Should music teachers be experts in folk and jazz music?

I think one of the most important characteristics of a good music educator is that they should be well rounded.  This isn’t to say that all music educators have to be experts in every type of music.  Every music teacher has his or her own musical background.  A music teacher could be a classical pianist, a jazz trumpet player, an opera singer, a composer, or a songwriter, or any number of other things.  The music teachers I had in school and the ones I know today have a wide variety of strengths.  My high school orchestra instructor was a conductor first and foremost, and he was also a cellist.  My middle school music teacher was a blues guitar player.  The music teacher at the elementary school where I’m currently interning is a singer and pianist with a classical background, and the music she enjoys most in her spare time is Christian rock.  Another elementary school music teacher I met recently had a career in the 70s as a rock guitar player/singer/songwriter.

Everyone has his or her own musical tastes, strengths, and tendencies.  In this case I don’t intend for the term well “rounded” to mean that a music teacher should be good at everything.  Instead I’m using it to mean that a music teacher should be interested in as wide a range of musical genres as possible, and be a good enough musician to be able to teach them.  A music instructor could have a completely classical background and have no experience really playing anything else, but he or she could still like and appreciate folk, jazz, and other types of music.  Obviously the more a music teacher knows the better, but it doesn’t take them being an expert to want to teach music that’s outside their comfort zone.

Both jazz and folk music are important for kids to learn about.  When I was trying to make a list of songs that all kids should know, it seemed that most of the songs I was coming up with fell on either that jazz or folk spectrum.  This is my list so far:

This Land is Your Land – Woody Guthrie

The Star-Spangled Banner – John Stafford Smith and Francis Scott Key

Heal The World – Michael Jackson

It Don’t Mean a Thing – Duke Ellington and Irving Mills

            Everybody’s Talkin’ – Fred Neil

            Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear – Randy Newman

I Got a Name – Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox

Wouldn’t it be Nice – Brian Wilson and Tony Asher

The Time They Are a Changin’ – Bob Dylan

Lean on Me – Bill Withers

Blue Skies – Irving Berlin

Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head – Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Embraceable You – George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

I Just Called to Say I Love You – Stevie Wonder

Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg

All The Things You Are – Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein