By Natasha Collishaw
Tiny hands will soon be occupied with guitars, violins, trumpets and flutes, every Tuesday afternoon at the Bronson Centre. These hands belong to the participants of the Orkidstra project, an initiative to give free music lessons to elementary school children who would not otherwise be able to afford them.
Late last month, the 40 children finally held these instruments for the first time. By program organizer Tina Fedeski’s account, it was a precious moment.
“They were so cute, so enthusiastic, their eyes were just lighting up,” the flutist gushed.
A group of musicians began this project in Ottawa after watching a documentary about the successful Venezuela state music program, El Sistema.
The program gives about 250,000 poor children not only the ability to play a musical instrument, but a new way of life.
The documentary chronicles the lives of young criminals and others who are transformed by the discipline and the spirit of co-operation involved in maintaining an orchestra.
“This program literally saves lives,” says Fedeski, who observed the Venezuelan program participants in a recent trip.
One example is Caracas Youth Orchestra clarinettist Lennar Acosta, who had been arrested nine times for armed robbery and drug offences before the program offered him a clarinet.
“It felt much better in my hands than a gun,” he is quoted as saying on the project website.
But why is such an initiative necessary in Ottawa, a wealthy city in a province whose government claims that elementary school students receive a “strong foundation” in music, visual arts, drama and dance?
The students at Cambridge Street Public School receive no musical education, not even instruction in singing.
“Well, they sing O Canada every morning,” says office administrator Doreen Rayne, after being asked if the children are exposed to any music at all during the school day.
And not coincidentally, the school is relatively poor, with a high concentration of immigrant students.
Decades of research show that music lessons boost thinking skills, motivation and co-operation with others.
The Ontario government’s own press release notes that arts education is often an effective way of engaging at-risk children or hard-to-reach learners. It also notes that it helps motivate students to stay in school.
Yet in Ontario, arts funding has been cut to the point that many students do not receive musical education until high school.
While the Ontario government reinvested $30 million in the arts in 2003, it does not seem that much of that funding went to music programs in elementary schools.
The elementary public school system tends to focus on a person’s material side without acknowledging that the ability to make money is conditional upon his or her emotional well-being.
It seeks to develop the skills that contribute to the development of the Ontario economy. But stressed-out, depressed people tend to burden the health-care system rather than contribute to the economy.
Poleski says that music education contributes to the spiritual or artistic side of a person, a side that the public education system prefers to ignore, perhaps because it is harder to define, and secondary to those subjects that will help Ontario compete in a global economy.
However, the provincial government acknowledges that the outcomes of arts education – creativity, imagination, innovation, and originality – are integral for creating economic prosperity in the 21st century.
This shows that knowing something is not enough to create a will for action.
The provincial government is well aware of the importance of musical education – they even show some willingness to spend money on it – yet most elementary schools in Ottawa do not have a music program.
It takes an initiative from Venezuela to wake us up to what we’re missing.
Hurray for globalization.