Opinion: No silver bullet to make every child a musician

One Friday after the last school bell, one of my brightest Year 7 students came into the music room and made to deposit her violin in the corner.

‘Aren't you going to practise this weekend, Klara?’ I asked lightly.

‘No,’ she said laughingly. ‘I don't want that noisy thing in my house!’

Her tone was unmistakably that of an older relative, for whose opinion she was momentarily a conduit. She grinned, pleased with herself, as children sometimes are when they copy an adult behaviour and feel very grown up.

I was extremely perturbed by this episode. I was an optimistic trainee teacher in the London Borough of Newham, where the celebrated ‘Every Child a Musician’ scheme provided instrumental tuition in the Western art music tradition to all primary school aged children. Additionally, in our school we were able to nominate children on free school meals such as Klara to benefit from the same. My more experienced colleague reminded me that children like Klara often share bedrooms and small living spaces with several other family members, and that many of our students’ parents worked – and therefore slept – at peculiar hours. The last thing such a parent needs is the screech of a bow drawn inexpertly across cheap strings.

Fast forward four years to 2021. A celebrated footballer has publicly stated that he wished he'd had the opportunity to learn an instrument in school. In the wake of Marcus Rashford's success in influencing the government provision of meals over the holidays, this feels like a silver bullet. Fervent believers in equal access to music education take up the call and seek to raise public support for the proposal. I too believe that every child should have this opportunity, however I do not believe that the provision of instruments and lessons alone will fulfil this worthy aim.

The obstacles facing our students from working-class and impoverished backgrounds are quite different from those of their middle-class counterparts. Similarly, the ability to engage with and enjoy learning a musical instrument requires much more than simply access to an instrument itself. Due to the lack of available domestic space for such students to practise, many are unable to do so at home.

One of the objections to my criticism of the simplistic scheme was that resistance in the home is simply ‘cultural’ and will be overcome once parents see the benefits for their children.

As a social anthropologist, culture and cultural change are the greatest concerns of my work and research, and all my experience suggests that simple exposure is not sufficient to effect a meaningful change in the short term. Moreover, it is simply unfair to insist that dislike of the noise of a novice instrumentalist is ‘cultural’, since this line of reasoning appears based on the assumption that working-class families do not already appreciate Western classical music and are insensitive to the possible benefits it might offer their child.

It is true that parental support and encouragement is one of the most important factors in a child's engagement with their studies, of any kind. However, while working-class guardians may have less energy to support their child in this way, this can also be true of more affluent families. If we are to include working-class families, we must avoid making assumptions and judgements about what they consider valuable.

I am not arguing that children should not be given access to instrumental music lessons in school. I am arguing that we need to fight for more than just the provision of instruments and lessons. If we want our students to be able to benefit from instrumental tuition, we must fight just as fiercely for the provision of practice spaces and staff paid to supervise practice outside the school day in every institution.

We must fight just as fiercely for better pay and conditions for all teachers, and for recognition that, with the exception of physical education colleagues, music staff are most likely to be running a club every lunchtime and every day after school without a proper break. We must fight for housing and credit reform, and for a living wage for every household. We must be adaptable and understanding. We must not imagine that our working-class students’ lives are just like our middle-class students’ lives with the exception of access to an instrument.