Chattanooga Times Free Press

Friday, September 18, 2009

By:
Perla Trevizo

Fiddle-eye-fee says the cat, its voice ringing from a musical triangle. Chimmy-chuck clucks the hen, her voice bonking off a woodblock. Those instruments and others, all played by the hands of third graders from East Side Elementary School, merge with the voices of the rest of the class as they run through the folk song “I Bought Me a Cat.”

But the 50-minute class is all their music education for a week.

“I wish they had it at least twice a week,” said music teacher Sonya Henry. “It would allow me to actually have more definite areas to focus on since we cover everything from singing to playing different instruments.”

Ms. Henry, the only music teacher at East Side Elementary, sees an average of 150 students on a given day.

Each year, trying to meet the requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law and dealing with shrinking budgets forces more schools to face the tough decision of cutting back programs — and many times the cuts slice off fine arts.

Some local middle schools, including East Lake Academy and East Ridge, have cut some of their music and visual arts programs, said Karla Riddle, director of Magnet Schools and Fine Arts with Hamilton County Schools.

“We are looking at funding issues, the number of teachers we can have on staff, then budget constraints,” she said. “Even though the arts is part of the No Child Left Behind bill, since we don’t test like we do for reading and math, it’s not on our base radar screen.”

Out of 82 schools in Hamilton County Schools, 75 have general music — the only program fully funded by the school system — but only 38 offer instrumental music, 14 have theater classes and six have dance, according to school system records.

Mandates by programs such as No Child Left Behind have led to widespread increases in instruction time for subjects such as math and English Language Arts while cutting social studies and the arts, according to a 2008 study by the Center on Education Policy.

“We are having such a hard time with this No Child Left Behind that all you hear is math and reading, that’s where the big focus is,” said Ms. Riddle. “A fine arts teacher has to really be dedicated.”

Research shows that the arts enhance learning, said Joseph Piro, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Long Island University, who researched the role of the arts on brain development and plasticity.

“We’ve been finding that simultaneously delivered programs of music and literacy seem to benefit the learning of both,” he said. “The more kids listen and learn how to process music, the more their auditory attention skills improve … and like anything else in education, the earlier you start kids, the better.”

“I think when schools realize the arts are not this detachable add-on but can make real difference in improving the academic success of students, they’ll think carefully before they decide to eliminate them in terms of instructional programs,” he said.

But sometimes, the money just isn’t there. Even when the Hamilton County school system can afford a fine arts teacher in a school, they only get $100 a year for art or music supplies as part of their budget.

“They are, to me, like almost on an island by themselves because they have to work so hard to raise the money they need for the supplies, instruments and music,” Ms. Riddle said.

Ms. Henry said she must be creative to manage the money she receives.

“We try to make some of our own instruments or, if I can find another instrument, I bring it in for (the students) to touch and hear,” she said.

Outside help becomes essential to exposing children to the arts when budgets are as tight as they are, Ms. Riddle said.

Private companies such as Unum, city programs such as the City of Chattanooga Department of Education, Arts and Culture, and Allied Arts — which recently had its budget reduced by 42 percent — have made half the arts programs at schools possible, Ms. Riddle said.

“If it wasn’t for (them), most of our kids wouldn’t have any art experience,” she said.

The St. Andrews Center, a nonprofit that works closely with the Hispanic community, decided to turn its afterschool program into an arts academy because that’s a need most schools weren’t able to meet, said Director Mike Feely.

“For a long time we’ve felt that every child should have a chance to appreciate and try different kinds of art,” he said.

The arts program that St. Andrews will offer this school year will provide dance, music and visual arts classes for about 40 children from mainly East Side Elementary and East Lake Academy, he said, but they would like to expand it in the future.

“All of (the kids in the afterschool program) come from places with rich, artistic backgrounds, cultures and traditions, but they don’t always have the opportunities here, where they currently live, to go to the museum or be involved in the arts and they don’t really have those opportunities in school,” he added.

A new emphasis on testing and test preparation — brought on by politicians, not early education experts — is hurting the youngest students.

By Patti Hartigan | August 30, 2009

Christine Gerzon is the epitome of a kindergarten teacher: warm and wise, quick to get down on her knees to wipe a tear or bandage a boo-boo. She can rhapsodize for hours about a single leaf and philosophize convincingly about the pedagogical uses of paper-mache. “I teach because it’s my calling,” she says. “It’s my life purpose.”

Yet two years ago, after 38 years as an educator, she threw up her hands and retired. (Her last job was at the Harrington School in Lexington.) She couldn’t stand the pressure.

Pressure? This is kindergarten, the happy land of building blocks and sing-along’s. But increasingly in schools across Massachusetts and the United States, little children are being asked to perform academic tasks, including test taking, that early childhood researchers agree are developmentally inappropriate, even potentially damaging. If children don’t meet certain requirements, they are deemed “not proficient.” Frequently, children are screened for “kindergarten readiness” even before school begins, and some are labeled inadequate before they walk through the door.

This is a troubling trend to an experienced educator like Gerzon, who knows how much a child can soak up in the right environment. After years of study and practice, she’ll tell you that 5-year-olds don’t learn by listening to a rote lesson, their bottoms on their chairs. They learn through experience. They learn through play. Yet there is a growing disconnect between what the research says is best for children — a classroom free of pressure — and what’s actually going on in schools.

Take the example of a girl who was barely 5 when she entered Gerzon’s classroom. She didn’t know her ABCs, but one day in class she made up a song and taught it to the other children. But because of new requirements, “I had to send a letter to her parents saying that [she] is not proficient,” says Gerzon. “You tell me that [she] is not proficient in language skills!” The Concord resident, who usually exudes a gentle presence, bristles. “It’s destructive, even abusive. That’s a pretty strong word, but what do you call it when you take a group of children and you force them to do something that they are not developmentally ready to do? What do you call that? It’s abusive.”

Psychologist and early childhood expert David Elkind, author of The Hurried Child and The Power of Play, echoes Gerzon. When children are required to do academics too early, he says, they get the message that they are failures. “We are sending too many children to school to learn that they are dumb,” says Elkind, a professor emeritus at Tufts University. “They are not dumb. They are just not there developmentally.”

It’s been more than two decades since Robert Fulghum published the oft-quoted (and oft-mocked) essay “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” The piece describes a bucolic world of wonder, a place for cookies and afternoon naps.

That world is long gone.

Earlier this year, the nonprofit advocacy group Alliance for Childhood, based just outside Washington, D.C., issued a report titled “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in Schools,” drawing from nine new studies of public school classrooms around the country. Kindergartners in the studies spent four to six times as much of the school day being drilled in literacy and math as they did playing.

Recess has been truncated or has disappeared entirely in some schools, a double whammy, since children are stressed out by the demands and also deprived of their major stress reliever. The report cites study after study showing increasing stress, aggression, and other behavior problems, and even breakdowns.

Roz Brezenoff taught kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools for 36 years, retiring five years ago. “I have heard stories of kids having what they call psychotic breakdowns in kindergarten, kids who are distressed because they are ‘kindergarten failures’ because they can’t read and they can’t write,” she says.

To be sure, many children thrive in an academic environment, and some parents seek out institutions like the Edward Brooke Charter School in Roslindale, which bills itself as “unapologetically college preparatory.” Teachers there assign nightly homework in kindergarten. But many children that age are not ready for that kind of work, and all are being held to new standards.

These changes grew out of attempts to solve another problem: a disturbing gap between higher-achieving white students and minorities who were falling behind. The state’s Education Reform Act of 1993 led to the establishment of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Tests (MCAS), given to all public school students in the state every year from Grade 3 through 8 and in Grade 10, to identify schools and districts where student performance is not improving and to hold those schools accountable by state watchdogs. As a consequence, says J.C. Considine, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, “some districts have developed more challenging but appropriate curricula for kindergarten. But many others have curricula, schedules, and expectations that would have been seen in first grade or beyond 10 years ago.”

Around the same time, neuroscientists were discovering a period of rapid brain development between birth and age 5. These advances helped launch the “brainy baby” business, a flood of products that promised to turn tiny tots into budding geniuses. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, says that “parents are misled by Baby Einstein,” the brand that sells books, DVDs, and flashcard “games” aimed at helping very young children get ahead. “They are misled by a marketing culture and a school culture that tells them achievement in early childhood is children sitting at tables doing work sheets.”

