Peter Yarrow and Bernie Williams talk about need for music education at Newsmaker

Folk legend Peter Yarrow and former New York Yankees centerfielder Bernie Williams joined a May 19 Club Newsmaker panel to talk about the need for music education in elementary andf secondary schools.

A survey found 77 percent of teachers and 64 percent of parents saying that music is very important, and more than three-quarters of teachers saying that music positively affects students who take music education, said Peter Grunwald, an education researcher and president of Grunwald Associates LLC.

“What struck us about the findings, overall, is that the teachers and parents consistently told us that music is an essential part of learning, not just an extracurricular activity that could be cut when times get tough,” Grunwald said.

Most of the parents and teachers who participated in the survey were largely unaware that music education is a core subject, and that there are federal financial sources to support such programs, he said.

In conjunction with Engaging Schools (formerly Educators for Social Responsibility), a nonprofit organization that collaborates with middle and high schools, Yarrow created a curriculum that is now being used in 22,000 schools across the United States, and is also required curriculum in Israel, Jordan, Hong Kong, Croatia, and soon Japan, “where the suicide rate is double what it is here,” he said.

“There was so much mean-spiritedness among the kids, with bullying, ridicule and injury, leading to depression and growth in suicides, then I realized what we need in the schools is music, to create a community of love and respect,” Yarrow said.