Music education in public schools

Tell me why music education in public schools is worthwhile. I hear impassioned pleas from music teachers to save this program, but wonder if it has any real value. I had “music appreciation” courses – Barcarole??, The Grand Canyon Suite??. Wasn’t considered talented enough for chorus, orchestra or band, but I play the piano quite well.

My friend Carole’s daughter is a featured player with the Met, but wasn’t “good enough” for her high school chorus. Kathleen Battle told me she was “discovered” in college – not public school.

I became an opera fan because my grandmother listened to the Met on radio every Saturday – never heard any opera in school.

I’ve just heard local music teachers plead for public school funding – can you justify it?

I was in band from 6th grade until I graduated high school, and it is a decision I have never regretted. It provided me with a group of people to socialize with that shared some of my interests. It kept me out of trouble. It gave me things to do so that I didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t feel the need to go seek out parties, etc. because I always had something going on with the band (football games on Friday night, competitions, etc.)
In addition to the social aspects, it actually helped me with my math, and gave me a reason to go to school. I’m awful at math, but all the counting rythms, and so on helped. I was bored in my other classes, and would have much rather skipped the whole thing, but I really liked band, and actually looked forward to it.
Not to mention it gave me the skills to let me play my own music, and find my own ways of relaxing in the evenings.

So do I support music education programs in schools? Hell yes.

I was a violinist for most of primary school and early high school. I knew all the music theory etc that they taught at high school. The classes were boring and the kids were disinterested. There was a generally-held notion that music was one of those compulsory classes that you had to do just to satisfy some higher-up’s idea of making sure we had a balanced education.

sigh

The music teachers didn’t do much to dissuade us from holding this opinion. I wish they’d played classical music and operas and jazz and blues, stuff that made us enjoy music instead of just tolerate the noises. I wish I could say they encouraged us to listen to anything but trashy 80s music. They didn’t.

But that is a failing of those teachers and the curriculum they followed. I think a properly-funded, properly-staffed music program can totally change a person’s outlook on the various styles of music that are out there. On that basis, I think any funding is good funding :slight_smile:

Max.

I was in two choirs in high school: an auditioned women’s chorus and show choir.

Like liirogue said, it kept us all from doing drugs, etc. We got to go cool places and sing the national anthem. We learned how to work together as a group even though we didn’t necessarily like one another. We learned some Latin. In show choir, we got lots of exercise learning the choreography. Music was to me like playing a sport was to other high schoolers. I couldn’t throw or catch worth a damn, but I still had an opportunity to advance a skill, be part of a team, and all the good stuff that comes along with it.

I only went to public school in primary, but it was there I got the seeds of my musical education. My family didn’t have much money, so private music lessons were a bit of a stretch, and the fact I could learn a musical instrument for free at school, as well as sing in choir, play in the band, etc, really helped out.

By the time I was ready for high school I was able to get a scholarship to a private school with a much better music program, but without the seeds that were sown in my primary years, I would have lacked the knowledge to appreciate the better program we had there.

Music was a major part of my life, as a small geeky kid who was no good at sports. Without music groups as a social activity, I quite possibly would have gone all through school talking to no-one but the librarian. Music gave me self-esteem, a sense of purpose, travel to other states and countries on tour with music groups, and a creative outlet at the most depressed times of my life.

Without the school music program at my public primary school, my life would be very different. Possibly, I’d be dead.

For me, music class (chorus) was my break and my easy “A” as well as my chance to perform and travel. It also exposed me to composers and musical styles I might not have encountered or sought on my own. Our director in high school not only taught the music, but he taught us about the composers and the times when the music was written. We learned how to function as part of a group, we learned self-discipline, we learned that even if we didn’t sing a solo, we were still a vital part of the whole. Pretty important life-lessons, I think.

Interesting comments, everyone, especially phraser. I know the music education in the public schools I attended was lackluster. Poor Miss Angel taught us at one time. Her first, last & only boyfriend had been killed in WWII, & she couldn’t abide “sad” music. Mrs. Hill thought the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was sent by God to teach us music. In private school, there was only a church choir. Growing up in a music-loving family, I got a lot more education at home.

Glad to hear y’all had much better experiences. :slight_smile:

Why is it that when a particular person didn’t happen to get much out of a class they sometimes assume that it’s worthless?

As they said in the film “Mr. Holland’s Opus”, what are people going to read and write about with art and music?

Oops, that should have been, “What are people going to read and write about WITHOUT art and music.”

I never got a music education, and it has harmed me. It seems like everyone else knows what to do when faced with a piano or guitar. I have no clue. I don’t know what any of the terms mean, or even how to play chopsticks. It’s sad because I am a creative person, and generally good at painting, writing and photography. But music will always be a big blank void for me, a form of expression I was cut off from.

I desperately wanted to learn music as a child – my entire family is musical, and I got the genes. Unfortunately, my piddy elementary schools didn’t provide music classes (but the football teams had new jersies every year!) so I missed out until I enrolled in college. There I learned the piano, and though I’m no Mozart, I can tickle the ivories when it pleases me. It’s given me a new sense of confidence, knowing I have the skill to read music and play the piano.

.:Nichol:.

Besides the value for a well-rounded education, music is good for a lot of the same reasons that sports are good- students who participate have a place to make friends and be social and a reason to stay off drugs and out of fights, while learning skills that will help them function in the real world, like how to work as a team, how to take responsibility for your work and take pleasure in the final results, and how to discipline yourself.

