Roll Over Beethoven There is much to learn from teaching pop music in schools, argues Julia Winterson  Music education in the UK has until recently concerned itself overwhelmingly with classical music. In consequence, there has been little sustained critical debate over the value of teaching pop music. But pop music has a great deal to offer, not least in capturing the interest of pupils. Certainly since pop became part of the curriculum the number of students sitting music exams has rocketed.

In the days of O-level music there were around 5,000 candidates each year in the UK , but in 2004 nearly 60,000 candidates sat the GCSE. Numbers have increased more than tenfold and they are still on the up. That change must demonstrate that music teaching today, with its significant popular music component, is tapping the musical abilities and interests of an ever larger number of pupils.

Forty years ago the Newsom Report Half our future found that music was the subject most frequently dropped from the curriculum. It observed that although out of school ‘adolescents are enthusiastically engaged in musical self-education', that they listen to records and are ‘often knowledgeable and highly critical of performance', in the school the contrast was often striking. This was in the days of the old O-level. The GCSE specification differs radically, and nowadays pupils are no longer rooted to their desks being told about classical music by the teacher and learning the conventional workings of cadential progressions.

Rather they are composing, listening and performing in a wide range of styles – classical, world and pop. For many now school music activities are related to the reality of experience beyond school. But this has not been a revolution. These changes have been a long time coming.

Until the 1980s music teaching was restricted to classical ‘masterpieces' and teaching was dominated by the values and technical conventions of the past. Those days of musical appreciation harked back to philanthropic Victorian attitudes where high culture was seen as a guiding force for society and classical music was good for you. This attitude still prevails and arguments against the teaching of pop music often stem from moral and cultural values in which classical music is seen as disciplined and enlightening (desirable) whereas pop is the antithesis - entertaining and fun (undesirable).

Nowadays this argument is specious: for the first half of the 20th century the gulf between high art and popular culture was wide but since then one of the aspects of post-modernism has been the dissolution of traditional categories. We live in an age of cultural diversity where the division between these two styles of music has blurred – witness the parallels between minimalism and re-mix dance music. Pop music has fragmented into a myriad of styles and some of the hostility towards popular culture is being displaced by direct engagement with it.
Music education has tried – and failed – to change people's taste in music. Pop music has eclipsed all other forms of music by any measure of popularity or economic dominance. The fact is that only a small percentage of the population buys classical CDs and the audience for classical concerts is aging. Like it or not, pop music is the real music culture in which people live. But does this mean that we have to teach it?

It is a commonly held belief amongst traditional music teachers that pop music is shallow and ephemeral. Certainly it can be argued that most classical music is more sophisticated in its construction than pop music, and that pop music can be formulaic in structure and limited in its use of harmony, but this is only part of the picture. There is now a well-established body of works in the pop repertoire that provides a rich source of material to study. Principles of structural analysis can be taught just as easily through verse and chorus as they can through rondo form and a great deal of pop music is sophisticated in its use of timbre and rhythm. Take, for example, the virtuosic playing of Jimi Hendrix with its extended instrumental and electronic techniques, innovative improvisations, and adventurous use of melodic intervals. Hendrix is a hero and one that students find it easy to engage with. His Star Spangled Banner is an ideal piece to teach alongside Paganini's 24th Caprice or a Berio sequenza.

Pop music can be treated as a discipline in the same way as classical music. Students can learn the same range of skills – performance skills (there is the same need for practice), analytical skills and compositional skills. Powers of aural discrimination can be developed – pop music can be used to develop the ear as well as an acute sense of idiom. It can only help when aural awareness is developed through a stance of involvement and first-hand knowledge. The study of pop music stimulates creative activity and encourages critical understanding – internalisation rather than superficial analysis.

For many years it was argued that pop music belonged to the pupils rather than the teacher. In some quarters it still is, but it is now nearly 50 years since Rock around the clock caused a sensation and became a symbol of the teenage generation. It is safe to say that in 2005 all music teachers have grown up with pop music and any teenagers who rocked around the clock will be past retirement age. Pop music is now common currency, and even if teachers are not au fait with the latest trends they can still use it to discuss musical elements such as rhythm and harmony without seeming to encroach on student territory. Pupils in their turn will be able to take more part in the educative process.

What is more, within the huge and growing pop music industry there are many vocational paths. It would be hard to claim the same for the study of classical music where every year thousands of music students are encouraged to train for a career in performance – a goal that only a tiny percentage will accomplish. For many years, British pop musicians were far more likely to have emerged from art colleges than music schools, but now there are courses nationwide which prepare students to enter the music industry.
There is also a growing number of specialist pop music colleges – often over-subscribed and with glittering alumni. Given that musical snobbery has been allowed to get in the way of any serious consideration of the educational benefits of pop music, should we be surprised that these are largely sponsored by private enterprise?