Music education is culture and education!

During the pandemic, we were often told: "Art teaching is not culture; you are education." when we pointed out the difficult financial situation of self-employed music teachers or when we wanted to have a say on cultural issues.

To become a qualified music teacher, you have to prove a high technical and artistic level on your instrument in the entrance examination at a music college and you have to impress with your artistic presence and charisma. After passing the exam, you study your instrument for at least five years and continue to develop these performative qualities. You then acquire didactic skills either in the 4th and 5th year of study or after completing your Master's degree in an additional course of study. - And this is where the problem begins: from a federal point of view, music teachers who continue their performative work after graduation and also or mainly pursue a music education activity are only "part-time artists", although they are professionally involved exclusively with their art - partly performative and partly music education, by passing on their musical knowledge and skills to people of all ages, giving them access to music, different styles and a wide variety of literature, and letting them discover their own music through musical improvisation. Suddenly what they do, although it is all about music, is no longer culture but "just" education. To put it bluntly, it's like telling a surgeon, as soon as he starts teaching at a university alongside his medical work: "You are now education and not medicine."

The label awarded has consequences: the SMPV professional association, which represents around 2,500 musicians, receives CHF 0.00 in structural contributions from the federal government because it is not recognized as a cultural association, even though that is exactly what it is, while the SMV, with significantly fewer members, receives substantial structural contributions. The irony here is that the SMPV organizes many cultural events with its music lessons, talent stages, teachers' concerts, toddler concerts, ad hoc choir events, etc., while the SMV focuses on its trade union work. Nothing can change this grotesque situation if the SMPV is not recognized nationally as a cultural association and is not finally allowed to have a say in cultural matters.

Many of the demands formulated in the cultural message are already being met by the SMPV as an association and by its members in their daily work:

• Cultural participation of the population: People who don't normally go to concerts often come to music lessons and concerts by our teachers or to children's concerts, but are fascinated by them and are encouraged to attend larger concerts. Or active singing in an ad hoc choir organized by the association is a low-threshold approach to choral singing. There and in the daily individual or group lessons given by our members, people of all ages and backgrounds find access to a wide variety of musical styles. Our students acquire skills that they can then use in amateur orchestras and choirs. Inclusion is a matter of course.
• Social cohesion is promoted by making music together in lessons with the teacher or in an often intergenerational ensemble.
• Advising our members on social security and employment law issues has always been important to the SMPV. However, the service was expanded during the pandemic.
• Digital transformation: With its guide to digital music lessons, which the SMPV compiled at lightning speed during the pandemic, with its range of further training courses on digital media in music lessons and with the association's two job placement platforms mein-musikunterricht.ch (for private music lessons) and rent-a-musician.ch (for arranging concert engagements), the SMPV is already very well positioned here.
• The two platforms also contribute to sustainability by providing qualified musicians from the neighborhood for music lessons and concerts.

As music educators, we can no longer deny that we are culture, even if part of our work consists of teaching and communicating it.
How boring our lessons would be if we were no longer artists in the classroom!

We need to join forces with associations from other art disciplines and fight for music education and art education in general to be perceived as the important Y between culture and education and for associations representing art educators to be treated as cultural associations.