I was in high school band, and it was a good experience. Even though I don’t do anything more with music than singing in the church choir, the high school band was a very important part of school for me, and I think my life would be worse now if I hadn’t done it.

Ditto that. I even tried to teach myself to read music and play the piano a few years ago. Nada. I can teach myself French and Italian because I learned Spanish at the tender age of 14, but I can’t read a lick of music. Pisses me off.

Now that I teach in an English school, it especially pisses me off because I teach 11 year olds who can play the violin, piano, and saxophone like nobody’s business - 3 instruments at the age of 11!! I went to a student concert today and watched six teenage boys wail on their guitars and drums…they were friggin’ rock stars, and they haven’t even taken their GCSE’s. Simply amazing.

liirogue expressed my sentiments exactly.

Although I did not continue with music past highschool, I did go into theatre (another art that shouldn’t slip through the cracks in the public school curriculum). Many of my friends did continue in music however. And many of them are making a living off it today.
Many are teachers, but there are others.
One has been playing on a cruise ship for the past couple years. He has composed and arranged some pieces that have gotten play in various places.
Another has been recorded. Indie music stores carry his jazz cd.

Public school can produce talented musicians. I do think it does depend on the teachers, however.

I started singing in the college choir at 24 and private lessons at 25, though I’m in a hiatus from lessons right now. Just because you didn’t do music as a kid doesn’t mean you can’t learn it as an adult – though I did take piano and violin as a kid, I was under the impression that I couldn’t sing to save my life. Apparently this is not true.

even sven, you might want to check out a local college to see about finding a teacher, if you are so inclined. There are lots of teachers who will happily teach an adult. A piano or guitar teacher should not be hard to find.

I want to learn guitar myself. Maybe I’ll get one of those teach-yourself-guitar books, my mom has a cheapie instrument. Hmm.

Gassendi, I’m going on more than my own experience – mentioned my friend Carole’s daughter & famed soprano Kathleen Battle. Also know what my 5 children experienced in public schools. Harli is right – it all depends on teachers.

Again – I’m glad others had positive music experiences.

I took an adult piano course at the university in my city some years ago, sven, and it was great. I could read music & play reasonably well, but many in the class were beginners. All of us benefitted.

I was always a huge music geek, and my parents chose what town I grew up in based largely on the strong arts component in the public school system (although they supplemented it whenever they could with additional music enrichment activities of various sorts, especially my mom). Every kid should learn to do something musical. I truly believe it helps develop parts of the brain that aren’t developed in traditional academic clases. Every kid I know who has been involved half-seriously with music has done well in other academics, too, especially languages. I don’t know whether there’s a cause/effect relationship there, but there you have it. Practice teaches discipline, harmonizing and playing in an ensemble teach cooperation and teamwork, and singing in choir teaches you to fudge your way through most major living West European languages, plus Latin! Yes, it was frustrating at times to be in a class with kids who didn’t want to be there and were disruptive, but something still stuck.

I can’t imagine what my life would have been like otherwise. I’ve taken classes in various points in percussion, flute (I sucked at that), voice, several types/sizes of choirs (choir was always my strongest suit musically; I love to sing, especially to harmonize a cappella, but I’m terrified of soloing), guitar (still doing that, although I don’t practice nearly enough), handbell choir…I always wish we’d been able to afford a piano when I was a kid, but you don’t need to grow up rich to use your voice!

If you didn’t get formal music background as a kid, all is not lost…the school where I take guitar classes now, the Old Town School of Folk Music (www.oldtownschool.org), is mostly adult classes. Most classes involve learning mostly by ear and require no formal music background or sight-reading ability. Really, how many great folk and blues musicians have no formal training? In Guitar I, there were plenty of people who didn’t even know what a measure was or how to count 4/4 time. It blew my mind, but they figured it out eventually.

Trust me, you’re not alone! If you feel like you’re missing out, do it now!

Keep believing, because it’s true.

I speak as a piano teacher, daughter of a band director, and high school field commander, who lives in sports-minded Tennessee. The music programs here are definitely wanting, and just a few years ago there was a big discussion on whether they should be eliminated at all. I was in the college here at the time, but I spoke up anyway (it’s good to have something to be passionate about).

I wish I had that presentation on my computer here at work so I could spout facts from studies that quantitatively supported music’s positive impact on brain functioning in children, but since I don’t, here are some things I found in just a few minutes’ time of googling:

  • children who have music lessons score higher on spatial reasoning tests for longer periods of time (cite)
  • children who learn basic rhythm early have a foundation for understanding fractions in math (it’s called a quarter note for a reason)
  • children who are allowed to move to music are able to find a sense of beat, which helps to develop motor skills - this was in a study of cerebral palsy patients who actually improved motor skills with music therapy; it was fascinating and I can’t find my cite now!
  • although the jury is still out on this one, there has been correlation of exposure to music and higher connection of synapses in the brain; researchers cannot say definitively that music actually causes it, though (cite)
  • musical children are often creative children - again, a correlation/causation issue, but it can’t hurt to reinforce creative children with music! (cite)

There are way more reasons than that, but I don’t need to post them all here…and I’m kind of tired of googling and pasting. However, in the end, the school system did vote to keep music in the curriculum, partly because of the evidence such as that above, and partly because of the local outcry.

I remember that the public school system’s music program did very little for me, mostly because I came from a musical family and had already learned most of the curriculum (and then some). But that’s not the fault of music itsef, just a poor program with little money. If anything, we should be giving more money to music programs, instead of taking it away. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen… :frowning: