Guns, Tragedies, And Music In The School by Dorita S. Berger Kean University, Union, NJ dsberger@mags.net
I
live in Connecticut. I had friends who lived in Sandy Hook. The late Jesse Levine, former conductor of the Norwalk Symphony, lived in Sandy Hook. The area of Newtown is, as was seen on the news, a very sophisticated, quiet, and wealthy location in the State of Con necticut. From where I live in Norwalk, it is about a 30-minute beautiful drive through farms and country, and a lovely day out. To have this special place be the site of the mas sacre of 26 innocent women and children, is so inconceivable that even a movie script would not be believable. But it did happen. And now the question of why, and what can be done to prevent such horrors, has become a free-for-all conjecture: gun laws revisited, mental health facilities reinvestigated, ASD and Asperger’s redefined, and much more. For those of us in the arts, and mu sic education, the question is more basic.
What opportunity do schools provide to young people, that enable them to express themselves, their emotional confusions, inner fears, traumas with bullying, fam ily function, interests, in a safe manner, if not through the arts and through music? Language is ineffective. Reasoning with a youngster who harbors rage and anxiety is ineffective because the youngster is not lis tening, and not hearing! There are no words to define or describe inner emotional tur moil. It cannot be “reasoned” away with words. The deepest sensory reactions to in ner fear and rage can only be somewhat ad equately expressed in nonverbal ways, and music activities present some of those ways. Music employs the whole body and the whole brain. Playing an instrument engages movement and energies of limbs. Vocal ton ing vibrates inwardly addressing muscular tensions and anxieties (why do we scream,
for instance?). I would like to make the case that the training of school music educators may need to expand, to include ways in which music education can provide some forms of personal self-expression for young people. For instance, more music improvisation classes and workshops in which students (and teachers) can self-express could do wonders in helping distressed students (and teachers!) bring forth problems and ex press their sensations without using words. Needed are not just music classes that fol low teacher directives – play “c” and “g” on the xylophone; count the beats and rhythm patterns; practice your instrument(s) so the school can have good music concerts, etc – but opportunities to apply music-mak ing itself as a self-expressive medium. The teaching of music in schools needs to be open to incorporating areas of communica
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MARCH 2013