Since 2004, music in the German state of Baden-Württemberg has only been taught as part of the subject group "Man, Nature and Culture". The state's CDU parliamentary group is now calling for it to be reinstated as an independent subject in elementary school timetables. The German Orchestra Association (DOV) supports the initiative.
Studies by the State Institute for School Development and the Baden-Württemberg State Music Council have shown, writes the DOV, that the merging of subjects, which was brought about almost ten years ago, has not achieved the desired educational results.
Georg Wacker, the education policy spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group in Stuttgart, explained that it had become clear that this approach had not laid the hoped-for foundations that had been expected based on the state of educational research at the time.
According to DOV Managing Director Gerald Mertens, the merging of music with other music subjects, as has been increasingly practiced throughout Germany in recent years, is also a wrong move. "Now that both teaching practice and scientific studies have clearly revealed this, the wrong decisions that have been made must be reversed as quickly as possible," continued Mertens.
