GFA's Pre-College Education Initiative

Forward by David Grimes

One of the principal mandates of the Guitar Foundation of America is "to foster the study of the classic guitar in private studios and at the elementary, secondary and college levels, and to encourage the development of innovative curricula in support of these ends."

The past few decades have seen the acceptance of classical guitar as an instrument for serious study in the vast majority of colleges and universities, and this has been an enormous step forward. Less happily, far too many students embark on their college careers with little or no preparation at the pre-college level. In many cases, an apt analogy would be that of a student's trying to enroll in a college-level mathematics program without having acquired any basic skills in arithmetic.

The GFA Board of Directors feels that we must now turn our attention to the high schools, making a concerted effort to promote classical guitar instruction in secondary education. We have appointed Gregg Goodhart as Director of Pre-College Education Programs, and he will spearhead our project. His article below represents a first step in the process of gathering information and laying the groundwork for designing the subsequent stages of the project. We will look forward to working with all those interested in this crucial task.

David Grimes

Why Johnny Can't Read

by Gregg Goodhart

Download this article in Acrobat PDF format

I was told a joke when I was in graduate school that went as follows, "How do you get a guitarist to stop playing? Put some sheet music in front of him." Unfortunately, this reputation is well deserved.

Why is it that there are thousands of guitarists who can play the heck out of a Van Halen guitar solo or play Foo Fighters music note for note with a band but can't read note one in written music? Why don't horn and clarinet players suffer from the same situation? While the underlying and ancillary issues may be complex, there is one overriding reason for this; the lack of formalized music training on the guitar as part of the pre-college school system in America.

At the high school level there are literally thousands of wind band and orchestral programs. While the research is not complete, there is no doubt that the amount of classical guitar (or whatever term you use to designate the instrument spoken about in these pages) pales in comparison. It is also the case that many ‘guitar programs' at the pre-college level are not teaching college-prep skills (as do band and orchestra programs). Many of these situations merely involve strumming to popular tunes and reading chord charts.

Any music making is a good thing, of course. Whatever anyone likes to do within music is fine as well. Training in the pre-college environment, however, is not a place to tailor one's learning to what one ‘feels like learning.' It does not work that way in algebra and biology, and it does not work that way in band and orchestra. It should not work that way with guitar either. Some teachers and principals may be concerned that too rigorous or ‘classical' a program will not attract the numbers needed to have a vital program. I believe that, instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator, we can represent our art properly, show the beauty and fascinating aspects of it, and expect students to rise to that level instead of the other way around. My experience in teaching bears this out.

Guitar in all of its forms is, without question, the most popular instrument in the world. How many students who would not join band or orchestra would take a classical guitar class to fulfill their fine arts credit requirement? (The answer in my case is hundreds.) How many of these students would then fall in love with the instrument and pursue further training who otherwise would never have been involved. (Again, in my case a significant number.) In the absence of a guitar program many of these students would play popular styles or not play at all.

I am in my fourth year of building the guitar program at Servite High School in Anaheim, California. When I began there, guitar was thought of as a blow-off class. By keeping definite standards, I was able to reverse that opinion among the student population. Enrollment by certain students dropped, but enrollment of students actually interested in learning about the guitar - even those who played popular styles - increased. In one case a student who had taken the class in the ‘blow-off' era before I arrived asked if he could take the class again, because he didn't learn anything the first time. Now it has become commonplace for kids and parents to see guitar ensembles and soloists at functions. Everyone now knows someone who plays classical guitar - it is part of the school culture. I currently have 60 in the beginning classes and 11 in the advanced (second through fourth year). This represents 9% of the entire student population, and the program is still growing. Such a percentage at any school is enough to justify the program. I also teach music history/appreciation and music theory.

So it is possible to create a full-time position for someone to teach guitar at the high school level. To this end I am happy to announce that GFA is taking an active interest in encouraging the development of pre-college guitar education. The role that GFA will play in this is still being developed and is part of my work. This article marks the beginning of the public process.

We would like involvement from our members. We know that there are numerous and varied programs in schools across the country, and we need to start by compiling a comprehensive listing of such programs. Do you know of any accredited pre-college educational institutions that offer such programs for fine arts credit? Are you teaching in one yourself? If so, we would like to know about it as we compile data for this project. Please contact us, as we have some questions we would like to ask about such programs.

Would you be willing to help in this endeavor? We are just beginning to determine the forms that GFA's support for educational projects might take, but it will be vital to know that there are people across the nation who we might be willing and able to help in this most important endeavor.

To contact me, please e-mail me at ggoodhart@guitarfoundation.org, or send ground mail to PO Box 4909, Garden Grove, CA 92842 - and stay tuned to what may be the single most important issue facing the future of our instrument.