By Christie Higgins
All my life, people have told me to speak up— that I was too quiet. I never enjoyed being the center of attention, but in music class it’s the opposite. My music teacher often tells me to play a little softer. In music, I like being the person playing the main melody and that’s because music gives me a voice louder than anything else in my life.
Dyslexia has made reading hard for me. Learning to read music has been my greatest accomplishment. Without the music education program at my high school, I would have never been able to discover my passion for music through both struggle and achievement.
Many high schools choose to focus preparing their students for standardized tests. Even though STEM subjects are crucial, music education in schools is a valuable extension to the academic curriculum and provides social and health benefits to many students from various sections of our communities. All high schools should have music education programs added to their required curriculum.
Students having trouble at home or living in rough neighborhoods with violence and drugs may end up going in the wrong direction. These students need to be brought into a positive environment where they can feel they belong and that they are taking part in something productive that won’t get them placed in a sticky situation. In Venezuela, there was a need for bringing the youth of Venezuela off the streets and into a positive, well-rounded environment. This was what motivated José Antonio Abreu, the mastermind behind the legendary El Sistema Program. “El Sistema’s aim is to address a depressingly universal problem: how to remove children from poverty snares, like drugs, crime, gangs and desperation,”[1]Daniel J. Wakin, writes in a New York Times article. Abreu created a program where young people were pulled in by the opportunity to play an instrument. El Sistema was “…established to occupy young people with music study and to instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment, and self-worth.”[2] .
There are only four BPS high schools that do include music education, but El Sistema should be placed in all BPS high schools. The El Sistema Ensemble is also a big part of the program’s success. “Mutual struggle and celebration both require group interaction so the primary vehicle for the execution of the El Sistema program is the ensemble.” [3] The ensembles require different types of groups to come together and put a whole piece of music together. Public high schools need a way to bring their students together as a community so that there are not so many disconnects between students—disconnects like socioeconomic status, race or other differences.
I conducted an interview with Dr. Pavasaris, a music education faculty member at the Boston Conservatory. Dr. Pavasaris has received the Conductor of the Year Award from the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors’ Association and the Visionary Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors’ Association. He told me that music allows for “understanding between cultures, ethnicities, it doesn’t matter if you make fifteen dollars an hour or one hundred dollars an hour, the joy of making music together is something we should celebrate as human beings.”[4]
From strings to woodwinds to brass and percussion, everything has its part that contributes to the whole piece. It feels great to be part of something, and no one should be excluded from something positive or creative. Yet in society today, the ones who often get excluded are special needs students— the ones who should be included the most. Special needs students are often placed into isolated classrooms and not involved in all the things that other students are involved in.
Not only do students achieve greatness inside the music room but they also carry the skills they gain from music education into regular academic classrooms and beyond. It may seem strange to think that playing a euphonium, for example, can make a high school student score higher on an exam, but it is possible. In “The Importance of Music” Judson mentions how musical training in rhythm emphasizes proportion, patterns, fractions and ratios expressed in musical relations. This is possible through listening to each other in one ensemble, reading musical notation, and playing an instrument well. The opportunity to learn about the arts and to perform as artists is an essential part of a well-rounded curriculum and complete education.[5]
A great example of a school taking flight thanks to the addition to the arts is Orchard Gardens. “Orchard Gardens has been named one of eight schools across the country that has been named a turnaround school by President Obama’s committee on the arts and humanities,”[6] said Andrew Bott, principal of Orchard Gardens, in an interview with Radio Boston. The turnaround arts initiative is a partnership that was designed to narrow the achievement gap and increase student performance and engagement.[7]. Turnaround schools received in-school professional development, partnerships in community arts, and musical instruments. After bringing the arts to Orchard Gardens the school improved dramatically. “When you think about why a school is struggling, we made the decision to have so much money invested in the arts. When your gut reaction is ‘I need to do even more math, even more reading,” the kids learn confidence— something that really hard for people most adults’[8].
High Schools can learn from this because the strategy of investing more in the arts can be applied to student performance if music education is added to all high schools. Bott stated that it really is more common to enforce standard subjects than arts subjects in a poor-performance school. “It’s daunting how when kids haven’t played an instrument before, they learn how to put it together, learn how to keep it clean, learn how to take it apart, not to mention learn how to read music and perform.”[9] Bott also states that in addition to helping students learn responsibility and pride in their work, music also develops fine motor and cognitive skills. “You can actually see the success faster with a trumpet than you can with Algebra.”[10] That’s all schools want to see from their students: success.
- Daniel J. Wakin, “Fighting Poverty, Armed With Violins,” New York Times, February 15, 2012. ↑
- Wakin, “Fighting Poverty, Armed With Violins.” ↑
- Jonathan Andrew Govias, “The Five Fundamentals of El Sistema,” Canadian Music Educator 53, no 1 (2011): 21-23. ↑
- Dr. Walter Pavasaris, in discussion with author, January 21, 2016. ↑
- Ellen Judson, “The Importance of Music,” Spread Music Now, https://elsistemausa.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/govias-five-fundamentals-of-el-sistema.pdf. ↑
- Andrew Bott, “The Remarkable Turnaround Of The Orchard Gardens School,” Radio Boston, WBUR Boston Public Radio, June 6, 2013. ↑
- “PCAH Launches ‘turnaround Arts’ Initiative,” School Band and Orchestra, June 2014: 6. ↑
- Bott, “The Remarkable Turnaround of the Orchard Gardens School.” ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- Ibid. ↑
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