Then came the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which links federal funding for schools to performance on standardized tests beginning in the third grade. Its passage “put the nail in the coffin” for the old ways, says Ed Miller, coauthor of the Alliance for Childhood study. “Faced with serious sanctions, they weren’t going to say, ‘OK, let them play and do all the things they used to do,’ ” Miller says. “Instead, we have to put them in testing boot camp well before third grade.”

President Obama has repeatedly emphasized the importance of early childhood education and has committed $5 billion to early learning programs. Yet it’s still unclear exactly what changes the administration will make to No Child Left Behind. “The challenge is to attune the learning experience to how children are at that point in their development, rather than trying to make them something they aren’t,” says Carol Copple of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a Washington, D.C., accreditation group. “We need to make the schools ready for the kids, not make the kids ready for the schools.”

Some educators are struggling to bridge the gap between best practices and the politically driven demand for accountability. Teacher Michael Kenney sits cross-legged on the floor of his cheerful classroom at the Thomas J. Kenny Elementary School in Dorchester. It’s time for reading, and a teacher’s aide leads some of the children to another room to read out loud to them. These youngsters aren’t ready to read yet, and Kenney and Principal Suzanne Federspiel have decided that a reading lesson would only frustrate them. “There is more pressure for children to be readers by the end of kindergarten, and we try to put the pressure on us, not on them,” Federspiel explains.

Addressing the remaining students, Kenney pulls out a fly swatter with a hole cut in the middle. “In our classroom, this isn’t a fly swatter, it’s a word swatter,” he says. “I want to find a word, so wham, boom, I swat it!” He whacks the word “the” on a large text mounted on an easel. The children giggle, and for the next 10 minutes, they take turns swatting words. Their glee is infectious, and their swats are precise.

Later, it’s time for a writing workshop, and a little break. “If you are done with your drawing and your sentence, you get 20 minutes to play,” Kenney says to resounding cheers. “But do a good job, capiche?” In unison, the children respond “Capiche!” In the housekeeping area, two girls are dressing up in hospital scrubs. A boy crawls around the room, meowing like a cat. No one bats an eye.

This is a place of creativity and joy, but it’s a tenuous balance. “I try to mix the fun and the lessons,” Kenney says. “But we are testing them so much that I barely have time to teach the curriculum. These are 5- and 6-year-olds, and there is so little time for them to be kids.”

Ben Russell, assistant director of early childhood education for the Boston Public Schools, is struggling to find the right formula, too. “Some kids aren’t ready, and I fear for those kids.” Children who struggle in kindergarten are the ones who grow to hate school and who will likely continue to fall behind, he explains. “What becomes of kids who are not reading at the third-grade level?” asks Russell. “We use those numbers to create prisons. And that is a tragedy.”

Leadership comes from the top down in schools, but even the most enlightened principals and other administrators are bound by state and federal requirements. “In my mind, the expectations for our kindergartners should be a little higher, but that doesn’t mean the practice should be more rigid,” says Valerie Gumes, principal of the Haynes Early Education Center in Roxbury. After 21 years in the field, she says, she is weary of the demands to assess, assess, assess. “I’m not opposed to standards, but the amount of time we spend doing these assessments

. . .” A pause. “It’s really criminal.” A sigh. “But I’m not in charge.”

Anthony Colannino, principal of the MacArthur School in Waltham, objected this spring when the state began requiring schools to administer a standardized test to kindergartners whose first language isn’t English. “If you gave this test to the general population, people would be beating down doors,” he says. “There would be an outcry. If they gave it to my kid, I would say, ‘Tell me what day you are giving it, and he will be absent.’ ”

In fact, Colannino has a 5-year-old son who is about to enter kindergarten in Woburn. He says that his son, like many 5- year-old boys, is spontaneous and active. And since children are now expected to sit quietly for at least part of the day in many kindergarten classes, Colannino is more than a little worried. “He is curious and asks a lot of questions, and my wife and I are concerned,” he says.

