Okay y'all it's time to rant again.
I just found out that my high school alma mater cut the marching band program, and needless to say I am livid. My most popular post on this blog is about the importance of marching band, but I feel like I need to expand on it; this time, from the perspective of an adult who’s long out of school, watching the real-time crumble of the very thing that brought me to where I am now.
When I was first begrudgingly pushed into marching by my director, I was a completely different person: skittish of my own shadow, chronically out-of-place, and cripplingly shy. I didn’t have the constitution for sports, and whatever other activities I found myself drawn to either couldn’t break through my hesitant demeanor or had no place for the strange personality they found on the other side.
But I immediately belonged in marching band. They didn’t mind my reserved nature, and strangeness was something they celebrated. Over the course of a single marching season, I got into good physical shape, dramatically improved my musicality, made more friends than I’d ever had… and most importantly, developed a still-quiet but genuine and unwavering confidence.
I found myself in marching band. The acceptance and fellowship it offered allowed me to learn who I was, and I brought that into every other aspect of my life. It gave me the courage to continue branching out to find other things I loved, the social skills to finally forge lasting connections with others, the opportunity to discover my own leadership style, and the assuredness to trust myself in walking my own path.
And if you’re not the type to be convinced by waxing poetic about intangible concepts, maybe you’ll be convinced by the direct impact marching had on my future career. I went into writing, and even well-meaning family members told me not to focus so much on marching band when it didn’t have any relation to the type of work I was pursuing. At least until the local newspaper hired me for high school practicum because they wanted me to write about band. In turn, that led to a performing arts beat job in college, which then led to an internship with Halftime Magazine: writing (about the marching arts!) on a national level at 19 years old. Marching band jump-started a completely unrelated career with opportunities that I wouldn’t have otherwise had, and that’s not even taking into account the passion and community that gave me such an important thing to write about in the first place.
I acknowledge that my life right now is the product of many intersecting circumstances, but it’s an undeniable reality that I would not be who I am without marching band.
That’s why it kills me to see this happening. It’s not just my old high school cutting the marching band. The little drum corps that I joined one summer folded in its first season due to a lack of funding or support from much of anywhere. The second college I attended removed the marching band from the pregame show a couple years ago, and the last time I went to an alumni event there, they were constantly cutting the band off during pep tunes in favor of playing Top 40 songs on the loudspeaker.
Seemingly more than ever, the marching arts are being sidelined and it pisses me off.
It’s been proven, over and over, for decades upon decades, that music education is invaluable to kids’ development and success. Schools with access to music education have an average attendance rate of 93.3%, compared to 84.9% in schools without it; and music students have an estimated 90.2% high school graduation rate compared to 72.9% of non-music students. Band members trend 87.6% to be in the top ten percent of their graduating class, and 94.9% of valedictorians and salutatorians participate in music education. Music students in America attend college at a rate of 86.4% — the highest rate of any discipline — and have a collegiate graduation rate of 88.4% compared to the national graduation rate of 60.4%. Band members have the lowest levels of current/lifelong use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs of any group. They have higher rates of brain development, critical thinking skills, motor capacities, and camaraderie; while having lower rates of bullying, racism, and disciplinary infractions. [x] [x] [x]
Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that sports are life-changing for kids. We all know that. There are umpteen billion studies and marketing campaigns and feel-good movies about how sports can turn someone’s life around. But the arts do the exact same thing, not just for kids who don’t have athletic inclinations, but for all kids who benefit from the cognitive, social, and cultural advantages that music introduces to their lives.
When you bend over backwards to continue funding athletics but cut arts programs without a second thought, what you’re really doing is looking at a group of kids — intelligent, talented, promising kids — and telling them that their futures are less important than someone else’s. You’re telling them that their passions and pursuits are inconsequential. You’re ripping potentially life-changing opportunities from them because of arbitrary and completely false narratives that the arts somehow have less impact than athletics, just because they don't bring in as much money and aren't as glorified and exciting on TV.
Funding is an almost universal issue for public schools, and I know it’s complicated to navigate. But I see no reason why budget cuts can’t be split up and applied equally to all programs, giving all students the opportunity to learn how to fundraise, work together in the face of setbacks, and come up with creative solutions to make their collective dreams a reality. I will never understand the decision to instead single out particular groups of kids, and I cannot fathom the sort of closed-minded, backwards thinking that causes arts programs to be the first to go.
In more ways than one, marching band took a timid, directionless wallflower and catapulted her into a confident, successful, and fulfilling adulthood; and I will defend music education for as long as it takes to ensure that the generations who come after me get that same chance.