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Wednesday » December 13 » 2006

Music, sports not educational add-ons

Listen to what the court was saying about charging parents user fees

Geoff Johnson

Special to Times Colonist

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

"In these days of political, personal and economic disintegration music is not a luxury -- it's a necessity that is the persistent focus of our intelligence, aspiration and goodwill." - Robert Shaw

If a public school system is a reflection of the community and culture it represents, why are music and sports "bolt-on" activities to our curriculum and what does that reflect about our community values and our hopes for our kids?

The recent court decision that it is illegal for schools to charge fees for some sports and music activities wasn't really about fees. It was about what the community thinks is important enough to be included as educational priorities and what should be a fully funded part of the core curriculum.

The legal decision seems to indicate that parents should not be charged extra fees so that their kids can take music in school. And you know what? The court is absolutely correct.

Unless music education is fully funded and integrated into our curriculum, playing music in school, singing, even dancing, will continue to be areas of human experience regarded as "electives," things that are nice but not really essential to every child's growth and development.

And that is wrong.

Let's consider for a moment why music is important enough to be regarded as a "core" learning activity for our kids.

The kids think so. They spend billions of dollars to experience music, acquiring it from a wide variety of sources, many uninfluenced by any consideration of positive growth and development.

The commercial music industry knows that music based in angst, anger and explorations into the seamier side of human experience sells.

But educators and parents miss the opportunity to teach our kids what music can do to develop a culture populated by more fully formed and educated adults, or that music can enrich and ennoble our lives.

And that puts us behind some less commercially developed populations on this planet who see music as part of their daily celebration of life.

Sports in our schools fall into the same category. They are usually a sidebar volunteer activity organized by volunteer coaches for a relatively few kids, done mostly after school hours.

Physical education classes do what they can to teach the basics of a variety of sports and fitness and nutrition, but are time-limited. Very often the game is just getting going when, to the frustration of the teacher and the players, the bell rings and it's time for math.

The lessons that might be learned through an extended experience of playing sports -- lessons about perseverance, fairness, the fun of responding to a challenge, camaraderie, winning and losing gracefully -- are lost or limited to the few students who play sports after school.

For many of our kids, sports is about professional sports and people who make more money than the economies of some small countries because they can pitch a baseball or catch a football.

Sports for everyone else is about being an outsider, a spectator not a participant. Sports is about millionaires with tattoos.

Yet when I visit an emerging country like Costa Rica I see that every village, even the poorest, always has two things: A church and a soccer field where the kids can learn about the value of actually playing sports every day, just for fun.

Australia, a developed country but younger than our own, is an example of a culture where sports is seen as the vehicle for teaching the really important stuff about life which can't be taught in classrooms.

Playing sports, being active, finding out that physical activity is actually fun becomes embedded in the school system and then the social and cultural norms.

And big state and federal money for the continued development of junior sports and sports in schools soon follows.

So now that the initial furor over school fees has passed, let's ask ourselves what the court really told us. Start by asking any teacher and they'll tell you a story about some kid who got onto the right track because of music or sports.

Let's get on that same right track ourselves and talk to our policy-makers about reconsidering the true place and potential of music and sports in our public education system.

Geoff Johnson is a retired school superintendent and a member of the Pacific Sports Victoria board.

gfjohnson4@shaw.ca