Music to Their Ears

Photograph by Kathy Richland

Two musicians started the Merit School of Music in Chicago to bring music education back into the lives of children, especially poor youngsters, after the local public schools curtailed many arts-education programs. Little did they expect that the school would expand the children’s horizons in many ways beyond their music lessons.

Since its founding in 1979, Merit has grown from a small conservatory program with nine teachers and 150 students into a school with a budget of $3.3-million and a faculty of 95 musicians who teach 1,000 students at the school.

Another 3,000 youngsters participate as part of 60 off-site programs at local public schools and community centers.

But the school is about more than music, says executive director Duffie Adelson. It also seeks to broaden the educational horizons of its student body, mostly youngsters from low-income families.

“By giving them intensive training in music, we eventually want to open the doors to college and college scholarships,” she says. A professional college counselor volunteers her services to the school’s students, helping them apply to college and obtain financial aid.

The school’s activities include an after-school “preparatory program” that offers music theory and group instrumental instruction for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and a Saturday conservatory program that offers more advanced instruction for fourth through twelfth graders.

Students can also take private lessons and go on monthly field trips to local concerts and other arts events.

Beyond training youngsters in the arts and college-preparatory skills, the school also hopes to nurture a generation of activists. In one class offered at the school, students are taught to become “advocates for the arts.” They learn how to write a press release, give a speech, and contact an elected official “to make their voices heard as youth consumers and participants in the arts,” Ms. Adelson says.

Here, several 4- and 5-year-olds in the school’s new early childhood program use cardboard practice violins to learn correct positioning and fingering skills because their hands are still too small for real instruments.