Since the reform and opening up, China's social economy has continued to develop at a high speed, people's living standards have steadily improved, and the whole education has entered a benign development track. It is in this context that music education in primary and secondary schools has gained a rare opportunity for development, and the party and government have paid unprecedented attention to it and made remarkable achievements. To sum up, these achievements are mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, most education administrative departments at all levels have initially established management, consulting and teaching and research institutions for music education in primary and secondary schools, which has changed the spontaneous state that there was no specialized institution and no special person to manage music education in primary and secondary schools in the past; Secondly, a series of laws and documents have been formulated to guide music education in primary and secondary schools, which fundamentally changed the situation that music education in primary and secondary schools in China can not be followed; Third, it has changed the situation that music education in primary and secondary schools has been largely blank for a long time, and the starting rate of music courses in primary and secondary schools has steadily increased, especially in 1994 high school, which ended the history that music courses were not offered in high schools since the founding of New China. Fourth, a large number of outstanding music teachers in primary and secondary schools have emerged, accumulated a lot of successful music education and teaching experience, and the construction of music teachers in primary and secondary schools has achieved initial results; Fifth, a series of colorful extracurricular music activities have been carried out, which have effectively promoted the development of school music education; Sixth, a certain number and quality of music teaching materials for primary and secondary schools have been compiled, and music teaching equipment in some areas has begun to take shape.

At the same time, we also see that due to the poor foundation, weak foundation and unbalanced development of music education in primary and secondary schools in China, despite the above achievements, there are still many problems, including: the management institutions and management teams of music education in primary and secondary schools are still not perfect; The starting rate of music classes is unbalanced, some of them are still very low, the shortage of music teachers is large, the qualification rate of teachers' quality, education and post is low, and the outflow is serious; The emphasis on music education is often only verbal, with little real investment and the overall shortage of teaching equipment; The understanding of music education is unscientific and incomplete; The teaching level and the quality of teaching materials are not high. Obviously, most of these problems can only be solved step by step by government actions, not by researchers and one or more scientific research projects.

On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that the achievements of music education in primary and secondary schools are more a quantitative expansion and hardware strengthening. Of course, without the development of these quantities and hardware, there would be no development and leap in the quality of music education. However, in order to improve the quality of music education, or to make music education develop sustainably, besides external conditions such as quantity and hardware, there is also a key issue, that is, at the same time, we should pay more attention to the music education itself in primary and secondary schools, that is, the internal problems of music education in primary and secondary schools. Therefore, at the moment when the 20th century is coming to an end and the 2 1 century is coming, it is an urgent and unavoidable problem for the further development of music education in China to carefully examine the previous music education in primary and secondary schools and truly answer the problems existing in music education in primary and secondary schools, including theoretical ambiguity and practical problems.

We believe that there are two serious and prominent problems in the music curriculum of primary and secondary schools in China at present. One is the non-artistic tendency of music education, that is, music education in primary and secondary schools does not highlight the characteristics of music art well; The other is the specialization tendency of primary and secondary education, that is, music education in primary and secondary schools does not highlight the characteristics of primary and secondary school students well, so that music education in primary and secondary schools often becomes non-primary and non-music education in practice. The above problems can be said to have been clearly revealed in the aims and tasks, contents and forms, principles and methods of music education in primary and secondary schools.

At present, there are several one-sided and biased views on the understanding of the purpose and task of music education in primary and secondary schools. These viewpoints either regard the purpose and task of professional music education as the purpose and task of music education in primary and secondary schools, or take the purpose and task of other non-music courses as the purpose and task of music education. Some people often take teaching students to master the knowledge and skills in music textbooks as the purpose of music education in primary and secondary schools, and think that music education in primary and secondary schools is mainly to transport professional reserve talents for higher-level professional music colleges, so cultivating music talents is the main purpose of music education in primary and secondary schools; Some people are used to treating music education as a "dessert", an ornament of school education and a vassal of other aspects of school education; Others like to simply transplant the ultimate goal of the whole school education to the goal of music education, especially when everyone is talking about quality education at present. Many people even like to artificially and hollowly raise the status and role of music education and regard music education as a good medicine for all diseases. We believe that the above-mentioned one-sided understanding of music education in primary and secondary schools is mainly due to the lack of understanding of the essential characteristics of music education in primary and secondary schools. On the one hand, music education in primary and secondary schools is a basic quality education for all students, not a professional music education or vocational training education for individual top students; On the other hand, music education is an education of art and beauty, but it is not a scientific education, a real education or even a good education. The main purpose of art education and aesthetic education is to beautify life and improve human survival and quality of life. Therefore, music education in primary and secondary schools should guide students to participate in music activities, so that students can enjoy the satisfaction of success and get aesthetic pleasure experience, and then make students love music and stimulate their interest and desire to further study music. On this basis, students should have the basic knowledge and ability to further study music and understand the history of the development of music culture, so as to lay the foundation for their sustainable development in music and at the same time achieve the goal of imperceptibly improving students' quality in an all-round way.

