Thursday, June 30, 2011

Research for Music Education in Nola

Reading this post of a Gentilly school, it truly is effective for students doing badly in school to try harder and make better grades when they start to dedicate themselves more to music. This article is leading me to the idea of also adding choirs to the schools as that they can benefit a larger number of people at the same time, and choirs are fun to be in. There's this emotional wave you get going through you when you are singing with a bunch of others like you, a kind of spiritual feeling.

Some similar organizations like the one I want to create are MusicianCorps, which pays for musicians to come teach at a more underprivileged school. They are currently at 5 schools in New Orleans, but the difference between my idea and their organization is that I want to get volunteer musicians who are in college to do this for free or at least volunteer hours, so that it's a program that doesn't require funding to pay for the musicians but perhaps for the instruments and for the places (however, I hope I can find free spaces for the teaching).

I'm reading about Musiciancorps in which they allow volunteers to teach children how to play music and music appreciation but in San Francisco and Oakland. Perhaps I could request them to open it in New Orleans as there are many musicians here as well. I see that it's a lot of work to get volunteers to teach music as background checks need to be done! That's a lot of work, which I need to learn more about.

As Sir Ken Robinson had said, the arts should be brought to equal importance to other disciplines. I think that's quite a huge step so I'd rather focus on making it only important enough to schools so that any student in the United States can have access to music education without the hindrance of money.

"  MusicianCorps was the brainchild of Kiff Gallagher,  a singer and songwriter who conceived the idea of a "musical Peace Corps" that would "bring music into public schools and other under-resourced community settings."

      "I know that music is a more powerful force in society than entertainment alone, " said Gallagher,  40,  who was in town recently to promote the program.

      His vision is to use music to teach "21st century skills like perseverance,  discipline and collaboration, " essential elements on the bandstand and beyond,  he said.

      "These are the skills of the musician, " Gallagher said. "They are also the skills you need whether you want to be an engineer,  an architect or an artist."


In addition, I just read about Baykids that creates and produces movies with hospitalized children. That is such an interesting initiative to bring passion to people who need it most. Nothing is more depressing than boredom and lack of ambition and dreams.

I found this blog called http://www.serviceartist.net/ Service Artist. net. Within the site, I found an article of information that does support that music does better not only the education of a child but his or her life.

No comments:

Post a Comment