There was a time a generation ago when music theory classes for
gifted elementary school students were available in some California
schools. Bands and/or orchestras were common.
Now we have students practicing the flute on pencils.
It is a national shame.
There was a time a generation ago when music theory classes for gifted elementary school students were available in some California schools. Bands and/or orchestras were common.
Now we have students practicing the flute on pencils.
It is a national shame.
But let’s pause from lamenting the tragic and socially indefensible long enough to applaud the altruism of those who are trying to take up the slack.
Susan Chizek, a music teacher in the Hollister School District, is on a lonely crusade to provide her students scattered around the district with instruments that don’t have poisonous graphite in them. Thanks to her efforts, several Good Samaritans have stepped forward.
One is 83-year-old Olga Schipper, who wrote a check to pay for a new flute, which can cost as much as $1,000. Shannon Grissom also donated a flute, and is watching eBay intending to purchase two more for the district.
John Pierce donated two French horns, which can run $2,000 a piece new.
And planning commissioner Mike Smith is donating his grandmother’s piano, which she used to play accompanying silent movies.
This kind of can-do spirit is a credit to the community. We suspect there are even more instruments out there gathering dust in closets, waiting for some well-meaning person to say, “I don’t really need that, and the kids do.”
We would like to urge everyone to search their hearts, then search their storage, and do what they can to help these budding musicians get a good start.
Music education pays off in ways we can hardly imagine, but for which we will all be grateful someday. Studies have shown that musicians hardly ever get Alzheimer’s, for example. And the therapeutic affects of music, not to mention music education, have been well documented.
It’s a tragedy that the arts are being treated so casually by a school system that used to be the envy of the country, if not the world, and now scrapes by while huge tax breaks are handed out to multi-millionaires.
Arts, as they say, are basic, and music may be the most basic of the arts.
The program needs instruments of all kinds. Anyone wishing to donate to the cause can call Susan Chizek at 637-3255.
