Are YOU or your children in a schola?

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Conflict with a night class. Night classes are the devil. Otherwise I would join. I love schola.
 
I am imagining a cowboy western musical heritage, but thats Hollywood for you. Bonanza!
 
I guess people forget or maybe don’t realize that there are many parishes in the US without any music directors or paid musicians and rely solely on the volunteer that is brave enough to step up in front of the congregation each Mass, or they go without music that Mass. Or the priest will choose a song or two to be sung at the beginning of Mass and the end that’s it. If you are blessed to be in a parish with any true music program, even if it isn’t the type of music you want, say thanksgiving prayers. You are blessed.

It’s not just music, but people seem to not realize that many Catholics live in areas where you can’t just pick which parish you attend and switch when a problem occurs. Many of us are in areas where it is an hour or more between parishes, and the priest cover three or more parishes. Latin Mass is nonexistent in many areas. You don’t have a wide variety of choices that you can just go out and find what you prefer. You have to go to Mass simply for the purpose of worshiping God.
 
I’m in a Latin Schola and I’m absolutely willing to make the time commitment for rehearsals. Then again, I’m a seminarian, so the time commitment for our seminary Schola isn’t really a big issue.

I think if I were working in the secular world and there was a Schola near me accepting people, I would try and join, despite the time commitment. Music is very important to me.
 
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As for where am I and my children during his rehearsals, I couldn’t tell you. I assure you though that I cannot afford nearly $150 an hour, and I can’t say that I know anyone who can. Even if my children begged to join, if it was even half of that price I would HAVE to say no. $150 a month would really be pushing it. I have a feeling that is the case for the majority of parents and most likely contributes to small attendances. In our area, $150 is more than what parents pay for an entire sports season, and private music lessons are $50-80 an hour. Group or choral lessons run $25-50 a month. These prices still prevent most parents from being able to afford to send their children to activities without scholarships.

Most families have their children join public school activities if they are desired because the price is right. They can join band or choir, drama club, sports teams, etc and pay little to nothing for their participation.
 
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I can’t read music, but I have a very good ear. I can usually learn a new Gregorian Chant by listening to it several times. I am in a small choir for the Saturday vigil Mass and, yes, we do Gregorian Chant. It really isn’t that hard.
 
This is not representative of any of the public school systems I have either worked in or sent my children to. I don’t teach music, but I see what the students are learning. They do a very wide variety of music, from classical to jazz to folk to hip hop and anything else you can think of. The teachers do dancing, teach how to read music, have them sing. The fifth graders at my current school write songs and perform them. They have exercises in rhythm, learn the basics of playing instruments, do patriotic concerts, Christmas programs, and much much more. I am sorry your area is lacking.
 
Your public school music program experience doesn’t fit our local public schools or any of the music programs I came through. As a matter of fact, the national trend in education is to restore music programs because studies have shown the tremendous educational benefits of having those programs in schools.

I’m sorry your public school music programs are suffering, but I don’t think your experience is representative of the entire country.
 
Hi, I am a university-level music student.
This is something that my friends would do at the collegium musicum, but I was at the Chamber Choir. While the gregorian chant is a basis for basically all Latin songs I have done (probably at least 100 songs), but the contemporary Latin pieces are different from the gregorian chants in entirety- I am saying this in the language forms (in some aspects), formats of songs (there are no repeating harmonies, melodies, etc.), and other things we see in chants.
But I enjoy singing very much. I can’t live without it. I have been a music student since high school- therefore, 7 years ago. I jumped into the musical basics and linguistics in university and that led me to say…“Hey! I like this! I want to study music as my minor.” And that’s what I did. My last step would be learning how to read the gregorian notes. My friends at collegium musicum (Latin for “college of musicians”) know how to do this…so I am jealous xD
 
The fees for director and accompanist (if needed) would be divided among all who participate, and probably (hopefully!) the parish would chip in most of the expense.

No one would have to pay $150.00 hour. I pay $65.00/hour for my organ lessons.
 
Thanks. It’s not good at all. The private schools and home-school co-ops are huge.
 
I agree, it’s not representative of the entire country, but the State of Illinois is also not representative of the entire country. We are at the bottom of the heap when it comes to state debt!

Why don’t we move? Elderly parents, and other relatives that are dear to us. We’ve talked about it, believe me, and Illinois is bleeding population–last year, over 3000 people moved away from our city. Main reasons cited for moving are bad public schools and high crime, along with high property taxes. 😦

And what’s really sad is that Illinois is celebrating its Bicentennial. It should be the happiest state in the union!
 
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I can understand why!

I am actually planning to homeschool after this school year myself. We are moving and will no longer need my income, so it just seems natural to transition to homeschooling.
 
I understand now. It still would be too steep for many families but my hope would be the parish would sponsor some as well.
 
