local councils will try to persuade people from the
education ministry, including director general Ronit Tirosh, to launch a
last ditch rescue of music education in Israel.
Remedial education
In music, unlike other endeavors, one cannot advance to higher levels of
study without investing 8-10 years of effort. That's why a K-12
infrastructure was created, drawing on both the schools and the
conservatories. In the last 15 years, however, music has been almost
entirely eliminated from elementary school curricula, and totally eliminated
in junior high schools.
It happened very fast. The education ministry killed music as a required
subject and principals, with increasing autonomy, quickly sacrificed music
hours for more studies of things children learn non-stop anyway.
The national supervisor for music at the Education Ministry in the late
1980s, Ofer Turiel, didn't defend music in the schools. During his tenure,
music education was privatized and commercial interests were soon having a
field day in the schools.
Turiel even instituted music programs he'd authored himself - Musikef, for
instance - and only after his resignation in 2001 amid irregularities, did
any hope arise for a change.
But recovery was slow. The new national supervisor, Yael Shai, had her hours
cut in half, and her impossible budget made her cautious about local
initiatives, like orchestras doing classroom music instruction - starting
with the Israeli Philharmonic and its "Mafteach" (key) program.
Many good people, from supervisors to classroom teachers, who battled for
music in the schools were suddenly pioneers again. One has to start at the
beginning. Meanwhile, from the schools' standpoint, all the children of
Israel need remedial education in music.
An option vanished
The ministry of education has thus been left with the supplementary
component of music education - the conservatories. Forty schools of music,
teaching playing and singing, musicianship and listening skills, are the
rearguard in the battle for the current musical landscape and its future.
Fifteen thousand students are involved in hundreds of ensembles and choirs,
jazz groups, pop music groups, and they are in communication with the
schools. Meanwhile, a similar number of students, mainly in outlying areas,
are unconnected to conservatories under ministry of education supervision
and avail themselves of music study programs offered by organizations like
Matan (a Hebrew acronym for "culture and arts project for youth.")
One might think the state ought to have protected, and developed, the
conservatories. But no. The education ministry funds only 7 percent of the
conservatories' budgets, putting the rest up to local councils - the same
councils that are almost broke, so they punt to the community centers or
private organizations.
That leaves parents, who now fund 65 percent of the bill - double late 1980s
figures. Lessons cost more, and the conservatories are fast moving to serve
only the wealthy.
At this rate, in a few more years, the sequence of links in the chain that
strengthens music development will disappear, its foundations collapsed
entirely.
The teaching of music is deteriorating from a strict, long-term discipline
into a hug (after-school program) like any other, but in that mode it hasn't
a prayer. A serious violin class is not a casual ceramics or aerobics class.
Soon the students will disappear, followed by the teachers, and then the
audiences, and eventually the orchestras and choirs from whose ranks
soloists emerge. The ministry of education is deaf to the approaching
disaster and has abandoned not only the schools under its supervision, but
also the conservatories.
Relegating them to the "support" column of its budget, the ministry forces
them to beg over and over again every year, never knowing how much their
annual allocation will be, since, without any formal standing as educational
institutions, they are not entitled to a fixed budget, as schools are. This
is not just another "cutback." It's the extinction of an entire spiritual
cultural world.
The silence
An Adva Center presentation a few months ago at a Tel Aviv conference called
"A Society Without Music" revealed an unknown species in Israeli society -
music teachers. The study found a population of highly educated and talented
people with academic degrees who, despite much longer years of schooling
than many other professions, cannot earn a living just from teaching their
subject - music.
Most work two or more jobs, barely making a minimum wage, and rarely get
fair employment contracts. Various private music instruction entities have
emerged as the state affiliated music education system has deteriorated, but
these do not grant teachers tenure. They turn them into permanent part-time
workers and exploit them on wages, fringe benefits, and promotion. Reduced
hours for music classes and the resulting drop in the numbers of students
who study music are making many teachers redundant.
What will happen when the mass of immigrants from the former Soviet Union,
who have been the backbone of music education in Israel in recent years,
exit the system in another decade? Who will replace them? How can anyone
address the looming danger to music in Israel?
Recently there has been a new initiative by teachers of music in the
schools, who have recognized the need to join forces and cooperate
pedagogically, organizationally and economically to promote music education.
Their program, called "T'nufa" (momentum), gets underway this month on a
trial in the northern district, with the aim of creating a teaching
infrastructure to nurture talented children and promote the activities of
orchestras, choirs and so forth.
This will all revolve around a series of reforms for the conservatories -
increasing their number, forging stronger ties with schools and higher
education, and integrating them more effectively into the community. In the
process, they will eliminate the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish
sectors in programming.
Music education has no political backing. There is no violence, no drugs, in
the conservatories; everyone is equally respected, and their programs lend
color, beauty, and spiritual depth to the entire system.
But the establishment does not reward such merits. The only support for
music education comes from below, from musicians who devote their lives to
teaching. Maybe their new program might inspire the Education Ministry and
government to take responsibility for ensuring that Israel does not become a
society without music.
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 sia spaventosamente deteriorata.
Sentendo Sarit Hadad, non gli si può dare torto >:)
-- 
"Il quoting è una sovrastruttura borghese" (post su IIS)
it.cultura.classica: 
http://digilander.iol.it/mmanca

 sia spaventosamente deteriorata.
:-(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
Z.
P.S: non č un problema solo israeliano.
Per amor di patria, meglio tacere su cosa accade in Italia...la cultura non
fa piů cassetta...)


Diciamo che hai espresso quello che io ho sottinteso :-)
Ciao.
