Preparing Students for Musical Life
What Is School Music Actually For?
A Question That Keeps Returning
Have you ever thought about the following question? I started to recently.
What is school music actually for?
Not what we say it is for. Not the mission statements we place on websites or the phrases we repeat in advocacy materials. I mean what school music is truly preparing students to do once school ends. For most of my life, I assumed the answer was obvious. Students join band, choir, or orchestra. They learn discipline, teamwork, musicianship, and performance skills. They prepare for concerts. They improve over time. They become “better musicians.”
But the older I get, the more I wonder whether many students leave school music programs without knowing how to actually participate in music outside of school. I know this because I was one of those students. I spent years in large ensembles learning how to function successfully inside a school music system. I learned to read music, follow a conductor, rehearse for performances, and blend within an ensemble. I learned how to be a “good band student.”
But one of the most memorable musical experiences I had during those years happened outside of that structure. A group of us got together to record Louie Louie (Hey, we were in high school). There was no conductor standing in front of us. No formal rehearsal process. No concert cycle. We experimented. We made decisions together. We listened differently. We collaborated in a way that felt far more social and alive than many of my school music experiences. That experience stayed with me because it revealed something important: there is a difference between performing music and participating in music.
The Difference Between School Music and Musical Life
School music often teaches students how to function inside highly structured institutional systems. Students learn to sit in rows, follow directions, rehearse assigned repertoire, and prepare for performances built around precision and accuracy.
Large ensembles can absolutely create meaningful experiences. I want to say that clearly because this is not an anti-band or anti-choir argument. Ensembles can foster belonging, emotional connection, teamwork, beauty, discipline, and artistic excellence. Many teachers create incredibly powerful experiences for students within these traditions.
But I also think we need to acknowledge something uncomfortable: most students will never again participate in formal ensemble structures after graduation. And when we consider how small a percentage of the overall student body participates in formal ensembles to begin with, the number of students who continue participating in those types of musical experiences after high school becomes incredibly small. Band directors know this. Choir directors know this. Orchestra directors know this.
Most students are not going to join community wind ensembles. They are not going to rehearse concert literature multiple times per week. They are not going to continue marching in formations on football fields. They are not going to spend their adult lives functioning inside conductor-led institutional ensembles. And yet those activities dominate music education for years.
Meanwhile, many forms of lifelong music-making receive comparatively little attention in schools. Students may graduate without ever learning how to play by ear, jam with friends, write songs, record music, improvise, accompany themselves, or create music independently. This leads me to another difficult question:
Are we preparing students for music, or are we preparing students for school music?
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Music as Human Participation
Across cultures and throughout history, music has largely been social, participatory, expressive, communal, and woven into everyday life. Music was not something reserved only for formal performance spaces. People sang together, danced together, improvised together, celebrated together, and used music as part of ordinary human existence. But school music often transforms music into something highly managed and institutionalized.
In many classrooms, success becomes tied primarily to accuracy, control, uniformity, and performance preparation. Students spend months preparing for concerts where the emphasis is often on avoiding mistakes rather than expressing ideas, communicating emotion, or developing independent musical agency.
And I think students can feel this disconnect.
Young people today constantly evaluate whether something feels connected to real life. They ask themselves questions like:
Will this matter later?
Does this connect to who I am?
Can I use this outside of school?
What am I becoming through this experience?
This may partly explain why many students increasingly choose other opportunities over music participation. A student who takes a dual-credit college course in high school can immediately see the future value. The purpose feels concrete. It saves money. It accelerates graduation. It contributes directly toward future goals. But music programs sometimes struggle to articulate a similarly visible future-facing purpose beyond concerts, participation, or tradition. And I think students notice that.
The Self-Directed Musician
The irony is that music absolutely can prepare students for life in profound ways. Music can help students develop creativity, collaboration, emotional awareness, communication skills, confidence, social connection, and identity formation. Music can become part of how people process emotion, build relationships, and participate in culture throughout their lives. But those possibilities become less visible when music education focuses primarily on reproducing performances within institutional structures.
Over the past several years, I have become increasingly interested in the idea of the self-directed musician. A self-directed musician is someone who can continue making music independently throughout life. Someone who does not require a conductor, institution, or formal ensemble structure in order to participate musically. A self-directed musician can learn songs independently, collaborate with others, experiment creatively, adapt to different contexts, and use music as part of everyday life. They can participate in music socially and meaningfully long after graduation.
To me, this feels like an incredibly important educational goal. Not because traditional ensembles should disappear. Not because concerts no longer matter. Not because technical skill is unimportant. But because music education should help students build lifelong relationships with music.
Broadening What Counts as Musicianship
Perhaps that requires broadening our understanding of what counts as musicianship. For generations, school music programs have centered a relatively narrow set of musical behaviors: reading notation, following conductors, reproducing repertoire, and preparing performances. Those are valuable skills.
But musicianship can also include creating, improvising, recording, arranging, producing, collaborating, facilitating, experimenting, moving, responding, and connecting with audiences. These are not lesser forms of music-making. In many ways, they are some of the most human forms of music-making.
I also think this conversation reflects larger cultural changes happening outside music education. Many traditional music systems were designed during a time when schools emphasized industrial models of organization: large groups, centralized leadership, standardization, and efficiency. That structure worked very well for producing large ensembles and polished performances.
But today’s world increasingly values creativity, adaptability, technology, entrepreneurship, collaboration, and self-direction. Young people now live in participatory cultures. They create content online. They remix ideas. They produce music on laptops. They collaborate digitally. They form musical communities independently of institutions. They are used to environments where they can shape experiences rather than simply comply with them.
And perhaps music education now faces an important decision.
Will we continue primarily preparing students to function within school ensemble systems?
Or will we help students develop lifelong relationships with music that continue long after school ends?
Preparing Students for Musical Life
For me, this is not about replacing band, choir, or orchestra. I still believe deeply in the power of those experiences. But I do think we need to ask harder questions about what musical success actually means.
If a student graduates after seven years in music programs and never makes music again, should that concern us?
If students leave without knowing how to create music independently, should that concern us?
If students experience music primarily as compliance, performance preparation, and institutional participation, are we fully serving them?
I do not think music education exists simply to preserve traditions or keep students busy during the school day. I think music education exists because music is fundamentally human. Music helps people connect, express identity, process emotion, build relationships, participate in culture, experience joy, create meaning, and feel belonging.
And if music education loses connection with those larger human purposes, students can sense it. But if music education genuinely helps students become lifelong participants in music, then perhaps the value becomes much more obvious, not only to educators, but to students, families, and communities as well. Because ultimately, the goal should not simply be producing successful ensemble students. The goal should be helping students build musical lives.
