Hello, all.
I can't help but jump up on a soapbox here.
I'm sure that many of us on Vocalist know this, but there is currently a very
sad trend in American and British schools which places preference (read: budget
money) on technology, sports stadiums, and test scores rather than music
curriculae. (See www.vh1.com/insidevh1/savethemus/ or www.voices.org.uk) Just
one case study: last year, I did the vocal direction for a musical in an
inner-city high school in Pittsburgh. In this school, there is no band, no
choir, no general music, and no music teacher. Nothing but the annual musical,
which traditionally only occurs if several of the (English) faculty members
decide they have the time to stay after school and do it. Nor can you blame
them for their position! As any high school teacher will tell you, classroom
teaching requires much more than forty hours per week, and directing a musical
has to be an extra extra-curricular activity for these teachers.
But I digress, how can a child understand that the very music that is saturating
the airwaves every day is trash? ...Especially when this child has no exposure
to instruments, or when he or she never discovered his/her own singing voice in
elementary school? After all, researchers agree, a child's musical aptitude is
best shaped before the age of nine. Elementary school music programs must,
then, be the bare essentials of a music curriculum since they help to establish
a child's inner ear through repetivite singing, movement, etc.
Combine an older, musically-untrained child's lack of musical independence with
the music industry's (and it IS just that - an industry, for profit - just like
the news media) savvy knowledge that sensationalized/video-drenched/3.5-minute
displays of sex sell, and you end up in our current situation: children staring
slack-jawed at a tawdry, un-fun, mind-numbingly redundant grammy "awards" show.
But I'm one who wishes to offer ideas for policy rather than sound off and shut
up. A qualified music educator, I actually teach private voice and piano. I
also work for an urban church music ministry, an urban performing arts
conservatory and an urban arts nonprofit. I believe that schools and arts
organizations must foster an awareness of how important the arts are, and we all
must advocate the artistic education of our children. March is
Music-In-Our-Schools Month! See
http://www.menc.org/information/advocate/psa.html
Just my two cents,
Jeff Cubeta
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