In Scotland we have become inured to idiotic statements from well paid public employees and politicians struggling to connect the family brain cell with their vocal cords. This produced another candidate for dunce of the decade last week.
In a live-streamed statement the Head of Education at East Ayrshire Council declared her opposition to schools music teaching by stating that she was ‘no [not] really seeing the point of a wean [child] knocking seven bells out of a glockenspiel’.
By The Editor
Linda McAulay-Griffiths earns £112,000 a year and compounded her deleterious rant by saying it would be better for pupils to be working with tools instead, and ‘we need to make sure we are maximising young people’s education’.
A media row ensued with Ms McAulay-Griffiths uttering the usual apologies and ‘out of context’ excuses, but the damage had been done.
Her comments met with due opprobrium led, appropriately, by Professor Jeffrey Sharkey, Head of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
He described the comments as ‘insulting’ and stressed that music education was not about ‘knocking seven bells’ out of anything. He added, ‘Multiple research studies show the value of music education in improving wellbeing and social inclusion, strengthening literacy, numeracy, memory and attention, and building creativity, teamwork, discipline, resilience and confidence.’
Award-winning percussionist Evelyn Glennie said Ms McAulay-Griffiths’ utterances were ‘short-sighted’. Calum Huggan, a percussion and workshop leader with the Benedetti Foundation charity, wrote: ‘To belittle the creative arts in this way is not just disrespectful, it’s dangerous.’
I think everyone in the piping and pipe band worlds can agree with these distinguished critics. Our state school piping and drumming tutors work hard for scant reward. Many jobs are only sustained with assistance from charities such as the Argyllshire Gathering Piping Trust and the Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust.
Local authority tutors know how fickle their situations can be. When budget cuts are needed, who’s first for the axe? We all know the answer to that. When we are struggling to maintain teachers of the national music in our state schools, Ms McAulay-Griffiths’ ill-judged comments are the last thing we need.
In her defence she said she had always been supportive of music education in her region, and it does indeed host the annual Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships (at the William McIlvanney Campus in Kilmarnock).
Hopefully she will attend next year. She should be invited to hand out the trophies. She would witness the camaraderie, and the satisfaction and pleasure that joint music-making can bring and all the benefits Professor Starkey mentions manifest. She would learn something from the youngsters and have a new respect for their tutors.
