A US school makes music lessons compulsory
OrchestrasAll middle-school students at Avon Lake High School in Cleveland, Ohio, are required to study music.
The school has just put on a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria with full orchestra and 154 singers.
All is takes is a sense of tradition and staff dedication.
Read here.
This already is the case at many schools in the across the United States. America has a large portion of its professional musicians (particularly winds and brass) start in public schools.
The Cleveland area in particular produces a disproportionate amount of professional musicians, but most of them come from the artsier east side of the city. Good on Avon Lake.
This is wonderful news and a wake up call to all schools, Heads and Governing bodies do not realise that by studying music the students are going to acquire so many life skills as well as speed and concentration in learning.
Bravo to them all! I grew up in the Northeast and back then — the late Mesozoic era, no doubt! — music appreciation class, and art class, were mandatory for all students through the 9th grade. There was no question that every child should be involved with the arts. It was no different than studying math or science or social studies.
If you had suggested that the arts be cut from the curriculum, you would have thrown out of town. Those were the days.
Avon Lake is actually a nice suburb west of Cleveland. Low crime rate, great schools, and conservative. The most famous son is Tom Batiuk who created the Funky Winkerbean cartoon strip.
congratulations! these suburbs cause car dependence and a whole list of problems follow, you can look them up
Good for them. I have never encountered musical presentation of this sort in Canadian schools, though it is a big country and it is not a subject I have studied.
(1) A US high school has no middle school students. High school is grades 9 to 12, middle school ends is grades 5 to 8, so the first sentence of the post is meaningless. (2) The linked article says that music is required in middle school and that most (not all) students then stick with instruments in high school. There is nothing there that says music is required in high school. It would be highly unlikely. Also, nothing in the article says music is required during the entire middle school. (3) The post says “[A]ll it takes is a sense of tradition and staff dedication”. The post does not mention that it also takes funding. The majority of school districts in the US do not fund music as a required subject.
Compulsory viola lessons?!
Avon Lake is 88% White and has a median household income above $100K. I think it is fair to say that they have resources, both human and material, that a school in the Englewood neighborhood here in Chicago most decidedly does not. I invite anyone chiding the rest of America for not emulating Avon Lake to try to set up a music program in a school on the West or South Sides of Chicago. We lack the political will to come to terms with the savage inequalities of an education system largely funded with property taxes.
Very true. And not a new problem.
“Here is where the whole problem of education ties in definitely with natural resources and the economic picture of the individual community or state. We all know that the best schools are, in most cases, located in those communities which can afford to spend the most money on them—the most money for adequate teachers’ salaries, for modern buildings and for modern equipment of all kinds. We know that the weakest educational link in the system lies in those communities which have the lowest taxable values, therefore, the smallest per capita tax receipts and, therefore, the lowest teachers’ salaries and most inadequate buildings and equipment. We do not blame these latter communities. They want better educational facilities, but simply have not enough money to pay the cost.
There is probably a wider divergence today in the standard of education between the richest communities and the poorest communities than there was one hundred years ago; and it is, therefore, our immediate task to seek to close that gap—not in any way by decreasing the facilities of the richer communities but by extending aid to those less fortunate. We all know that if we do not close this gap it will continue to widen, for the best brains in the poor communities will either have no chance to develop or will migrate to those places where their ability will stand a better chance.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address Before the National Education Association, June 30, 1938
I graduated from Avon Lake High School in 2009 and was a member of that choir. 15 years later, while they’re performing Vivaldi, I’m in Helsinki singing Mahler 8 as a member of the Latvian Radio Choir.
That public school education gave me what I needed to reach the highest professional level in choral music. Thrilled to see that’s still the case in Avon Lake, and blown away to see it covered here!
Congrats on the Mahler!
Are other musical traditions also taught in schools? After all, less than half of the US population under 18 are white
Although not compulsory, many schools in the desert Southwest do offer ethnically oriented music. There are quite a few mariachi programs – in fact in Tucson, mariachi programs are more numerous and better supported than jazz. There are also groups with a Caribbean outlook – we spend a fortune on steel drums. I know of no Native American music groups at school, but not only would qualified teachers be scarce, but the native traditions simply would not allow those ancient and hallowed rituals to be taught to non-Indians. And in some schools with a large Pacific Islander population, there are Ukulele clubs.
I was fortunate to be enrolled in music programs begining in the 7th grade and continuing through to graduation from high school. We had excellent music directors and a full program with band, orchestra, begining instruments, and jazz band. They and private lessons, prepared my to become a professional musician for 60 yrs.
Outstanding!!
I hope they have competent teachers.
I had weekly public school music lessons all through grades 6-12 and in retrospect, knowing what I know now, they were all quite deficient in essential pedagogy.
Imagine having a math teacher who could tell you if you gave a correct answer to a problem but didn’t tell you how to find the correct answer.
That’s what these public school private lessons were like.
The math classes were like that, too.
Is it a middle school or a high school I’m confused?