What does it say when an elementary school principal fears that his own child won’t thrive in kindergarten? And what is the new emphasis on academics doing to the children? The Alliance for Childhood report contains chilling statistics. In Texas, the rate at which kindergartners were held back rose by two and a half times from 1994 to 2004. And in 2007, a 6- year-old girl in Florida was arrested for having a temper tantrum in school.

And what of Christine Gerzon’s former student, the girl who failed the official proficiency tests but who showed so much potential? “She’s still struggling,” Gerzon says sadly. (The teacher has kept in touch with the girl’s family.) Students get labeled young, at a time when their ability to perform can vary widely from day to day, and it’s hard to shake those labels later on. Children’s impressions of school, too, are formed early, and when they feel like failures at 5, it’s hard to turn that around later. The city of Boston recognized this last year when it formed a public-private partnership with United Way called Thrive in 5, an umbrella agency that is conducting a citywide effort — starting support and play groups, distributing flyers about health and other kinds of resources, and more — to help parents prepare their young children for school.

But these grass-roots efforts can only go so far. Early childhood experts have been publishing books, releasing reports, and testifying before Congress, with little change in public policy. Why isn’t anyone listening? “It’s not the educators, it’s the politicians,” says Russell of the Boston schools. “The schools don’t make the decisions. The politicians are making the decisions to meet political needs.” There is also an element of fear among educators, especially in a troubled economy. “You have to be willing to get your wrist slapped a little bit,” says Russell. “If the folks who know what’s right don’t talk about it, we’re never going to get anywhere.”

And now is the time. The Obama administration has pledged billions, but some experts remain wary that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is proposing policy that sounds like No Child Left Behind. “I think he has bought into the standards and testing model,” says Miller. “What we need is a whole reassessment and change of direction.”

Meanwhile, more and more children are “failing” kindergarten, according to the Alliance for Childhood report — and missing out on the kind of early schooling that does help develop 5-year-old minds. Winifred Hagan is a former kindergarten teacher and a vice president at the Cayl Institute in Cambridge, a nonprofit that sponsors conferences for principals and fellowships for the study of early childhood education. She worries that vulnerable kids are being sent down a path to failure inside a system that was created to meet purely political goals. “Kids are spending hours of their day sitting with pencils and tracing dotted lines,” she says. “And we call that education? We are kidding ourselves.”

Patti Hartigan, a former Globe reporter, blogs about education at http://TrueSlant.com. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

?2. Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills?- Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.

?3. A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background.?- Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.

?4. A 1997 study of elementary students in an arts-based program concluded that students’ math test scores rose as their time in arts education classes increased.?- “Arts Exposure and Class Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, October, 1998.

?5. First-grade students who had daily music instruction scored higher on creativity tests than a control group without music instruction.?- K.L. Wolff, The Effects of General Music Education on the Academeic Achievement, Perceptual-Motor Development, Creative Thinking, and School Attendance of First-Grade Children, 1992.
 
6. In a Scottish study, one group of elementary students received musical training, while another other group received an equal amount of discussion skills training. After six (6) months, the students in the music group achieved a significant increase in reading test scores, while the reading test scores of the discussion skills group did not change.?- Sheila Douglas and Peter Willatts, Journal of Research in Reading, 1994.

?7. According to a 1991 study, students in schools with arts-focused curriculums reported significantly more positive perceptions about their academic abilities than students in a comparison group.?- Pamela Aschbacher and Joan Herman, The Humanitas Program Evaluation, 1991.

?8. Students who are rhythmically skilled also tend to better plan, sequence, and coordinate actions in their daily lives.?- “Cassily Column,” TCAMS Professional Resource Center, 2000.

?9. In a 1999 Columbia University study, students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident, and better able to express their ideas. These benefits exist across socioeconomic levels.?- The Arts Education Partnership, 1999.
?
10. College admissions officers continue to cite participation in music as an important factor in making admissions decisions. They claim that music participation demonstrates time management, creativity, expression, and open-mindedness.?- Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999.

