'Perfect Pitch' project targets six primary schools

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

The benefits of music to students were touted at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel, Waterloo Road, yesterday at the launch of 'Music - Perfect Pitch for a Sound Education'.

Six primary schools across the island - John Rollins, Success and Bickerstheth in St James, Duhaney Park and Seward in St Andrew, Central Branch in Kingston and McIntosh Memorial in Manchester - will participate in this initial stage of the programme, an initiative of First Global Bank and the Ministry of Education.

In connecting music with education, "the programme will focus on students in grade 3 ... . The intention is for them to realise the benefits of the programme before sitting the Grade Four Literacy Test. The students will be taught a curriculum with the focus on using music as the main tool to drive integration and to teach literacy and numeracy skills in particular".

Appropriately, there was music at the launch, an all-male ensemble from Duhaney Park Primary getting a standing ovation and Alaine relating the effect of classical piano training on her math grades before settling behind a keyboard to sing and play. Fae Ellington added her touch of song, folk style, about using a coconut brush, teasing a 'city boy' in the audience about his ignorance of the 'country' contraption.

Close monitoring

Maureen Hayden-Carter, president of First Global Bank, explained that the participating schools were chosen from the parishes First Global operates in. "This will give our staff the opportunity to visit the schools and encourage the students. We have purchased instruments for each of these schools ... . We will also ensure that the teachers who will be interacting with these students

are adequately trained in music and delivering the curriculum using music," Hayden-Carter said.

There is media support from the RJR Communications Group, senior marketing coordinator Anika Smith said, adding that the programme will be promoted islandwide via TVJ, RJR 94 and FAME.

Assistant Chief Education Officer Dr Mary Campbell pointed to the intersection of 'Music - Perfect Pitch for a Sound Education' and the Revised Primary Curriculum (RPC).

"Over 10 years ago, when the RPC was being developed, all of us as developers of the curriculum were excited as we felt it would be delivered in a manner that would ignite sparks in the children in every nook and cranny of Jamaica. Essentially, what was different about this curriculum was the fact that the performing arts, in particular music, would be the engine for its delivery," she said. First Global will now provide the instruments required to deliver the RPC.

Before Alaine sang, musician Noel Dexter reflected briefly on 45 years of teaching music from the primary to tertiary levels and the late Professor Rex Nettleford's emphasis on the importance of the arts.