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Stick Time: Would You Prefer the “Cafetorium”?

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Let’s play “What If?”
 
You’re a high school choir director in a small mid-western town, striving daily with limited resources to provide the best possible choral education for your students.  Your school performance space is – to put it mildly – an acoustical disaster.  But wait!  The church just down the block has beautiful ringing resonance, a balcony, and a pipe organ!
 
Which would YOU choose for the concert?  (That’s a “well, DUH !” moment, kids.)
 
Thus it was for a young colleague who phoned a few days ago.  The only problem is that his administration forbade him from taking the choir to perform in the church building, citing unfounded fears of philosophical influence if not actual conversion.  Apparently, the boss felt “uncomfortable” in the church and projected that personal discomfiture upon his professional decision making.  So, this new teacher is relegated to performing Renaissance literature in the “cafetorium.”
 
The American Choral Directors Association has long held that the performance of sacred music is vital to the choral art, and we have shared that statement here on numerous occasions.
 
Additionally, the very first of the 12 stated purposes of this Association is “To foster and promote choral singing which will provide artistic, cultural, and spiritual experiences for the participants.”  The Association fully supports the performance of appropriate choral literature in the very best possible concert venue available.  To offer our choirs anything less than the finest local performance spaces is irresponsible to the art and to our students.
 
Over the past half-century, ACDA has staged countless hundreds of conferences on the state, divisional and national level, with choirs competing fiercely to earn a coveted performance invitation.  Virtually every one of those events has featured choral performances in a house of worship.  So far, one has not heard of any proselytizing or coerced conversions.
 
That said, here is an excerpt from the concert by the Eastview High School Concert Choir held in St. Ambrose Cathedral (Des, Moines, Iowa) during the 2014 North Central Division Conference.  A public high school choir singing in a church, yet all seems to go well.
 
To quote Billy Sunday, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you an automobile.”
 
 

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Comments

  1. These situations cry out for community activism. With goodwill and without involving the high school choir director, a committee from the church should spread the word to every congregation, community organization, and media outlet in the area, explaining that their church was offered for use as a concert hall, and was rejected by the school administration.  The organizations should ask their members to make calls and appearances before the school board, complaining politely about this anti-educational policy being enacted in their names and with their tax dollars.  Many parents would speak out on this too, once they hear the news (from the media or church members, not from their students and the choir director).  A call to the right news organization could easily make this a national story. 
     
    Have our professional organizations like ACDA and MENC gotten involved in situations like this?  Have there been past public school music performances in churches, and if so, is there a list?  Is there a synopsis, book, or graduate thesis on related law and court decisions?   An information packet to show these precedents (if they exist) might be helpful in showing school boards and administrators that they are on solid legal ground and have community support.  
     
    Lastly, in the event that such non-religious cooperation between school and church results in a lawsuit, there are at least two law firms that take selected cases of this type pro bono. 

  2. The lack of thought that goes into knee-jerk reactions such as this administrator who forbade a high school choir from singing in a church because of some perceived fear that they would attempt to “convert” the young people in question, etc., begs an ultimate question:  are not schools, themselves, grounds for indoctrination?  Is not education, after all, a form of indoctrination?  Yet, that’s fine.  Parents may question the ultimate results, but cannot truly complain about the process of teaching, except in individual cases.  But no educator of my experience would consider school a source of indoctrination.  Yet again, look at what and how we learn in history, for example; or the question of evolution vs. “creationism.”  The administrator clearly has NO clue; and as a consequence, HIS personal viewpoint is what is at the decision, not one of real consequence and thought.  Sadly, should the choral director challenge that, he/she is likely to lose his/her job.  What this administrator has insured, yet again, is that what the young people learn from school about the world is to fear the world.  This administrator is no more and no less an indoctrinator than any priest, rabbi, or minister – and at least, in the last three instances, they would know exactly where they’re coming from, intellectually, morally, spiritually – but what about this administrator?  Other than the fact he/she was appointed to this position, what does anyone know about his/her standards – except he/she is terrified?

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