2. “Music is exciting. It is thrilling to be sitting in a group of musicians playing (more or less) the same piece of music. You are part of a great, powerful, vibrant entity. And nothing beats the feeling you get when you’ve practiced a difficult section over and over and finally get it right. (yes, even on the wood block.) Music is important. It says things you heart can’t say any other way, and in a language everyone speaks. Music crosses borders, turns smiles into frowns, and vice versa. These observations are shared with a hope: that, when schools cut back on music classes, they really think about what they’re doing – and don’t take music for granted.”?- Dan Rather — CBS News

3. “In every successful business…there is one budget line that never gets cut. It’s called ‘Product Development’ – and it’s the key to any company’s future growth. Music education is critical to the product development of this nation’s most important resource – our children.”?- John Sykes — President, VH1

4. “The things I learned from my experience in music in school are discipline, perseverance, dependability, composure, courage and pride in results. . . Not a bad preparation for the workforce!”?- Gregory Anrig – President, Educational Testing Service

5. “Music is an essential part of everything we do. Like puppetry, music has an abstract quality which speaks to a worldwide audience in a wonderful way that nourishes the soul.”?- Jim Henson – television producer and puppeteer

6. “Should we not be putting all our emphasis on reading, writing and math? The ‘back-tobasics curricula,’ while it has merit, ignores the most urgent void in our present system – absence of self-discipline. The arts, inspiring – indeed requiring – self-discipline, may be more ‘basic’ to our nation survival than traditional credit courses. Presently, we are spending 29 times more on science than on the arts, and the result so far is worldwide intellectual embarrassment.”?- Paul Harvey – syndicated radio show host

7. “It’s [music education] terribly important, extremely important — because when you are a child, you are in a receptive age … In high schools, public schools — that’s where they must have the best influence, the first influence, which will go through their whole life.”?- Eugene Ormandy – conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra

8. “It is our job, as parents, educators, and friends, to see that our young people have the opportunity to attain the thorough education that will prepare them for the future. Much of that education takes place in the classroom. We must encourage our youngsters in such pursuits as music education. In addition to learning the valuable lesson that it takes hard work to achieve success, no matter what the arena, music education can provide students with a strong sense of determination, improved communication skills, and a host of other qualities essential for successful living.”?- Edward H. Rensi – President and Chief Operation Officer, U.S.A. McDonald’s Corporation

9. “A grounding in the arts will help our children to see; to bring a uniquely human perspective to science and technology. In short, it will help them as they grow smarter to also grow wiser.”?- Robert E. Allen – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AT&T Corporation

10. “Some people think music education is a privilege, but I think it’s essential to being human.”?- Jewel – singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist

FOR RELEASE:
August 18, 2009 Contact: Kymberly Drake
Public Relations Manager
NAMM
760-438-8007, ext. 162
Fax: 760-438-8257
kymberlyd@namm.org

Scott Robertson, APR
Director of MarCom
NAMM
760-438-8007, ext. 102
Fax: 760-438-8257
scottr@namm.org
Washington, D.C. — The NAMM Foundation announced that it hosted a live, public teleconference today with U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to discuss his recent letter sent to school and education community leaders outlining the importance of the arts as a core academic subject in U.S. public schools.

More than 1.75 million national music and arts education advocates were encouraged via a national network of coalitions to participate in the call to hear Duncan express his concerns about access to arts education in U.S. public schools, and how these programs can be supported in the future.

The call was initiated after Duncan issued a letter last week to school and education community leaders stating, “At this time when you are making critical and far-reaching budget and program decisions for the upcoming school year, I write to bring to your attention the importance of the arts as a core academic subject and part of a complete education for all students. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) defines the arts as a core subject, and the arts play a significant role in children’s development and learning process…”

“The arts can help students become tenacious, team-oriented problem solvers who are confident and able to think creatively,” he stated. “These qualities can be especially important in improving learning among students from economically disadvantaged circumstances. However, recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results found that only 57 percent of eighth graders attended schools where music instruction was offered at least three or four times a week, and only 47 percent attended schools where visual arts were offered that often.”

“Concerned citizens in cities, towns and communities should share this letter with state and local school leadership,” said Mary Luehrsen, NAMM’s director of public affairs and government relations and executive director of the NAMM Foundation, who moderated the call. “The Secretary has clearly stated that arts education is part of the core curriculum and is vital to a complete and quality education for all children. All of us need to work together to assure that all children have access to a complete education that includes high quality, standards-based learning in music and the arts.”

