Dear Parents:

It is with great excitement that I welcome your family to our instrumental music program!

Learning to play a musical instrument and acquiring the unique habits of mind that come with it is one of the most incredible opportunities that our school can offer your child.  The instrument that will be placed in your childs’ hands has the power to transform their lives in ways that no other endeavor can.  In addition to musical accomplishments, this year your child will learn to :

• Be patient and persistent with difficult tasks;
• Delay gratification by working in order to sound better;
• Develop curiosity, problem solve, and cultivate grit.

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I ran across a piece last week on Huffington Post warning people that they should not advocate for music education using the argument that it helps with academic and test performance, etc.  The author, Peter Greene, even went so far as to say that it was a “tactical error” to defend music in this manner. He believes that if/when testing doesn’t drive educational policies anymore, music will be left hanging out to dry, having latched on to test improvement as its largest selling point.  What was more troublesome than the article itself was the enormous amount of people who agreed with it, as evidenced by the amount of shares and supportive comments left on the blog.

On the surface, there is a lot to agree with in an “art for art’s sake” argument, but with today’s educational and political landscape, this argument alone will not get us to where we want to be:  music as a core part of every child’s school day.

Articles like this are attractive to many.  We all love to huddle up in our ideological corners — it’s comfortable, and we love to talk to people who agree with us;  in turn we exaggerate and stereotype the “other side”.  Ultimately, this was an extreme-viewpoint piece, but because it got so much attention it deserves to be addressed and discussed.

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I become very passionate when writing about school administrators’ lack of awareness of the benefits of instrumental music in school curricula, and how parents can help advocate for programs that their children are involved in.  There is no doubt that music programs all over our nation are constantly in danger of being reduced or cut every budget cycle; many times their fate is in the hands of myopic data-driven bean counters.  Until the pendulum swings away from high stakes testing and towards cultivating creativity in schools, maintaining healthy music programs will always be a battle.

As music advocacy and the pressure on administrators and boards of education to keep music programs alive roars on, there is still a ten thousand pound gorilla in the room:  There needs to be a great teacher in every classroom to carry out the mission of raising the musical bar for all children and creating enduring programs that become mainstays in our school system.  Without great teaching, music education in our schools doesn’t have a chance.

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The Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools recently declared that APS will have 18 fewer band and orchestra teaching positions when students return to school in August.  After quite a bit of outcry, Dr. Carstarphen explained her rationale on her blog.  The following letter is an extended version of a comment I left on her blog (which has yet to be approved for public view).

Dear Dr. Carstarphen,

I appreciate you addressing recent rumors stating that Atlanta Public Schools would be eliminating all music programs next school year.  While it is relieving to hear that this will not be happening, it is still disturbing to read that you will be viciously cutting your music programs, in turn altering the course of thousands of children’s lives each year for the foreseeable future of your school system.

While it is understandable that you have the all-too-common fiscal pressures mounting in your schools, I believe that your cuts are short sighted and certainly not in the best of interest of children.  Even though you believe these cuts are of teachers and not programming, if you execute them it will be the beginning of the end of instrumental music in your public schools whether you realize it or not.

Here are 4 reasons why your elementary school cuts are not in the best interests of the families you serve:

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I spent a decade teaching band in a middle school classroom in Brooklyn, NY.  I started students on band instruments, from scratch, in a group of 100 — no small group lessons.  By 8th grade, the students were performing high school and college level music at a very high level.

I wish I could say I walked into the job knowing how to accomplish what I did, but that was not the case.  I was a professional musician with no degree in education; I couldn’t put a flute together, let alone teach it; and worse — I had a low expectation of what kids were capable of doing musically (especially in an urban setting).

Although I am ashamed to say those things, I am proud to say that I was wrong, and I spent all my life energy seeking to find ways to help all students reach their full musical potential.  I also found that, if I taught every class as if it was a large private lesson — a “perfect practice session”, of sorts — instead of teaching to the concert, my students improved in leaps and bounds.

Here are some ideas to maximize your large ensemble rehearsals and create great musicians — and people — in the process:

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This is a guest post by performance psychologist Dr. Noa Kageyama.  Noa is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and teaches performing artists how to utilize sport psychology principles and more consistently perform up to their full abilities under pressure. For more tips on effective practicing, learning, and performing, visit his blog, The Bulletproof Musician. 

My mom likes to tell the story of the time I once walked out on stage, turned to the pianist to tune, and then forgot to turn back around, performing the entire piece with my back to the audience.

In hindsight, I’m sure it was pretty cute, but in the moment, my mom was mortified and resolved to make sure I wouldn’t forget something so obvious the next time.

So, throughout my early formative years, the week leading up to every performance contained lots and lots of performance practice. Where I would put on my concert clothes, pretend to walk out on stage, smile, bow, tune, pretend to shake the conductor’s hand – the whole nine yards. No matter how seemingly trivial the detail, the idea was to make every step of the performance a deeply-ingrained habit that I didn’t have to think about, to ensure that when I walked out on stage, everything would go smoothly.

Indeed, things went swimmingly from then on, but as I grew older, I started taking on more of the responsibility for practicing and naturally drifted away from some of these mom-initiated strategies that I thought I had outgrown.

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I have spent many years visiting public schools throughout our nation, and most times I see the same thing:  students hard at work.  There is always lots of work going on in our schools, and with the increased emphasis on meeting national and state standards there is more work coming.  My Kindergarten-bound daughter will get right to work when she goes to school next year on what used to be a 1st grade curriculum.  As a matter of fact, my wife and I had to search quite a bit for pre-schools that were play-based as opposed to a more structured elementary school-ish routine.  The less play our children experience during the school day, the more adult-assigned tasks they will receive — that’s not the roadmap to independent and creative thinking.

But when I visit music classes in schools, I see something different.

I see students playing.

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Graduating from one to school to the next is both an exciting and crazy time, to say the least.  The changes that are occurring biologically, socially, and academically in children are enough to make parents’ heads spin.  With a change in school comes a  lot of unanswered questions:  What will the schedule be like?  Will there be a ton of homework?  What classes are my child’s friends taking?  How do I set up my child to do well academically?

Middle school years, especially, are a time of amazing growth — music can (and should) play a huge part in this.  Quite often, however, music falls by the wayside when students graduate from elementary school to attend middle school — and again when students graduate middle school to high school.

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Our nation has been deeply committed to closing the achievement gap that exists in our education system for almost 15 years. Achievement gaps occur when one group of students outperforms another group and the difference in average scores for the two groups is statistically significant. Most school systems use Hispanic-White and Black-White scores in mathematics and reading to determine the gap for these groups and to illuminate patterns and changes in these gaps over time.  This gap is only based on test scores and has nothing to do with any other area of school curricula (or life, in general).  I believe that this misguided view of test scores defining “achievement” has stunted both our children’s growth and our growth as a nation that values education.

Another achievement gap exists when instrumental music education enters a school’s curriculum.  When students receive their instruments for the first time, they are divided into “haves” and “have-nots” immediately, and for different reasons.  I call this the Creativity Achievement Gap.  If left unaddressed, I believe this gap not only has serious consequences for students’ creative potential, but also for their personal progress and true achievement in life beyond school walls.

What causes this immediate handicapping of students’ potential as musicians and creative people?

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