The Injustice of Singer/Non-Singer labels by Music Educators

Abstract

Cheri, a successful career woman, when speaking of her elementary school encounters with singing describes them as humiliating and dreadful experiences. Sydney, a retired health care professional, has not sung in 65 years based on an incident involving an elementary teacher. Marjorie, an urban planner, described her elementary music teacher as the wicked witch of the west. Maria, a young instrumentalist, has refrained from singing in the last ten years because of a comment made about her singing ability by a secondary teacher. Cheri, Sydney, Marjorie, and Maria now regard themselves, because of these negative encounters in the education system, as adult non-singers. Their teachers, knowingly or unknowingly, used their position of authority to label these three women as non-singers. Labeling, according to current sociologists, is, “… analogous to prejudice, except that it provides us with a focus on language” (Phillips & Johnston, 2007, p. 182). Once labels are placed on students, dichotomy is emphasized instead of inclusion and there is great potential for inaccuracy and ensuing negative effects (McCall & Simmons, 1978). This concept may be summed up in a quote from John Barth’s novel, The End of the Road, when he writes, “Enough now to say that we are all casting directors a great deal of the time, if not always, and he (sic) is wise who realizes that this role-assigning is at best an arbitrary distortion of the actors’ personalities” (Barth, 1958, p. 24). Students, who have been labeled as non-singers in grade school by one whom they deemed as a musical expert, internalize this judgment and allow it to curtail future singing endeavors throughout adolescence and adulthood. Such students in later life may become adult non-singers. Cheri, Sydney, Marjorie and Maria did become adult nonsingers and thus the value of fair treatment of individuals and groups that should be inherent in the school system was not upheld in their situations.

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