Sistema in the news: exploring media coverage of Sistema-inspired programs in Montreal and Kahnawà:ke
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Montreal is home to three music education programs inspired by the internationally renownedVenezuelan program known as El Sistema. The Garage à musique (est. 2009) is part of theFondation Dr Julien, and features classical and popular music as part of their work in socialpediatrics in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough. Share the Warmth is a communityorganization in Pointe-Saint-Charles that started out collecting food and clothes for those in need(1989), expanding to include youth programming and music lessons (2007) and a “SistemaIntensive Music Program” (2012). Finally, Viva! Sistema serves both Pointe-Saint-Charles andthe Kahnawà:ke reserve with a string orchestra program. In this study, I address two majorquestions. First, how does media coverage of these programs reflect their aims as well as publicunderstanding of El Sistema and Sistema-inspired programming? Second, why were these siteschosen for Sistema programs, and what does that imply about the role of Western classical musicin these communities, as perceived by music educators and the general public?For my study I analyze newspaper articles from the four major Montreal Newspapers in bothFrench (Le Devoir, La Presse, Le Journal de Montréal) and English (The Montreal Gazette) aswell as music industry publication La Scena Musicale, all from January 2011 to August 2014.Through this I gauge public perception of the programs, supplementing this analysis withprimary sources such as program brochures and websites. I explore the themes that arise fromthis analysis, including issues of language (particularly important in Quebec), immigration,indigeneity, race, culture, and class as they operate in Montreal, engaging theoretical workincluding Simpson (2014), Haque (2012), Chan (2010), Thobani (2007), Razack (2007) andFreire (1970). I also draw on music education literature such as Bowman (2005) and Campbell(2004). The North American scholarly literature discussing El Sistema programs is growingrapidly, including books by Tunstall (2012) and Baker (2014) as well as several studies anddissertations, for example Mauskapf (2012), Shoemaker (2012), Silberman (2013); Rossi (2011);Cline (2012). By investigating Montreal media coverage of Sistema-inspired programming, Iwill supplement the existing literature regarding various North American projects. Theconnections I will make between social issues and Sistema-inspired music education make itpossible to apply this research well beyond the boundaries of the communities in this study.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".