Sounds of Success
The first thing you notice when you walk into the Mountain View High School music room are the people. Gathered in small groups, either studying or chatting, the students in the music program seem comfortable and safe. More students walk in during lunchtime, simply looking for someone to chat with. There is always at least one person in the sound-proof practice rooms prepping for this audition or that performance. All of the students know that the minute they walk through the double doors of the instrumental music room, they are home.
Many taxpayers and administrators don’t believe that their money is being well spent if it goes to paying for a new
music program at their local high school. They might argue that the students don’t need to know how to play the saxophone to be successful and get a job. However, many students and teachers truly believe that these programs are bigger than just learning how to sing or play the tuba. They claim that they provide a valuable community for many students, and they teach kids how to think creatively and strengthen their brains – honing important skills for for their future. Music programs are necessary today because they provide a safe haven and a way to cope in an increasingly stressful and negative world. High school music programs may be expensive for the administration, but the
benefits of community, learning new ways to think, and a healthier mind make them integral in every high school.
“I think my favorite part is probably the community,” says Grey Krauss, a junior at Mountain View High School. Krauss, who currently plays percussion and bassoon, is involved with multiple ensembles in the music program on campus.. Reflecting on the culture of the program, he explains, “marching band specifically is very welcoming… because you don’t really need experience to join, so you can kind of just join and then… just have fun and stuff.” Krauss talks about how some students are more welcoming than others, but
overall, “if you make friends in a program like I did then it’s good and fun.”
Krauss’s friends brought him back into the program after leaving for a year during the pandemic. He regretted not joining the marching band in his sophomore year because he witnessed the kind of rapport and friendship that was formed throughout the 3 month program. He recalls, “ [my friend] told me about winter percussion and I joined that and that’s kind of what kickstarted my reintroduction to music.” Krauss paints a picture of a program that is constantly trying to expand the community and make it stronger, arguing that “any community in high school is important.”
Mountain View High School provides a perfect example of community in music programs. This is especially apparent in the choir, where students have to be even more vulnerable when performing than instrumentalists. Jill Denny, the MVHS choir teacher of 26 years, talks about how her classes “[are] accepting of all students, where every voice counts and people really make an effort to raise
everyone up.” She goes on to describe how in order for the choir to be successful, every individual must be successful, and that creates a feeling of unity – the choir slogan that appears on their t-shirts is “Every Voice Counts.” Denny stresses how everyone is very open to all identities and not only accepts them with open arms, but celebrates them, saying “they proactively support it.” When speaking about the MVHS staff, she says that teaching a student is very collaborative and that “everyone is looking out for the whole child.” She argues that having a range of music programs in schools is important because it not only provides a larger community among students, but also can provide different relationships between the student and their teachers. Denny describes the support system that the students have with the staff, saying that she asks herself, “what is going to help this one person be well rounded?”
In a Cal State San Marcos study about the effects of music electives for secondary students, graduate student Sarah Slezak finds that “many students felt they had made more friends and stronger relationships with friends because of participating in the [choir] class.” She details how the students felt supported by their classmates and their teacher which motivated them to come to school and boosted their morale. Slezak explains how a “sense of belonging in school is strongly correlated with expectancy of success, valuing schoolwork,
general school motivation, and self-reported effort,” further proving the importance of a strong community. The students in Slezak’s study defined their choir class as a “safe space,” “judgment free,” and “inclusive,” similar adjectives that Krauss used to describe his experience at MVHS. Overall, MVHS music programs and other schools’ have a welcoming and open community that gives students a home away from home.
Learning to play music at a young age teaches students new ways of thinking and learning that can actually strengthen one’s memory and expand mental capacity. According to the National Association for Music Education, “Students who have early musical training will develop the areas of the brain related to language and reasoning. The left side of the brain [used for language, numbers, and reasoning] is better developed with music, and songs can help imprint information on young minds.” Executive director Lydia Kontos, of the Kaufman Music Center (a music-focused school in New York), talks about how
learning music can help kids understand deferred gratification. In a world where children increasingly look for instant gratification rather than thinking in the long term, Kontos says that “It’s not so easy to make it disappear in music… A child gets a piece to learn, doesn’t know it at all, and works through it with a teacher and masters it. They get that feeling that it doesn’t happen the next day. It could happen the next week; it could happen in the next month.” This teaches children to have patience and perseverance, and helps them better understand the beneficial effects of deferred gratification. Kontos believes that this is one of the key academic benefits of learning music, and compares it to learning other subjects too, like math or English. She says that it teaches individuality and hard work. The Kaufman Music Center has noticeably higher test scores than other schools because of its focus on music education. Kontos sums it up by saying, “I think every child deserves to learn music, just like every child deserves to learn how to read and do math.”
