Music Is Key To Successful Schools

By Benjamin O. Canada

Superintendent of Schools, Atlanta, Georgia

Experiencing and understanding music are vital to education in many ways. Teaching Music asked three administrators to describe a successful school and music's role within it.

Plato Karafelis:

A successful school is one that teaches the basics well. In my view, the basics include the three Rs as well as the skills you will be required to use in the real world to be productive and content. The understanding that knowledge is integrated is also basic. From my perspective, the arts (especially music) are the disciplines that pull all knowledge together. They defy the separation of reading and math and science and social studies into discrete disciplines.

At Wolcott Elementary School, we have attempted to build a comprehensive music program. First, we view music as inherently valuable. Second, we view music as important relative to communication. Music and the arts in general are all about communicating what's important, and music gives a person the ability to understand the nature of reaching out to others.

In our school we have, among other things, a theatre repertory company, a dance repertory company, a music studio, a post office, researchers, judges, mathematicians, poets, playwrights, town meetings, band, orchestra, choir, school store, audio tech engineers, and a music composition program. Children participate in these opportunities both during and outside of class time. We spend more time on the arts than probably any other school I've ever visited, and yet our achievement scores on the Connecticut Mastery Test increase every year. Why does that happen? Because the arts afford children the opportunity to express who they are to the school community and to express what they think is important to the school community. Our teachers take their expressions- -in writing, music, art, theatre, dance--and bend the curriculum to meet that expression. In doing so, our children believe that we value them because we let them express themselves, and we assign importance to their expression by adapting the curriculum. We validate and celebrate children through the arts.

Our kids are motivated and they have opportunity. Those are generic concepts. When you've provided motivation and opportunity to the kids, they take advantage of that with gusto and they invest fully in everything in our school community.

The arts will thrive best in a democratic society. If you think about schools in general, they are not very democratic; they are autocratic. The teacher tells you when it's time to be creative. In a democracy, you're creative when the situation calls for it, which is often.

We have a democratic society here; the students control the management of the student body. If they don't like a rule, they can question or challenge it. Our school is regarded by them as a free country, and the arts thrive in our free country. Our student government does have rules and one of them is that the student government does not control teachers or teaching. But we have an atmosphere here that says, "Let's respect the children and what they have to say, and let' s respect them as problem solvers and give them opportunities to solve problems."

Finally, we have our regular vocal and instrumental music instruction. We have kids involved politically in music advocacy (the music department has a board of directors, and the current president of the school is a former member of that board); we have kids in music composition; we have kids involved in performance formally in the ensembles; and we also have many opportunities for improvisation in music. Our music program is comprehensive. It's not just thirty minutes a week; it' s part of the fabric of our school.--Plato Karafelis is the principal of Wolcott Elementary School in West Hartford Connecticut.

Janie Ruth Hatton:

A successful school is a community that is supportive of the people, the operation, and the mission to promote and achieve excellence and equity. Schools, of course, are made up of people from various ethnic groups and races, and they need to be places of validation: when you walk into the building, you are one community, but distinct.

In music, you learn to become disciplined, and that helps you respect other people as part of the community. You take a look at the first bar and work on it. I compare that to dealing with people. You look at each person as a whole, as a composite. When you have a problem, you say, "Let's attack the problem here, and not the whole person. "

Music also teaches you how to enjoy the finished product, and you understand that it took a long time to get to that state. The product was the result of many people working on the piece. We look at teamwork in the workplace as the way to reach success. But we often don't translate and transfer that to the classroom. When kids do teamwork, we call it cheating. But through participating in music, kids learn how to work together for a finished product they can be proud of.

You don't have music in the building just to show it off or to say, "Come to the concert and see what we've done this year"--you teach students to understand music and how it works. It's cerebral. Music sounds good, it feels good, and it is a highly intellectual activity. When students learn discipline, teamwork, respect for each other, and the pleasure of pursuing intellectual activity, they find meaning in their lives and make a significant contribution to a successful school.--Janie Ruth Hatton is the principal of the Milwaukee Trade and Technical High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Benjamin O. Canada:

For me, a successful school is one in which the arts have been incorporated into the basic core curriculum. And therefore all students are getting all the basics, including music and other forms of the arts, as part of their regular educational program. I think that every child should have an exposure to music.

In order to be successful in life, you need something like music or the arts, because it requires one to set a goal and to be diligent in following through in rehearsals and practice. It gives one the opportunity to relieve tension and pressure. It makes it possible for us to enjoy many other aspects that we consider basic--and all this as a result of just opening oneself up to the experiences that music, art, drama, and other arts bring to you.

When we speak about the National Standards for the arts--music, dance, theatre, and visual arts--we have to counter the perception that the arts are only for individuals of a particular socioeconomic background. Administrators, music teachers, and other teachers of the arts can help by showcasing students in a classroom instead of in a performance outside the classroom. By showing the arts in the classroom and letting parents and other community Members participate, you are saying that it matters not whether you come from a housing project or a half-million dollar home.

The arts allow everybody to be successful by letting them discover their talents and develop their skills. I may not be able to sing like somebody else, but I may have a special ability to draw or to dance. Or I may be involved in stage construction. But there's something that I do, tied to the arts, that builds a sense of belonging, a sense of self-worth, a sense of giving to someone else. Those feelings come from the arts, and I don't know of any other field that allows you to experience them in such a deep way.