Article on Band's Secondary Attention

NPR - School Bands Should Not Be Entertainment Adjunct for Sports

This short article/talk transcript from NPR discusses one of many cases where students who did not want to participate in Marching Band and/or perform at the football half-times were not allowed to join any of the other music groups such as concert band or the school orchestra.

The main pull of the article's opinion is that music is good in its own right, and doesn't have to be "entertainment" between sports rounds for it to be worth anything, and that forcing students to be such pawns is inexcusable.

But it's not just the marching band entertainment ploy that bothers me. It's how schools, high school and university level, will give many scholarships for their sports players and hardly any to deserving musicians, or certainly much less money per scholarship. While there may not be as much physical risk involved in sports, I'd like to argue that musicians actually have to pay for their own instruments and upkeep thereof, whereas many athletes can rely on school funds to cover many of that. Likewise, many sports trips have no cost to the student whatsoever, whereas student musicians must fundraise and fundraise and fundraise in the hopes of going to a competition they've been accepted into or a trip outside their own neighborhood, or heaven forbid and overseas tour!

Music trips such as these can bring just as much positive publicity as sports games and lead to a great number of potential students and sponsors. Who wants to give money to something that they've never seen or heard? When we put it out there and give it a priority, people pay attention, and they give it what it's due.

But there in lies the problem: sadly, music is NOT a priority. Not for universities, not for high schools, and certainly not for middle schools and elementary schools.

I could go into so many rants about our current education system focused on test scores and eliminating all essential brain-stimulation and "extra"curricular activities and even physical activity or just being a child (called recess), but that would take me an hour and I'm not sure anyone reads this blog anyway, so I will keep my opinions to myself for now.

As for this debate of the value of music vs. sports, or rather, as I'd like to challenge, music AND sports (why can't we value both?!), I'd love your opinions. :-)

Band is Best

Beating the Drum

Closing argument for why the best extracurricular activity is band, and more specifically, marching band: Experts say that the key to high school success is rigor, relevance and relationships. Band hits on all three: It offers the rigor of learning to play music while marching in complex formations; the relevance of the discipline and team skills that benefit teens long after high school, and relationships that can  develop and deepen over all four years of high school.

Absolutely all of my best memories from elementary up through college have been those where I was involved in music. I have met some of the best (and worst, but mainly best) people. A lot was expected of us, and we rose to the challenge. We stayed busy, and that kept most of us out of trouble. And the empathy that music encourages is only one of the hundred things that will benefit me for the rest of my life.