Whatever happened to Row, Row, Row your Boat?

Recently, as I was driving my son to school, we discussed the schedule for the rest of the week & he mentioned their music class would be having a sing-along that day. “You don’t like those much, do you?” I asked. “No.” “Yeah, the songs are so weird!” I said. Then he said, “I can’t imagine what would drive someone to write songs so stupid!” I laughed, OH, how I laughed. My boy for sure. Well, it’s true what he says.

I’ve been to my share of school concerts &, yes, the songs are very stupid. I can’t really describe the genre, except that it is too involved with historical or political or nutritional storytelling to show proper respect to the power of rhyme. Also, & maybe this is just this specific teacher, but there is a LOT in the way of hand motions. If they sing about a wave, they have to move their hands in a wave. If they sing about a bunny, they have to hop. If the bunny eats a carrot, they have to all lean to the same side at the same time, hold up one hand, & pantomime eating a carrot. All things in moderation is not applied here. Given the attention span of your average grade school kid combined with the mathematical reality that the more kids there are who are supposed to do the same thing at one time, the less likely they are to achieve it, plus the sketchy singing skills of most kids these age even when they’re not having to remember to hop, results in a full 2 hours of rather spastic twitchings & flailings reminiscent of drunken hula dancers. It’s distressing to watch.

I still recall, far too vividly, Reid’s first school concert. The cafeteria was overfull, & we ended up standing by the wall about 2/3 of the way back, just under a speaker. Yes, a speaker. The kindergartners trooped up on stage, giggling & being shy. And they began to sing. Hypothetically. Their mouths were moving. Know what I heard? I heard a professional children’s choir, accompanied by several well-played instruments. A. Professional. Children’s. Choir. At high volume.

Call me old fashioned but I would have walked away from that school greatly more satisfied if I’d seen various breathy waifs bleating off key to some ineptly played piano music. They’re kids. With the rare exception of some young prodigies, we’re not there expecting to hear actual good singing. That is not the point. The point is to give the kids some stage time & make them feel their efforts are worth something. If I were a kid who had to spend 3 periods a week learning lame songs, then get up onstage & have my squawky but willing childish voice drowned out by a recording of kids who spend their spare time ironing their audition suits for the new production of Little Orphan Annie, I’d leave there pretty dammed demoralized. Even a little kid can ask, what’s the point? And adults can not only ask what the point is, they can go home & write about it to other parents & to the school.

My son’s school markets itself as “arts rich.” That’s lovely & I like the sound if it. The problem is I’m not sure how impressed I really am with the art portion. I know in one grade, won’t say which one here, another parent witnessed a teacher lining up all the portrait drawings & adding perspective & other small nuances. Gee, no wonder our kids’ drawings were so impressive on open house night! Reid, now a 4^th grader, was eligible to start the band this year. I nixed it. He has taken a few fiddle lessons on his own & practices randomly. The 5^th grade class I saw perform 2 years ago played a violin piece. It had 3 notes. THREE. This after 2 solid years of study. Reid can play 2 scales well, & he learned that in about a month. That would be 15 notes. I know it must be hard to teach violin to kids, but I don’t see how 2 years of showing up to learn 3 notes is ever going to inspire one of those “they gave me a chance when all I had was my crippled mom, half a dog, & slept in a dumpster & now I’m the young Yo-yo Ma” stories.

I’ll tell you something – overall, I have a really hard time judging how good my son’s school is. The problem is my perspective doesn’t allow that level of nuance. There was just one school where I grew up. We had the pedophile lesbian grade school gym teacher, the minister/guidance counselor, the 3^rd grade teacher who made us sing hymns each morning yet beat kids in class, the cliché home-ec teacher married to the shop teacher. On the bus & the playground, you were on your own. Our bus driver was a 300 lb. male farmer version of Helen Keller in worn jeans, a Red Man cap, & a crewcut. His awareness, such as it was, was forward. Utterly. Once you passed his impassive wide back in stretched & faded cotton, you entered Lord of the Flies wrapped in Bluebird yellow. In my son’s classroom, they have magic markers in all the colors of the rainbow. I mean…they must have at least 10 colors in there! And they’re allowed to have water bottles at their desks!!! My god. Once I found out they heated the building in winter, I was sold. So when I fall into conversation with another parent & they ask how I like Adams, I say, I’m not as pleased as I’d like to be, but it’s hard for me to say.  I don’t have anything to compare it to.

I will say, now that we’re in the 5^th year at this school, I do feel absolutely justified griping about the music program. Because Adams is supposed to an arts rich school. If would be different if they were positioning themselves as a math school, but music is of the arts, yet I don’t see them doing it at all well. Do you know, at the last concert, the teacher went on about how someone had made a donation, allowing them to add another instrument to their studies. And then each kid picked up a tube which they whacked against the other hand to make a tone. In a pattern, you see, with the rest of the notes. And I’m thinking, if they’re going to call this an instrument, why not just collect empty bottles, fill them with varying amounts of water, & make a jug band? Same thing. Each kid would have 1 or 2 notes, & heck, you can get all the materials from your neighbors’ garbage cans on recycling night. Take that, pathetic school budget!

I don’t have any bright ideas here. I suspect that when I go to these concerts, I’m not seeing the full range of kids. I bet that a fair number of kids get more focused training in the form of private lessons. That’s the case with Reid. So the cream has already been skimmed off, leaving the kids who don’t have the time/talent/attention/discipline/opportunity to do more than whack a tube.  But shouldn’t our schools be giving truly worthwhile experiences to all the kids?