Enjoy! The time with your children goes by so fast, and home-schooling gives you more time with them.

If we had moved to our current city at this time, we would probably be home-schooling. Even the private schools are biased one way or another when it comes to things like politics. I prefer to have all the points of view presented and analyzed, rather than told that “This is the way we should think.” And when it comes to music…well, I did a lot of supplementing what my kids learned in their private schoo.
 
Thanks! I’m nervous. I have taught either as a substitute or kindergarten go many years, but the two school age are high school. The two babies will be starting way before I’m ready though. They grow up so fast!
 
Maybe the “Hip Hop Program” was implemented because it is a legitimate genre of music with a history that is relevant to our nation’s musical and cultural history?
 
I would be willing to go along with this theory except that other genres of music were NOT included in the curricula, e.g., classical, folk, country/western, sacred, chant, opera, etc.

Also, we’re talking about ELEMENTARY school, not high school. Children need to learn basic music theory that applies to ALL musical genres, and they need to be exposed to many genres of music, not specialize in one genre of music.

Although I see the value of including subjects that are relevant to students, an education should include subjects that the students know little or nothing about, such as “reading music”, so that they will become educated citizens. Learning more about something that you already know a lot about isn’t going to enlarge the mind and increase knowledge of the world.

Finally, I don’t think that hip-hop is very “inclusive,” and I think that a balance is badly needed in a school system where a large percentage of the children come from poor homes with one or less parent and neighborhoods where violent crime is a daily, even hourly occurrence, gangs control the hood and recruit even young children, and over 65% of the males do not graduate from high school.

A few weeks ago, our public school testing results were released, and in our city, only thirteen percent (13%) of the students achieved the minimum reading and math standards. Obviously our school system is not working. I’m not saying that hip hop is the cause, but it definitely is not improving the results of the tests. We have the lowest scores in the entire state of Illinois.

I know that the music teachers are frustrated with the mandate to “teach relevant music.” I know many of these teachers, and basically, they go along with it because, like the rest of us, they need to earn a living. So sad.
 
I’m curious about how you know from one performance of one piece that a school isn’t teaching any genre of music other than hiphop. Referring to a “hiphop program” indicates a program outside of the regular curriculum, so I would assume that this is a club or a program beyond the regular music class. The actual musical skills elementary students need to master are varied vocal techniques and part independence, the ability to keep a beat, the ability to identify, retain, and develop multiple melodic and rhythmic patterns on multiple instruments, the ability to read standardized notation, and the ability to connect music to other art forms, history, and culture. All of these goals can be accomplished using repertoire from the hiphop genre. There is no way that an elementary student could begin to master every mainstream genre of music. There are people who spend their entire lives studying Bach’s cantatas alone. There is a plethora of evidence and research that shows that children are engaged and retain information better when they recognize the relevance of the material they are learning. This is the same in every subject, not just music. High quality music teachers don’t have to be “mandated” to recognize the importance of relevance in teaching music. They realize that they have six years to instill a love of learning music and that once sixth grade hits and the students no longer have to take music, they will lose the vast majority of their students if they don’t acknowledge the importance of relevance. You can’t teach students who aren’t there. Of course, high quality teachers probably aren’t breaking down the door to teach in a school district that is in a gang-controlled neighborhood with the lowest test scores in the state.
 
I know because I know the music teachers in the public schools. I have several friends who are or were (retired) music teachers in our public school system.

I also know because for the last ten years, I have chaired our city’s music scholarship competition, and I talk to the teachers and the parents. I have personally met with music teachers from the public schools and talked with them about the competition, and they have told me what their music curriculum consists of. And I talk to the students when I do get public school students in the competition, and they tell me that their musical education is obtained through private lessons, not school

I know from our local news reports (newspapers, radio, and television) that only in the last few years has band been restored to our public schools. There is still no orchestra program.

The meeting I referred to was a report on the state of the arts in our public schools (that’s why I attended the meeting, even though I’m not a school teacher–I am interested because of my position with the scholarship competition)… Written information was presented about the curricula in the schools.

It is getting better ,because as you and others know, musical training helps students develop critical thinking skills. There have been studies demonstrating that musical training helps a student with math skills, although I must say it never helped me with math. Oh, well–I guess I’m an outlier. 🙂 The problem is money–when something is cut, it WILL be music because it’s more important for the students to learn to read words than music. One reason the hip hop program was created was so that they classrooms could use current popular music instead of buying books and supplemental material, and maintaining a keyboard. Also, people who weren’t music teachers could teach it, because all they had to do was turn on the music and let the students dance along. That’s what STUDENTS told me–there was no teaching, just listening and dancing.

I have lived in my city most of my life and have been involved in many ways. I know what’s going on, especially in the music world here.
 
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