Do You Believe in Music?

Members of the Washington High School Orchestra join Matuto on stage at the 2013 Landfall Festival of World Music, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids, IA.

I started my formal music education in the fifth grade, when I signed up to learn cornet through the music program at my elementary school. It was free, and my parents didn't mind spending the $60 they spent on a used cornet. Mr Shaffer, the teacher, came to the school once a week to teach the various instruments. An hour each was devoted to woodwinds, brass and percussion. After the first semester of learning the basic instruments, we all met together in a real, honest to goodness band.

OK, I'm not so sure about the “good”, but we enjoyed it. Strains of out of tune “Go Tell Aunt Rodie” still waft through my mind from time to time.

In addition, my fifth grade teacher taught the entire class to play the recorder. So, I was hooked on music from then on. I begged my parents for a guitar as well and started taking lessons from the older brother of my friend who lived across the street. By 11 I was a multi-instrumentalist!

I continued in band throughout high school, eventually joining the Symphonic Chorale as well. In my junior year, I was so inspired by our band director, Claiborne T Richardson II, that I changed my goal of majoring in Anthropology/Archeology to Music Education. An outstanding teacher can have that effect on a student, leading some to want to follow in his footsteps. Dr. Richardson was that sort of teacher. His passion for music was obvious in the care he took to not just get us to play music well enough to perform, but to explore music: it's very nature, history and impact on society. The closest friends I had in high school were my band mates. Yes, I was a band geek and do have interesting stories to tell about band camp (none of them sexual though).

Circumstances drew me away from completing my degree and becoming a music teacher, but I have continued my involvement in music in various ways all my life. Perhaps, in some ways, it's good that I didn't go into the field of Music Education.

Why do I say that? I'll start that answer with a question: have you ever seen the movie “Mr. Hollands Opus”? If you haven't the synopsis involves a budding composer who takes a job as a high school band director to pay his bills. His intention is to only work the job until his symphony is finished and published. However, he soon finds himself becoming as passionate about teaching and his students as he is about music itself. Various events result in what was meant to be only for a year or two becoming a lifelong career. The movie follows his life as he touches the lives of thousands of young people who come under his tutelage over the course of several decades.

Meanwhile, between his work and dealing with family issues (his son is born deaf, imagine being a musician with that to deal with.) he has less and less time to work on his symphony. He laments of ever completing it and at least hearing it performed, and more or less resigns himself to being remembers not as a great composer of the modern age, but as a humble high school band director.

Then budget cuts force the school to eliminate the band program altogether. Mr. Opus is put out to pasture with a modest pension and a “thanks for your years of service, but we can't afford to keep music education in our schools anymore” hard line response from the school board.

Therein lies the problem, and the main point of this essay:

We can't afford to not teach music, and the other arts, to our young people.

Study after study, as well as a simple examination of our society, demonstrate how enriching music is to our lives, as well as how much an education in music, especially learning to play an instrument, enriches the life of those who do learn to play, or are trained to sing (or dance or paint or write poetry for that matter). Fortunately there are still many schools which support music and the arts. Interestingly enough,these schools often report higher overall grades and fewer discipline and attendance problems than schools which have severely cut back or eliminated education in the arts.

Despite evidence that music and arts education programs in public schools can offer benefits to the greatest number of students, when it comes to budget decisions, sports almost always wins out.

Why is that?

Part of the answer is because our school system embraces a male-dominated world view. It is all about competitiveness and winning, being better than the next guy, being “manly” and aggressive and goal oriented. Sports embodies these qualities, when testosterone influenced views of success make people think that a football team winning a trophy is more important than the band winning a trophy. Most “jocks” think band, orchestra and chorus people are wimps, nerds, etc. We are, for the most part. We are also far more creative and capable of independent thinking and cooperation than most jocks.

Therein lies the problem: music and arts education encourages independent, critical thinking together with cooperation rather than competitiveness. (I don't want to go into music programs which only strive to have the students win competitions. As far as I'm concerned, music teachers who focus their efforts on winning trophies are hacks.) Yet we have an educational system designed to get students to fit into the status quo, follow the rules, toe the line and be as competitive with “the other guys” (and with each other) as possible while conforming to expectations regarding acceptable behavior and life goals. I'm not saying there is a conscious conspiracy against education in the arts. It's just that given the mindset of many people, music, drama, dance, and the other arts are not what we want our children to learn and consider as a way of earning a living. It's a nice children's activity, but except for those parents who push their kids to win competitions in music, dance etc. most parents assume it's all something just to keep their kids occupied and out of the house. The parents that actively encourage a child who wants to become a professional musician, actor, writer, dancer, photographer or artist of any sort are rare gems.

Which is really strange, considering the huge amount of money we spend on music, movies and TV, things to read, and things to hang on our walls or decorate our homes or even wear. We idolize musicians and actors, and to a lesser extent great dancers. Successful authors can become millionaires and the occasional billionaire. Photographers and artists can produce images that become icons. We follow the lives of our creative people as closely as if they are our own family. Most of us cannot imagine a life without music, drama, books and art.

Yet we, as a society and within our educational system, are reluctant to teach our children the very thing we value so much. Perhaps it's the thinking that it's so hard to become a major success in the arts (by that reach the point the average non-arts person assumes is success, which is big paychecks and an article in People magazine). Why bother teaching and encouraging young people to learn something that they may never earn a decent living doing? That was my father's attitude: I really wanted to play professionally more than teach, but my father said I would “never earn a living tooting a horn”. He would only pay tuition for music school if I majored in Music Education, because he viewed teaching as a respectable profession.

This dichotomy, in which we value music and the arts so much, yet do so little to nurture and support them in our children, is especially frustrating for those who are involved in music, drama, dance, photography, writing and other arts. Nowadays, in certain locales, young people wishing to learn the arts have to go it practically alone, or depend on private instruction or the local dance academy. How many potential masters of music, drama, poetry, art, dance et al are going unnoticed and un-nurtured because school systems would rather spend money on new team uniforms or a bigger paycheck for the football coach than on educating children in the arts.

There is great hope in the fact that even when school boards cut funding, many parents rally together to form booster clubs and other groups to raise funds to continue to support education in the arts. There are professionals who offer time and resources to teach others. There are communities which recognize the value of the arts, with city leaders who make sure that funds become available to support music, drama, dance and other events. We need to do all we can to support these various endeavors, because our society needs as a many musicians, actors, dancers, writers, poets, artists etc. as we can get. Our creative people offer something to the world that goes beyond the music, drama, dance, prose and poetry and art that enriches our lives.

They offer hope in the form of showing us the road less traveled. They are the beacons of independent and critical thinking that question the status quo and invite us to think outside the box. They are the spice in what would otherwise be a very mundane existence. They embody the fearlessness we claim we admire. They understand what it means that a person's reach should always exceed his or her grasp.

The ending to “Mr. Holland's Opus” tells the real tale of it all. Many of his former students, including a state governor, successful business people, teachers, lawyers and others-all of whom cite Mr. Holland as the inspiration for reaching for the goals they have achieved-get together and perform his symphony with him conducting. That ending, as bittersweet as it is, is also a celebration of the fact music changed the lives of these people for the better, as does education in any of the arts. Therein lies the real meaning of Mr. Holland's Opus: the lives of thousands of people enriched by his instruction.

That alone is reason to support arts education for our children as much as we can.