PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

Susan Elkin asks you to ensure children are exposed to as many different genres as possible

Yes, of course, we’d all like every child to have access to instrumental lessons and to be taught class music by an imaginative specialist. But, indefatigably as many people and organisations try to make this happen, there is an in-room elephantine question of resources: personnel, facilities and obviously, money. And regrettably, it isn’t at the top of every priority list either. Every reader of Ink Pellet will, I know, carry on striving but there are, sadly, many obstacles.

Perhaps one day the tide will turn.

Meanwhile, let’s, at least, expose children of all ages to music as much as we can. This costs almost nothing and requires no specialist expertise – just enthusiasm and teachers have that in spades.

I think children and young people should hear music – all genres – in school every day. Why not play, say, a Beatles number, a children’s favourite such as Nelly the Elephant, a musical theatre track, Anoushka Shankar on sitar or a movement from a Beethoven symphony at the end of every morning and afternoon in every primary school classroom: five minutes shared listening time? The choice is almost limitless. And it’s very easy these days to access anything you want via streaming channels.

In time the children will recognise and request repeats. I vividly remember going home from primary school aged about 10 clutching a scrap of paper and asking if we could buy a record of The Carnival of Animals. An enlightened teacher had played The Aquarium several times in assembly, and it had got under my skin. So I’d asked the teacher to write down for me what it was so that I could get my dad to get it, perhaps for my birthday – which he did. It’s a tiny example of how children can respond to music if you give them the chance to hear it.

I once visited a primary school where I could hear Beethoven’s seventh symphony from the other side of the playground where I had to park. Later, when I commented, the Head told me that school policy was to play a different piece of music every day on a system which relayed it in the corridors and public spaces on a repeat loop. A board in the foyer told children and visitors what that day’s piece was. I thought it was a marvellous idea.

You could play corridor music in secondary schools too as well as including a piece of music in every assembly and encouraging staff, irrespective of subject to share music as students arrive at and depart from lessons. It wouldn’t be difficult to work a bit of music into a whole range of subjects either … How about a bit of Mendelssohn in an English lesson on A Midsummer Night’s Dream or listening to early Tommy Steele and How Much is that Doggy in the

Window if you’re teaching/learning about life in the 1950s in history?

The sad fact is that today, many children and young people hear almost no music except via adverts, jingles from streamed cartoons and the synthetic, usually loud, “musack” routinely pounded out in shops and public spaces. I once taught a lesson (an idea from a course I’d attended) whereby I asked a secondary school year 9 class to think of a tune they already knew and sing the poem we were studying to it in pairs. It foundered badly because the students simply knew no tunes.

Of course, listening passively to recorded music is no substitute for the sort of Real Music Education that we’d all dearly like every pupil to have as an entitlement. But it is, at least, something every teacher and school could do to make sure that our charges have the richness of lots of music in their heads.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to stop at recorded music either. There are plenty of projects run by professional orchestras, concert venues and opera companies whereby musicians will go into schools and play for students along with talking about music – or enabling students to participate. Find out what’s available in your area – easier in big cities, maybe, but I went once to a school in Coalville, Leicestershire, a socio economically deprived area and, at that time a musical desert, to watch a small group of musicians run a singing project. Only one child in the entire school played a musical instrument.

Don’t forget amateur groups either. Many community orchestras, bands and choirs now operate as registered charities. That means that they have a legal obligation to offer what they can – free of charge. Ask if there are players willing to come into school to demonstrate different instruments (including voice) and genres for students. Or consider taking groups of students to the concerts these people mount in your area. Because of the charitable status they will almost certainly be offering free tickets for students of all ages.

The very first concert I ever went to was an Ernest Reed concert for children at Royal Festival Hall. I was 11 years old and taken there in a school group on a Saturday morning. I heard Wilfred Pickles narrating Peter and the Wolf. Never underestimate the importance of such experiences because they last for life – and, in my view, we owe it to our kids to ensure they have as much musical enhancement as we can pack in despite the difficulties of these cashstrapped arts-light times.