The SupportMusic Coalition conference call also reiterated the points in Duncan’s letter about how state and local actions can be reinforced to assure access to arts education.

Duncan reminded listeners that under the ESEA, states and local school districts have the flexibility to support the arts through Federal Title programs and U.S. Department of Education programs, including professional development of arts teachers as well as for strategic partnerships with cultural, arts and other nonprofit organizations. In addition, Duncan stated that local school districts can use funds under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the arts along with other district expenses.

Duncan also outlined the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) next steps for supporting the arts as part of a well-rounded curriculum. These efforts include:

Conducting a survey to assess the condition of arts education in grades K-12. This fall, elementary and secondary principals will be asked about their schools’ offerings in music, dance, theater, and visual arts.
Surveying elementary classroom teachers next spring as well as music and visual arts specialists at the elementary and secondary levels about their programs and resources.
Reporting findings from this comprehensive profile in early 2011, the first report like this since the 1999-2000 school year. The data is expected to help practitioners and policymakers make more informed decisions about arts education.
During the call, Duncan highlighted the series of music events at the White House that demonstrates the administration’s ongoing efforts to stress the importance of arts education beginning with a Jazz Education workshop in June with 140 students from across the country. At the July White House event reinforcing the importance of arts education, he joined the President and First Lady in featuring country music artists Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley, who appears in a White House video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvUy540I7o released today.

To view Secretary Duncan’s letter, visit the U.S. Department of Education’s Web site at www.ed.gov. The letter is also available along with the full transcript of today’s teleconference at www.supportmusic.com.

People who are interested in finding out more about the resources available for supporting the arts in U.S. public schools are encouraged to visit the Department’s Web site for arts education at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/programs.html, or for more information and links to national, state and local organizations working together to keep music education strong, interested parties should visit www.supportmusic.com. Organizations interested in participating in the SupportMusic Coalition, write to info@namm.org.

About NAMM Foundation
The NAMM Foundation is a non-profit organization with the mission of advancing active participation in music making across the lifespan by supporting scientific research, philanthropic giving and public service programs from the international music products industry. For more information about The NAMM Foundation, please visit www.nammfoundation.org.

Cause its music time, music time
A time to sing and dance to the groove
Oh it’s music time, music time
It’s time to let the music…make you move

By Wendy Harris
Post-Crescent staff writer

Exposing their young children to music just comes naturally to Jill and Bob Williams of Appleton.

“Music is a huge part of our life,” said Jill Williams, who plays piano, and also bassoon for the UW Fox Valley Concert Band and a local woodwind quintet.

Since Rose, 3, and her baby sister, Lillian, 9 months, were born, music has been as integral a part of their lives as learning to walk and talk. Bob, a baritone with the White Heron Chorale, is always singing at home. Jill, meanwhile, is frequently practicing for concerts, or playing the piano, while Rose dances and keeps time with her castanets and baby Lillian bounces nearby in her exer-saucer.

Jill is convinced all this music exposure is paying off.

“Rose is 3 and she is reading,” she said. “She has the gift of language and I can’t help but believe it’s because of rhythm and rhyming and the flow of music.”

A growing body of research supports her observations.

Exposing a child to great music — as a listener and as a player — is good for brain development.

“Nothing activates as many areas of the brain as music,” says researcher Donald A. Hodges, Covington Distinguished Professor of Music Education and director of the Music Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

And to answer a question that has been floating around both scholarly and in popular culture for a while: Does music make you smarter?

“The answer is ‘no’ in a superficial sense,” Hodges said. In 1993, experimenters claimed that listening to a Mozart sonata would make your IQ increase by eight points. Subsequent work, Hodges explained, proved that such listening would sharpen a subject’s spatial-temporal relationships momentarily. After a short while, the subject would go back to being just as smart as before. Or dumb.

But, he explained, a rich environment makes a difference: “The brain: Use it or lose it. The more education you have, the more the interconnections in the brain. Music changes the brain.”

It’s an observation that Patricia DeCorsey, coordinator of Lawrence University’s Early Childhood Music Program in Appleton, has been making for years.

“By introducing children to music, so many areas of the brain benefit at the same time, like the mathematical and language centers,” said DeCorsey. “It’s really a super-advantage.”

