When Did Music Education Become So Specialized?

Reclaiming Participation, Creativity, and Lifelong Musicianship

After forty years in music education — and still teaching — I find myself asking a simple but unsettling question: When did we become so specialized?

There was a time when music-making was woven into community life. People gathered to sing songs they all knew. The repertoire carried shared stories, beliefs, celebrations, and sorrows. Participation was not reserved for the trained or the talented. It was communal. It was accessible. It belonged to everyone.

In today’s schools, we still see glimpses of this spirit in the elementary years. Young students sing widely — patriotic songs, folk music, cultural traditions, jazz, popular tunes. They move, create, and participate freely. Music feels shared.

But as students grow older, something changes.

We begin to specialize.

Students choose an instrument in order to join the school band or orchestra. They learn notation and technical skills to perform literature selected for the ensemble. Choir students focus on sight-singing and choral repertoire. The music is often beautiful and artistically rich. The ensemble experience can be powerful.

Yet increasingly, music becomes tied to performance within a specific group. Outside of concerts, how often can students share that repertoire with family and friends? How often does it live beyond the rehearsal space?

We have not done anything wrong. Ensemble music is valuable. Discipline, collaboration, and artistic excellence matter.

But somewhere along the way, we may have narrowed our understanding of what it means to be musical — to make music freely and to express ourselves through it.

What if learning an instrument were also about the joy of playing a melody at home? What if students were equipped to improvise, accompany themselves, or create music to share with the people around them? 

In many school programs, the artistic outcome understandably takes center stage. Directors select literature. Students rehearse and perform. The focus is excellence. Yet the music can begin to feel separate from everyday life — something that happens on stage rather than in the living room or around a table.

What if we could do both?

What if students learned to sing and play in ways that allowed them to share music with family and community — and also perform high-quality ensemble literature? What if creativity and student ownership stood alongside the works of great composers? What if ensemble experiences included room for choice, improvisation, and personal expression?

I see hopeful signs in guitar and modern band classes, where student voice and creativity are central. Many students who struggle to find their place in traditional ensembles thrive in these environments. They are not rejecting music. They are seeking access to it in a different way.

The question, then, is not whether specialization is wrong. Specialization has brought tremendous artistry and achievement to school music programs.

The deeper question may be this: Have we unintentionally allowed specialization to overshadow participation, creativity, and self-expression?

Music education at its best does more than prepare students for performance. It prepares them for musical lives — lives in which they can sing with confidence, play for joy, create freely, and share music naturally with others.

Perhaps the future of music education is not less artistic, but more whole. Not less disciplined, but more expansive. Not centered only on performance, but grounded in lifelong musicianship.

This belief has shaped my own work. It’s Time to Play was created as one small step toward restoring that balance — beginning instrumental music playing with sound, song, creativity, and ownership, and allowing musical growth to develop naturally from there.

Music education at its best prepares students not only for concerts, but for confidence, creativity, and connection — the kind of musicianship they carry with them for life.