Message in ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ Was Music to His Ears

If we columnists are supposed to write about things that move us, then I’m required to say something about “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” I saw it Monday night, began misting up before the butter on my popcorn disappeared and never really got it back together. I was either having a bad hormone day, or this movie tapped into a major vein.

I think it’s the latter, and I predict “Opus” will attain “classic” status, although, as my editor points out, I’ve been wrong before.

The movie delved into a number of life’s big-ticket challenges, but the two themes that most resonated with me were the power of music in people’s lives and the power of skilled teachers to influence students.

It’s not unlike the impact that similar sports-related movies had on me (“Hoosiers” being the most obvious example), but the difference is that nobody ever talks about eliminating school sports programs. Nor should they.

People do talk, however, about eliminating certain music and other arts programs in schools. Not only do they talk about it; they do it.

It’s hard to come away from this movie and not lament that.

If sports participation converts otherwise luckless or talent-less students into contributing members of society, surely the arts do the same. If sports gives some young people a reason to be excited about the future, so do the arts. If sports enhances society’s aesthetics by allowing us to watch skilled people perform, so do the arts.

And yet, the arts somehow degenerated into a “frill” in too many school districts around the country. Learning to read was deemed essential; lifting people’s spirits was not.

Viola Brelje, who lives in Orange, doesn’t want you to know how old she is, but she’s been teaching piano for 40 years. She has seen the enjoyment it gives her students and has had that enjoyment returned when former students come back to visit.

She’s been exasperated over the years, both by schools that cut music programs and by parents who don’t support their child’s involvement. “It is frustrating for me as a teacher because parents many times feel if they give their child lessons, that’s all that’s necessary,” she says. “They pay for the lessons, drop them off and come to a recital once a year. But if they don’t really love music and enjoy it with their children, those kids aren’t going to go very far.”

Relegating music to secondary status on the grounds that not as many students participate seems as terrible as denying rights to minority members in society. Tyranny of the majority, we call it. Like human rights, we ought to treat music as a sacred trust to pass along to future generations.

Jim Gilliam manages the Imagination Celebration, a 15-day festival of the arts sponsored by the Orange County Department of Education. He’s also a musician and a former classroom teacher who has watched too many arts programs fade into oblivion, like distant notes.

“We’ve seen it, starting with Proposition 13, all the way up to this time,” he says. “The cuts have been constant, year after year, for arts programming in the schools.”

That may be changing, because academic studies are showing that music does more than kill an hour after school for mediocre tuba players. Gilliam cites an ongoing study at UC Irvine that has linked a mother singing to her preschool child with that child’s increased aptitude in science and math.

“In other words, it develops the cognitive skills that increase other disciplines,” Gilliam says. “So, you’ve got the correlation that music isn’t just for music’s sake. Let’s validate music for the quality that it has in and of itself, but also for the fact it translates into other scholastic areas.”

All well and good, and maybe music directors will have to show up at school board meetings armed with studies and test results when they argue for continuing arts programs.

I wish that weren’t necessary. I wish every parent and board member and principal had a deep-down, gut-level reverence for music, for what Gilliam calls its “power to transform people’s lives.”

I wish they could get the same kick I did from “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and wonder why the innocuous rock song, “Louie, Louie,” which I’ve heard hundreds of times on the radio, made me get all weepy when it was used in the movie.

I wish I could explain why it did. Then again, maybe I just want to feel it.

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.