Guitars, Not Gangs

Music education and reaching at-risk youth

By Gary Crawford

I recall attending a parent council meeting at my local school a few years ago at which a parent expressed her surprise about a seminar she had just attended. The seminar in question was about the benefits of music and music education on children and youth. Benefits leading to success – success in school, success in fostering intelligence and success in life. I remember my automatic response being, “but of course.”  Having grown up with exposure to music and the arts, I simply assumed the importance of the role of music in education.

What struck me in particular about this incident was the realization that there are many parents who are quite unaware of the positive ways in which music and music education can influence their children.    Those of us engaged in education are well aware of how important music is to the overall development, education and maturing of a child.  We see the value of music education every day in shaping young minds and hearts – preparing them for their futures, no matter what paths they choose.  However, in our advocacy of music education for all children, we tend to focus on the more traditional academic and developmentally-specific areas. 

I would like to suggest that music can be a powerful vehicle for positively influencing and benefiting at-risk and alienated children and youth.  Music can be used both within and outside the formal education system and environment as a means towards building safer and more nurturing, communities.  Using music as an outlet, an activity and a means of staying connected and in-touch with kids. Music as a means of expression and identity for kids-at-risk!

In my community, one of the main issues I deal with as an educator is how to reach marginalized and alienated youth in a positive and productive way.  Many urban as well as rural areas across Canada are faced with the issue. The headlines of the day are regularly taken up with youth violence, youth crime, gangs and kids who just don’t fit in.  Kids who “fall through the cracks” and who lack strong role models.

Much to its credit, our community , along with a number of professional and amateur sports organizations, has come forward in a concerted and very public effort to involve youth-at-risk in community sports and educational programs.  At the same time, high-profile role models from the world of sports have stepped up to the plate with the full cooperation and involvement of the sports organizations, the media, the police, community groups, multi-cultural organizations and faith-based groups.  The initiative is a huge step in the right direction and indeed, most inspiring.

But what about the kids for whom professional sports and professional sports heroes have no allure? 

I would like to propose a second front that I believe would be just as vital and could be just as successful as the sports initiative.  And that would involve reaching at-risk and marginalized youth through music. Music as a tool to “speak” to kids as well as a way for kids to “speak” to us. I do acknowledge that there are many individual programs that are very important but what is needed is a coordinated, collective initiative that brings all stakeholders together, especially the private and public sector.

One of the driving forces of youth in their pre-teen and teen years is to achieve identity. The “Who Am I” years. It is through appearance and behaviour and other outward signs that teens assert themselves. They wear their badges of identity in their choices of clothing, music, hair, group identification, risk taking, experimentation, challenging authority, gangs.

Music speaks to youth in this quest for identity like no other medium, activity or cultural form of expression.  And while it’s critical to ensure that children “receive, through their basic school curriculum, a well rounded and balanced education that includes a comprehensive, sequential, quality music program,” it is as important that the education system and curriculum seek ways to speak to youth, to motivate, engage and relate to kids. To guide and form their thoughts as they mature and develop into productive members of society.

Music is not always used to its broadest potential within the education system.  Progressive and alternative music programs as well as community-based music initiatives, much like sports, can be key elements in keeping many youth in, and engaged in, school.   Here is where we as music educators and advocates for arts education can become more involved.  And this is where I would challenge the music industry to really step up to the plate.  To spearhead a music education and involvement initiative which has the drive, support and funding equal to the current sports initiatives.

For those of us who are music educators and advocates of music education and school-based music programs, this will undoubtedly involve some shifts in the way we approach music and music education.  It may involve a change in defining what kinds of music are acceptable and expected in a school-based music program. We would need to build a gateway for kids with an attraction to music and the arts that is more accessible than the current curriculum.  We must reach youth through forms of artistic and creative expression that appeal to the language they speak – communicating through hip-hop culture or techno, dance and other forms of contemporary youth music that they identify with.  And once we’ve brought these young people through that gateway, we’ve engaged them – which is half the battle.  In the longer term, we can bring many of these same kids into the larger music program with all its promise and options.

But it’s up to music educators and the music industry, not just the government, to step up to the plate and face this challenge.  And make no mistake, it will require us to think hard, think creatively, and make some changes in our own concepts and the way we deliver music education in Ontario.

http://www.guitarsnotguns.org/Canada.html