The cost of cutting music in schools
It will be 34 years ago this coming June that I sat one evening in a Stamford Board of Education meeting in which budget decisions were being made, similar to what is happening now. I was completing my second year as an elementary string teacher in the district. I was thrilled with teaching my groups, and my student orchestras were learning and performing music from Bach, to fiddle tunes, to Pachelbel’s canon. The program throughout the city was thriving.
That night, however, the Board of Education made the decision to cut the string program from our schools. Hundreds of students who were studying violin, viola, cello, and bass were left without string and orchestra instruction. Years after the program was silenced by bureaucratic and budgetary decisions, the attempt was made to shove strings through the back door of the band/instrumental programs in the Stamford Public Schools. In spite of the best efforts of some of our instrumental staff, it has been a poor substitute for a fully staffed string/orchestra program with string specialists. Essentially, that was axed by the board on a June night 34 years ago, and has never been truly reinstated.
I write this because the Stamford Board of Education is poised to make the same type of wrongheaded decision all over again. Now, it is the elementary band/instrumental program that faces total elimination in the latest round of budgetary wrangling. This has been put on the table as a very real possibility by the Board of Education if the Boards of Finance and Representatives reject the proposed budget increase coming from administration and the Board of Ed.
If this program is cut, it will likely never resurface. Experience in this city and the history of the Board of Ed tells us so. Aside from the loss of music positions and employment of those with the least seniority in the district music department, this will immediately impact about 1,700 elementary students, who will no longer have the opportunity to study any instruments or play in school ensembles. Some of whom find their voices and places in school and paths in life through musical expression.
But, the negative impact will not end there. With no feeder system left to prepare student instrumentalists for middle school and high school ensembles, those programs will also likely die on the vine in short order. That will bring the total number of students who will be deprived of instrumental music instruction in Stamford to about 3,000. That will also mean no instrumental groups playing in concerts. That will mean no marching band programs for football games. That will mean no Holidays in Harmony performances by instrumental groups at the mall and any other out of school performances … and more fallout.
There is a plethora of research revealing the benefits of instrumental music study for students. From studies on musicians’ brain development, to superior performance and scoring on standardized testing, to the social and emotional benefits of musical study, and to the development of whole human beings who grow aesthetic and artistic sensibilities, the findings show that the rewards are tremendous for students of all backgrounds. In other words, musical study is core to the education of the whole student, not just an extra that can be tossed onto the trash heap as if there is little consequence. Sadly, that is the decision that might very well be made by this Board of Education.
Lastly, many of today’s student musicians will become tomorrow’s performers, composers, teachers, and audiences. This is integral to the ongoing cultural life of our society and more immediately of this city. To cut instrumental music instruction to our students will place this future in jeopardy for all of us. It will impoverish students in the present and impoverish our artistic participation in and contribution to our culture and society in the future. I would hope that the residents of Stamford will join together to urge the board to not preside over such a disastrous decision for today and tomorrow.