By Julie Fay
Contributor
5/15/08
Milton High School senior Rory MacNeil plays the saxophone and plays it well.
The soon-to-be freshman at the University of Texas will major in jazz performance and sees himself making his career in a professional jazz combo someday.
He traces his aspirations back to his elementary music experience.
“Concert band in fourth and fifth grade was really key,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been ready for the jazz bands at Pierce and the high school without the concert band at Glover.”
But FY 08 cuts to the music program in the elementary schools have forced the instrumental ensembles to rehearse during recess time. Gary Good, band director for all four elementary schools, says the impact of that schedule change will definitely affect young musicians’ participation in band.
“Maybe for the first year or two you won’t feel it (the reduced numbers)” he says, “but in three years, you will.”
Band and strings aren’t the only parts of the music program affected by cuts. Other recent reductions have included elimination of elementary chorus (previously offered for all fourth and fifth graders); slashing elementary general music to one 35-minute weekly class for one semester (30 minutes for kindergarteners)—a reduction of 50 percent; and the reduction of music department faculty by more than 30 percent (from 11 to 7).
“I have to stop and ask myself, ‘How did we go from such a strong program to what we have now?’” says April Allegrezza, an elementary music teacher for the past 21 years. “We have taken drastic cuts. It’s like cutting the root from the tree.”
Dr. Noreen Diamond Burdett, director of music, agrees that the elementary years are very important for the study of music. “They cut our elementary program to shreds this year, and elementary music is the bottom of the pyramid,” she says.
The No Child Left Behind Act defines the arts as a “core academic subject.” Recent studies demonstrate that secondary students who participated in band or orchestra reported the lowest lifetime and current use of all substances (alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs).
Studies show that schools with music programs have significantly higher attendance and graduation rates than do those without music programs; students of music outperform their non-arts peers on the verbal and math portions of the SAT; results of an IQ test given to groups of children who were provided with lessons in keyboard, voice, drama or no lessons at all showed that the IQ of students in the keyboard or voice classes increased from their pre-lesson IQ score more than the IQ of those students taking drama or no lessons; and young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do not receive musical training, according to the National Association for Music Education.
Rebecca Croce, who teaches band and other music classes at the high school, cites another benefit. “It’s the whole idea of teamwork,” she says. “The actions of each person in an ensemble or performance class affect the entire group. If we don’t have music in elementary school, it’s even harder to get that idea of teamwork (as a child gets older).”
Good, who team-teaches the high school band with Croce, adds that in an ensemble, “You’re doing something that an individual can’t do. You’re doing something that only a group of people can do, and only if they work really hard, are disciplined enough and have the social skills to work together.”
For now, elementary students will continue to have general music classes for half the year, but the depth of the instruction may be reduced due to space limitations, according to teachers. When the new elementary schools were built, they included dedicated music rooms furnished with a digital piano, an acoustic piano and several large instruments, such as xylophones, for hands-on learning. But with space at a premium due to full-day kindergarten, those music rooms may be used for general classrooms, forcing thousands of dollars of instruments into storage, they say.
Allegrezza is preparing herself for “music on a cart” next year, when she may have to bring general music into the classrooms. “It will have a huge impact on the curriculum,” she says. “It’s the kinesthetic part of it—you’re making things happen in your body and brain by singing and playing instruments that just don’t happen in other subject areas. But you cannot take those instruments room to room.”
School Committee member Glenn Pavlicek is hopeful, despite the grim situation for music in the public schools. “If the money comes back the programs can come back. We’re trying not to eliminate programs entirely because once they’re gone, it’s harder to bring them back.”