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Double Bass Cuts to music programs

#3
Dimmik said:
In American schools, many districts are dropping cursive writing. Talk about cultural impact.
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In this case the educators may be finally recognizing a societal change which already happened. The sole use for cursive writing is to give a legal signature for aging hand writing experts to verify.

Music and the arts in general on the other hand like athletics is important in forming the whole man. We are not animals who just seek to eat and reproduce. Just because it doesn't lead directly to a job, as arts careers are held by a very few we do not stop the team building aspects of team sports when nobody from that school is going to be a professional athlete either.
 
#4
Happy to see that Milwaukee school district plans to hire 45 additional art and music teachers next year, representing a doubling in arts spending over past years. This was mainly in response to parent surveys, which overwhelmingly indicated a desire for more arts education in thes school.

I'd go so far as to predict that there will be positive results in terms of test scores and retention.
 
#6
Signed. Like Quiltkitty said, cut funding to a sports team and everyone looses all self control but cut music and arts, meh, no one needs that.

I was one of those kids in school that benefited from the music/arts programs. With out them i would have been a much more destructive teen.
 
#7
It's a damn shame wherever it happens. My music program at my high school in a suburb of Detroit received next to no funding for the years I was there- and we played on dilapidated equipment in a crumbling auditorium.

It's a happy situation in my case, as a bond issue passed that is going to enable the school district to tear down the entire music/arts wing of my high school and rebuild it from the ground up, with a new 1000 seat theater. As someone who definitely benefitted from having music in my high school, I don't see why it isn't a no brainer everywhere. I wish every administrator was as savvy as the principal of my high school, who had to beat off people coming to his house telling him how arts education spending was a waste of taxpayer money, when every shred of evidence points to the contrary.
 
#8
Peripatetic music teachers here in the UK were chopped quite a few years ago, and the impact was as mentioned - quite delayed. I was teaching music in a college, and for years we had a great mix of students, and we always introduced them to jazz/big band, until one year when we asked what they played, nobody played anything bar guitar, bass and drums and they were all self-taught and couldn't read any kind of written music, just tab. The big band folded and the subject I was teaching got harder to get them through. They didn't have any theory at all, and even though they were keen to learn, it was way too much in the time allowed. Sensibly, now the junior schools are now letting kids have music lessons again - BUT - their parents have to pay!
 
#11
It was put best in Mr Hollands opus. You take away the arts and sooner or later people aren't going to have anything to read or write about. I'm a surgical technologists and personally I think my music education helps me all the time because it helps creative thinking. Sometimes I have to "improvise" especially on emergency cases. Life is not as simple as 2+2=4
 
#12
Where I live, Western-Europe, the music classes of the last few years on my just graduated from high school were practically empty and therefore closed, so I had to take acting courses (wich were meh).

I do not think that music, as in playing an instrument, should be given as a subject in high school, because

A) It kills the fun of making music, because it is school.
B) The teacher will either go with the most talented kids, or with the least talented. Kids should learn to play an instrument in their own tempos (fe our music teacher in the first few high school years only paid attention to the talents, preferably classical pianists).

That's why I think that music should stay a hobby, until you're old enough to decide to make it your job after high school and make it your subject of education/profession.
 
#13
Dimmik said:
In American schools, many districts are dropping cursive writing. Talk about cultural impact.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is limit set forth on the expression of individual personality. No surprise, since the chosen form of communicating in workplaces has been moving towards hand held computers..iphones, ect.

Consider that printed messages via this technology can be generated from voice activivation..speak into the device and it's sent as text..it's having a huge impact on our culture for sure.
 
#14
We should never assume that publicly funded schools run by bureaucrats and union officials know what is best for our children let alone their future. Music and the Arts will survive because it always has throughout history as a result of the human spirit and the human longing for beauty and creativity. Let private schools reign and people will vote with their feet. If one school doesn't provide enough Music education, then go to another one.
 
#15
Private schools are mostly for people of independent means, not every family has the resources to send their child to private institutions. A better solution for the good of all in imo is to act as the OP has requested, to raise awareness of the problems. I wouldn't assume that any private school was better than public unless I saw the curriculum..I know kids who have spent their time in private schools and switched to Community Junior College and are completely unprepared for many basic tasks in the classroom, such as showing up on a regular basis, not being allowed to use their phones, ect.
 
#19
I appreciate that my kids have grown up in a public school district with a good music program. One daughter sings in the chorus, the other (surprise!) plays bass. I have no musical aptitude at all - I can't hold a tune and when I played instruments as a kid I could play the notes, but it wasn't music. Without the school programs my kids would never have been involved in music. The bass player is in the school orchestra, symphonic band, and jazz band, but her real excitement comes from being in an outside youth symphony.

The challenge has been maintaining the quality of the music education when teachers retire or move on to other jobs. The orchestra teacher now is, to be polite, far from inspiring. The number of kids participating in the music program is going down, as it's not much fun. As the numbers go down, will the school programs maintain the community support? I am sad for the younger kids who may not have the opportunity to be excited by music.
 
#20
Jhengsman said:
In this case the educators may be finally recognizing a societal change which already happened. The sole use for cursive writing is to give a legal signature for aging hand writing experts to verify.
Click to expand...

An incredibly uninformed statement to make. The teaching of cursive writing to children is proven to improve various cognitive skills that they will need to develop because it is highly important in their adult years. The use of the fingers in the manner that cursive requires equals the activation and stimulation of various brain circuits that does not happen simply by using a typewriter keyboard. Is it linked to musical ability? Who do you think can play a bass easier--a kid who knows cursive or a kid who only knows how to tap a computer keyboard? Without cursive, cutting music programs probably makes sense since there will likely be less students interested because they lack the brain-eye-hand-finger coordination. And once you get to a certain age without developing these brain circuits, it's too late.
 

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