DeCorsey has headed the childhood music program for 15 years of its 20-year history. Age-appropriate classes are available for children as young as 6 months old.

“Children learn musical concepts only until about age 7,” DeCorsey said. “After that, the learning pretty much stops. That’s why it’s so important to start children early.”

Rose Williams started in the program when she was 2; and her sister, Lillian, will start this fall.

“We took the Mozart and movement class this past year and it’s just incredible how she came out of her shell,” Jill Williams said.

The Lawrence classes, led by trained professional musicians, introduce basic music concepts and give hands-on experience to play with a variety of folk, instrumental and percussion instruments.

Appleton mother Jennifer Ganser enrolled her first child, Jackie, in the program when she was a baby for something fun to do. Two more babies and five years later, Ganser believes her three children have gained more than just enjoyment from the classes.

“You can just see them light up when they are there,” Ganser said. “We’ve really seen them progress.”

Jackie, now 6, loves music at school and has been asking to take violin and piano lessons, Ganser added.

While music and brain research moves at a slow pace, Hodges has outlined some major findings:

Disproving earlier assumptions that musical activity takes place in the right hemisphere of the brain, the activity occurs with equal vigor in the left — or rational — hemisphere. Music is an emotional and intellectual activity that engages all the brain. Almost.

During performance, there is almost no activity in the frontal lobe, where conscious thought takes place. When Yo-Yo Ma is playing his cello in concert he’s not thinking, Hodges argues. All the thought took place earlier and if he were to think now it would impede his playing. He is simply performing, much like a highly trained athlete.

“Music is always a physical activity,” Hodges said. “Musicians are small-muscle athletes.” And not just the performer. A listener sitting still in a classical concert hall is having the area of the brain that controls motion stimulated. Thus, that convention — not moving during classical performances — is unnatural.

A person with brain damage from a stroke may not be able to speak but can sing because the area that controls music is not damaged, said Shannon de L’Etoile, who heads the music therapy program at the University of Miami.

A therapist will get the patient to sing a phrase, then change it to spoken language with an exaggerated rhythm, and finally to natural language.

“We are rerouting through the healthy part of the brain,” de L’Etoile said. “The spinal chord reacts immediately to rhythm.”

Such therapy can be used with Parkinson’s patients, she added.

And, researchers have learned that autistic children are capable of reproducing patterns of music, which a therapist can translate to language and to unlock the social interactions autism prevents.

“Music makes you smarter because it helps you understand yourself as a human being and your relationship to the world,” says Hodges.

Though, all humans are musical, regardless of training or IQ.

“From the least to the most intelligent, everyone can have a meaningful music experience,” he said.

Wendy Harris can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 526, or at wharris@postcrescent.com. Knight Ridder Newspapers reporter Enrique Fernandez and correspondent Jacob Goldstein contributed to this report.

“Smoke on the Water” resonates through the hallways of Elco Middle School on this afternoon as Zach Adams describes how he became involved in music.

The eighth-grader started playing drums in sixth grade. But, he says, he didn’t particularly like the instrument and soon decided he wanted to be a part of the school band.

While a version of British band Deep Purple’s 1972 tune continues to reverberate through the halls, Adams describes his musical change of heart.

“I heard the high-school band play, and it was fun to hear them play, and I thought it would be fun to be a part of that,” says Adams, who plays tuba in the middle school’s band.

Now, his bandmates switch to “Rock and Roll Part Two” by Gary Glitter. Adams says his favorite thing about the band is practicing and playing with the other students — even if it means staying after school.

“This is one of my favorite parts of school,” he says. “We have a good bunch of people. We’re all
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really good on our instruments, and when it comes time to play, we all play really good.”

In spite of increased pressure to focus on standardized tests and a plethora of other activities available to students today, music education — and band in particular — remains a constant at Elco and schools around Lebanon County. And while participation may not be what it used to be, instructors and students all agree music remains an integral part of education.

In a rhythm

March is known nationally as Music In Our Schools Month. Started as a single statewide celebration in 1973, Music In Our Schools Month has grown to encompass a day, then a week, then, in 1985, a monthlong celebration of school music, according to the National Association for Music Education Web site, http://www.menc.org. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of music education for all children and to remind citizens that school is where all children should have access to music.