Krauss agrees that playing music teaches us better ways to use our brains: “I feel like it kind of helped me develop a more growth mindset when it comes to learning things and that it’s okay to not be perfect at something at first…” Learning so many new instruments has taught him how he learns best, and how he personally needs to practice to get the best output. Before he got
back into music, he would start learning a new skill or hobby and then drop it because he felt he wasn’t good enough at it at first. With his new mindset he believes that “...even if you mess up in a practice or something, then it’s just part of the learning process.”
Musicians are stronger pattern-recognizers and can more easily pick out sounds in a crowd; in fact, the data shows that “they had stronger memory
nonmusical classes. They found that “it wasn’t extracurricular enrichment in general that sped up brain development. It was music” (Kraus and WhiteSchwoch).
In an increasingly stressful and pressure-filled world, teenagers have been found to have higher rates of depression and stress than 30 years ago, because “as college tuitions rise along with
and attentional skills than nonmusicians.” The participants in a study on the neurological effect of musicianship, who were in their sixties and seventies, were found to have stronger memory, attention, and better hearing abilities than non-musicians of the same age. In another study referenced in the article, there were two groups of students –one who jumped straight into music instruction, and the other who started out taking other,
the requirements to get into a top college, teenagers are put under more pressure today than in previous generations.” With this growing pressure, creating spaces for teenagers to let down and release stress is important for their physical and emotional health. School music programs can reduce stress and increase focus for participants. In Slezak’s study, she asked the participants how they thought their choir class affected their mood. She found
that “being in choir simply made them feel happy and put them in a good mood by relieving stress and anxiety.” The participants also said that they felt they could focus better in classes after choir because they had had a “nice mental break.” Furthermore, the community provided creates a safe space for students to express their emotions and get support from their peers. Slezak’s findings are bolstered by Tim Ringold, owner of Sonic Divinity Music Therapy Services, who claims that “when stress can’t be expressed solely through language… the physical and mental act of making music can allow you to get those feelings out of your body and mind.”
However, the mental health benefits are not absolute. Krauss has a differing opinion on how playing music affects his mental health. He says that, generally, music does help him alleviate stress, but, “I feel like I have an expectation that I’ve set for myself to be on a high school level, when I’ve just played the instrument for half a year.” Krauss explains that this
negatively affects his self confidence, because he pressures himself to constantly be better. This can be positive in that it creates motivation when practicing, however after a certain point, it can become unrealistic and stressful. Overall,
playingmusic does help alleviate stress, as long as students do not put additional pressure on themselves to reach proficiency too quickly.
This is all good and dandy, however in order for any of this to matter, these programs need to be properly funded. At Mountain View High School, some students play on school instruments that are frequently falling apart, along with mallet instruments that are out of tune. Krauss explains how a saxophone player had to miss out on class time almost every day in order to fix some part of his instrument. He stresses the importance of a properly funded program, saying, “I think funding not only would help the efficiency of the program, but also would help people have more fun in it, because it’s kind of hard to have fun with something when you have to fix your instrument every five seconds.”
Providing the inside perspective, Denny explains how the choir program uses its funding: “we provide scholarships for everything, to go to choir camp, to have costumes, to be able to attend field trips.” This allows a more welcoming and equitable program, where everyone has access to the great opportunities that the choir provides, like class trips. Without this extra funding, many low-income students would be left behind. Denny notes that they also use the funding to hire a piano accompanist, “which really raises the caliber of our program.” The music classes at MVHS use their funding to bolster their programs and make sure that every student can participate.
In summary, music programs create a safe space for students who might not fit in other places, teach them valuable life skills, and give students outlets to relieve their evergrowing stress. These classes cannot function without funding, and they certainly cannot thrive without the proper administrative support. As Denny puts it, if administrations don’t fund their music classes, “for sure [the students’] mental health would go down but also they may just stop coming to school all together. So you’re just cutting off an entire life chunk of a person’s development.” A school without music will be less successful, less healthy, and much less happy.
“I think funding not only would help the efficiency of the program, but also would help people have more fun in it.”
Zoe Parker is a junior at Mountain View High School and is currently studying film at Freestyle Academy. She is passionate about the arts and in her free time she loves to draw and play the french horn. She is also an avid movie enthusiast.