At present, there are also serious problems in the teaching principles and methods of music courses in primary and secondary schools. First of all, in specific teaching practice, people often adopt the same teaching methods as other disciplines that do not highlight the characteristics of music art; Theoretically speaking, although scholars have put forward many music teaching principles in recent years, some of them have failed to highlight the artistic characteristics, and it is difficult to play their due guiding role in music teaching practice in primary and secondary schools. In a word, at present, music teaching in primary and secondary schools is over-knowledgeable and rational, emphasizing teachers' teaching, ignoring students' participation and experience, emphasizing teaching results, ignoring the pleasant process of teaching, emphasizing knowledge and skills, and carrying out light music practice activities. The teaching mode is single and the teaching effect is not good. It is so common that almost all students like music, but quite a few students don't like music lessons. We believe that the non-artistic teaching methods adopted by teachers inevitably make music education mixed with some non-musical and non-artistic elements, and its existence will inevitably affect students' main position as the subject of music appreciation, music performance and creation. Therefore, the improvement of music teaching methods is, in the final analysis, to truly establish students' dominant position in music teaching. Music class is an active practical course, and music teaching activity is actually a kind of music practice activity in which teachers and students participate together. Therefore, the forms and methods of music teaching are necessarily different from other knowledge and disciplines. For music teaching, students' dominant position is mainly reflected in whether students really become masters of music teaching, that is, music practice activities. If the forms and methods of music teaching are still dominated by teachers' lectures, students' dominant position cannot be guaranteed, music teaching cannot provide students with enough opportunities to participate in music activities, and students cannot really get aesthetic pleasure experience and success satisfaction. Therefore, the primary task of music teaching is to create opportunities for students to actively participate in music, so that students can truly become the masters of music teaching activities.

In terms of content and requirements, music education in primary and secondary schools also has a serious tendency of specialization and adult. Generally speaking, the current music syllabus for primary and secondary schools and various versions of music textbooks based on it are deeply influenced by professional music art colleges in terms of content, style and requirements: the content and requirements are comprehensive and systematic, and it is too difficult, which not only exceeds the existing level and acceptance ability of primary and secondary school students, but also exceeds the needs of music development for primary and secondary school students, and a lot of knowledge and skills are unnecessary and impossible for a non-professional musician to use; However, in the form arrangement, all kinds of music knowledge are often in a fragmented state, which is not well integrated, so that students are presented with complete music images instead of individual knowledge points, which leads to students' contact with only isolated knowledge points instead of real music. At the same time, the arrangement of teaching materials overemphasizes its own strict logical system and time sequence arrangement, which is closed, single and rigid, leaving little room for teachers and students to create, which seriously violates the creative character of music discipline itself. We believe that to effectively solve this problem, we should not only fully respect the laws and characteristics of the music curriculum itself, but also fully follow the laws of physical and mental development of primary and secondary school students and the aesthetic characteristics of their music.

Due to the misunderstanding of the purpose and task of music education in primary and secondary schools, as well as the low level of practice and in-depth theoretical discussion of music education in primary and secondary schools in China, the evaluation of music teaching in primary and secondary schools is quite backward and there are serious problems. It can be said that at present, China has not established a scientific and reasonable evaluation system of music teaching in primary and secondary schools with unified standards, so that in practical work, some behaviors that conform to the laws of music education in primary and secondary schools are often considered wrong, while some behaviors that violate the laws of music education in primary and secondary schools and deviate from the great goal of quality education in primary and secondary schools are often affirmed and promoted. Therefore, seriously exploring and establishing the evaluation criteria of music education in primary and secondary schools will play a very important role in the healthy development of music education in primary and secondary schools in China.

In a word, music education in primary and secondary schools in China is developing at present, but it also faces many problems to be solved urgently. It should be said that the problems we pointed out above are only a few of the main problems, and there are serious problems such as the disconnection between school music education and social and family music education, the disconnection between music education and other disciplines, and the failure to combine foreign music education theory with China's concrete practice. Whether these problems can be fundamentally solved depends on whether the music education reform meets the needs of social and educational development in the 2/kloc-0 century.