Wish me Good Luck and please, advice

[musicrebel4u]

Dear colleagues,

From May 14 'till July 2nd I am planning to visit Ukraine, Russia, Spain and Israel.
Since I was born in Russia and grew up in Ukraine ( and received my music education there), I feel obliged to help these countries to improve their music education in public and state music schools.

I started an initiative: Music literacy for Russia and Ukraine with help of technology. We have decided to offer our software to all the state schools for free. I  already got appointments in Ministries of culture and education in both countries with key people in this field.

I wish to provide the same action in all the countries in the world and of cause to start with the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. My problem here is following: due to the fact that Russian and Ukrainian are my first languages and I already have some name, recognition and endorsements in these countries among the most renowned musicians and scientists, it was not hard for me to find the ways to open the doors and I have a great chance to make music literacy happen there in my life time.

But I am absolutely helpless in the USA, because I don't know 'key words', how to approach etc to have a chance to present our invention and start the same project in English speaking countries.

I will appreciate any input or ideas from members of this forum in order to know, what steps I should make to bring the invention to attention of governments? 

[Bob]

(Bob after much thought.) 

I suppose you could try phoning the President. 

And yes, good luck.

[Bob]

In the U.S. music is competing with other subjects for time and attention in the public school curriculum.  Good luck in changing that.  It is a "core" subject though and that does carry some weight.  No Child Left Behind.  But it's not treated the same as the other subjects, and it's not tested -- So if things aren't quite right with music, it doesn't really matter and not too many people notice.

If you really wanted to change the entire education system for music, you would want to contact MENC.   menc.org 

I'm all for more musical literacy.  I don't see the public schools budging much on that.  They're very performance oriented.  And, at least in some way, music must be fun.  It can't be like math too much in the schools. 

[Bob]

MTNA too

I think it's mtna.org



(laughing)  You really might have just as much luck contacting the President though.

[musicrebel4u]

MTNA too

I think it's mtna.org



(laughing)  You really might have just as much luck contacting the President though.

Yes, you're right!
They always happy to offer me a booth for money and don't give any chance to get to educators on the level of science - not business. How sad, because I have much to offer 

[Bob]

A booth at a conference you mean?  One of the vendors?  How much do vendors have to pay for those booths anyway?

Maybe write some articles for various music teaching magazines.

Get someone to do a study of students who have gone through your system.  That will take years though.  But it's a solid.

Then a few pilot schools to test out the program.  Those would be the systems with more money and resources to test something like that out, and still not be too affected by a community if they don't see what you're doing as being fun or performance-oriented.

I still don't quite know what it is you're doing.  I'm thinking it's just teaching music with some solfege and flipping the staff sideways to make the idea of 'the notes on the page to the keyboard' easier for some kids to understand.  Is that what you're getting at?  Being 'musically literate' by being able to read music like you would a book with words?  I did read some pianist biography who said he attributed his success in music to that start with solfege by his elementary music teacher. 

I still don't know what your program is though.  The idea, not the software part.  Do you have things sequenced out for grades, say kindergarten through sixth grade?  I'd be interested in that.  Except... I'm thinking there are already programs like that out there.

[Bob]

Education isn't an exact science though.

You need to present whatever you're dealing with in simple terms.  I've looked at your stuff and read your posts and I still don't know what you're talking about exactly.  It looks like you've got a decent early music business going and then some kind of software.  But then you're telling teachers they don't know what they're doing and they're messing up students.  And then what...?  Then it's a jumble of articles and information.  You need something very simple to present.  Very few people are going to read through all that and the articles, etc.  I've read some and I don't know what it is.  What I've seen doesn't look that revolutionary or different from what anyone is doing anyway. Basically... nice setup for early music and getting kids happy and parents getting what they want.  That keeps them coming back.  Then it's... kids should learn solfege.  Yes, great.  Some do.  A lot won't go for that though.  If they do want it and go on to college, they learn it then.  Earlier would be greater yes, but I haven't seen a lot of places that can do that.  Actually, I've only heard about places that have a developed solfege program -- in K-12 educational settings.  College, yes, of course.  The most I guess I've seen is a bit of solfege in elementary, a little more in junior high, and more in high school.  But even in high school, they're only sight-singing through diatonic music.  But hey, that's a great start.