I get this from students all the time: "I only need to take lessons to prepare for this one solo contest/audition/chair test/etc". Invariably, those are the students who call me to start lessons 4 to 6 weeks before a big event in their musical-instrument-playing lives, they don't want to work on anything but that one piece of music, and then they quit taking lessons immediately after completing that one event. This helps nobody, in the long run. The amount of time they have given themselves to prepare is usually woefully inadequate, the amount of work they're willing to put into their goal is usually not enough, they are generally expecting me, their teacher, to instantly wave my magic wand and make them good enough at it to pass their audition with my super-secret unicorn ninja powers. Along the way, they will work themselves up to make this one goal, this one contest, this one audition, into the most important event of their entire life, and then when they inevitably don't do as well as they had hoped, they will likely be so crushed that they'll think about giving up music altogether; and they'll likely blame me, their teacher, for not adequately preparing them to win their contest.
First of all, it's great to have goals, don't get me wrong. I think every one of us has had at least one challenging piece of music that they want to get really good at in order to pass an audition or perform at contest. Auditions (both formal and informal) are a regular part of every career professional musician's world. Solo contests (when I was coming up they used to call them "solo festivals") are a part of every school music program.
But let us focus on the reason behind the goal-oriented nature of these school music programs and allow ourselves to question whether we are truly doing a disservice to kids by making music into a competitive sport as opposed to a creative art form.
Solo Contests in schools exist because music department heads can point to those as a quantifiable reason for their need to keep their music programs funded; when the bean-counters in the administration buildings decide how to allocate funding, they need to see result-based activities, which music in and of itself is not. It's not easy to point to a young musician and say "wow, little Johnny really felt that Bach sonata, let's give his school more money." It's not easy to point to a high school jazz ensemble and say "wow, they sure are playing those blues licks, there were some wrong notes in there but I admire their creative spirit so let's give them more money."
In short, most school board members do not understand music. They do not understand the complexity of creating a form of expression through the medium of sound and using that to communicate an emotional state or evoke an emotional response in others, and they for sure don't understand the value of teaching kids to be able to develop those nonverbal communication skills as an essential part of brain development. It's far easier for them to understand test scores, bell curves, and standardized exam grades.
On the other hand, as extracurricular activities go, Competitive sports are easy to point to and say "my school is the best because we win more games than all the other schools in our district." The students, parents, and fans can all rally behind their school colors and cheer for their team. The more students, parents, and fans there are, the larger the attendance at the games, and it's very easy to point to a cheering crowd of sports fans and say "See? Our football program is a success!" The school district boards and parent associations find it easy to see the value in supporting a winning athletic program, and even the losing schools are able to get funding by pointing to their programs and saying "we might win more games if we had new uniforms". But in the arts, no such competitive spirit exists. Art is creative expression that evokes emotion. Not easy to put a dollar amount on that. So the school music program directors invented the concept of solo "contests" so they could point to their classes and say "my music program produces at least ten contest winners every year" and "our school wins our district's music contest every year"
The prevailing theory among some music educators is that while they are preparing towards that goal, they will learn all sorts of other things about music in general. But what they learn is that their ability to regurgitate a practiced routine of musical notes in order is being compared to other peoples' ability to regurgitate a practiced routine of musical notes. They're learning how to pass a test - which has absolutely nothing to do with the overall purpose of music.
Unfortunately, as a friend pointed out, "teaching to the test" is the new way of doing things.