Music In Our Schools Month is also an opportunity for music teachers to bring their programs to the attention of their schools and communities and to display the benefits school music brings to students of all ages, the Web site states.

“It brings (music) to everybody’s attention a little bit more,” says Sherie Strohman, the elementary instrumental music teacher at Annville Elementary School. “With all the push right now for reading, math, writing and all of that, sometimes they forget that these things are here, too, and they’re very important to a lot of these kids.”

Annville Elementary School used to have an assembly to recognize the monthlong celebration, but Strohman says it hasn’t had anything in recent years because there are so many other things going on.

“The high school has their musical around that time, and we take the kids up to the high school to see the musical,” she explains. “We make them aware of it in the music classes, … but I don’t really have any free time in my schedule to do anything else.”

Not much is planned to mark the month at Pine Street and Forge Road elementary schools in Palmyra either, according to Dan Hoover, instrumental music teacher at the two schools. But Hoover sees its purpose.

“I think anything we can do to raise awareness is good because music and the arts in general is something that is looked at to be expendable sometimes,” he says.

No music left behind

Although not much might be done to celebrate Music In Our Schools Month, Strohman, Hoover and others call music an integral part of education. But recently, increased attention to standardized tests because of the No Child Left Behind Act has shifted the focus to certain parts of students’ education.

“I think one of the things that we miss with the testing is we’re just giving one little facet of their being a chance,” Strohman says. “We need the sports, we need the arts, we need all of these things because everybody’s not going to be going to college. Everybody’s not going to be doing the same things. So this gives them a chance to develop many, many more areas of their abilities, and I think we’re really missing the boat if we don’t catch all that.”

Jared Daubert, band director at Lebanon High School, also sees standardized tests’ negative effect on music education. For example, there’s an extra English class at Lebanon that students can take if they’re less proficient in reading and writing. Not so for music.

“I’ve had a few kids not be able to take band because of that,” Daubert says. “You look at some schools, and you hear horror stories. That hasn’t happened at our school, but I know at other schools it’s really devastating some programs right now. You’ll see kids taking an extra hour of reading or an extra hour of math to try to get to that proficient level, and anything else that’s not reading and math tends to be cut for the extra time. I think it can be extremely unfair for the development of kids.”

Being in a band is not just about music, Daubert adds. It offers benefits such as increased social skills, stronger teamwork and developed work ethic.

“The most important thing is, there is no other subject in this school besides music that allows kids on a daily basis to come in and do something that is self-expressive and that allows them to do something on a level that is above that of a normal high-school student,” he says.

A teamwork crescendo

One of Daubert’s charges, Sarah Herb, has been involved in band since third grade. Now a senior, Herb says being in band helps improve social skills. That’s part of the reason she came back each year.

“You can come here and have fun in class,” she says. “I don’t see why you would want to go to any hard classes during the day when you can come here and be just as productive but be creative and be having fun.”

Herb, who plans to major in music education at Lebanon Valley College next year, says she considers herself part of a team in the band — just like an athlete would.

“Especially with marching band — we do competitions, and we compete,” says Herb, who plays clarinet. “We work together just like a sports team to do the best at a competition and win. It’s pretty much the same thing.”

Craig DeVore, band director at Elco Middle School, says music gives students another activity outside of athletics.

“Not every kid wants to do athletics or can do athletics,” he says. “It’s definitely an outlet for creativity, and it allows kids to be creative and to create something and to have that sense of accomplishment because they are creating something and they’re making music.”

Standardized tests are causing problems in music programs, DeVore agrees, and some teachers are more reluctant to allow students to leave classes to attend music lessons.

“We have a great faculty here, and if the kids can’t make it for their regularly scheduled lesson, we make other times available for them to make it up,” he says. “But if the teachers are doing something that’s really important or really geared toward the test, they’re reluctant to let them out.”

For some students, band is the only reason they come to school. Daubert credits band with helping him to get through both middle school and high school.

“If I didn’t have the desire to be here every day for the band, I don’t know how successful I would have been in anything else,” he says. “There are a lot of kids that this is the reason why they really want to come to school.”