by Peter C. Muir Ph.D. Dip.I.M.H.

© Peter Muir 2005
No part of this article may be reproduced without the consent of the author.

A remarkable initiative called the Hand-in-Hand program is taking place in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Primary age school children go into nursing homes on a regular basis throughout their elementary school years to sing songs with seniors. The focus is on interaction—students are encouraged to hold the seniors’ hands, look into their eyes while singing, and dance/move with them where appropriate. Wherever possible, the seniors are encouraged to join in with the singing—the songs chosen are mostly familiar older style popular songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby!” that are easy to sing.

The Hand-in-Hand program represents a revolution in music education. For the first time, the approach is basically not technical—playing the right notes and getting them in tune—but pro-social: reaching out into the community and using music to actually help people and strengthen community ties. This is a radical reorientation from the priorities of conventional music education.

The Hand-in-Hand program is the brainchild of Susan West, lecturer in music at the Australian National University (ANU). It is based on the life-work and philosophy of John Diamond M.D., the world’s leading authority on using music as a health modality, with whom Ms. West has personally studied for many years.

The scale of the program and its rapid growth are impressive. Since its inception in 1997, roughly 15,000 primary school children from 25 schools have taken part. And, as part of her work, Ms. West has trained ninety teachers to run their own Hand-in-Hand programs, which they now do in their own schools. Meanwhile, the program is attracting increasing attention from the educational establishment, delighted parents, and the general public. It has been the subject of numerous conference papers, a recent doctoral dissertation, media interviews, and newspaper articles. The film company Ronin Films has released a documentary about Ms. West’s work (Oh Beethoven, 1999), while another (The Singing Side) is currently being made.

A remarkable characteristic of the Hand-in-Hand program is its universality. All children are able to take part, regardless of whether they are viewed as strong musicians in the conventional sense, for it is an integral part of the Hand-in-Hand philosophy that we all have music in us, and that, in the right circumstances, we can all use that music to benefit others. The Hand-in-Hand program has therefore proved extremely successful in special education as well as in mainstream, empowering those with many different kinds of physical and mental challenges. It has in short benefited a broad cross-section of children of different backgrounds and abilities.

So, just what are the benefits of the Hand-in-Hand program and does it really have any advantages over traditional music education? The benefits are of three types: musical, social, and personal.

I’ll deal with the musical benefits first. Critics of the Hand-in-Hand program argue that, by prioritizing social issues over technical ones, the traditional standards of music education are being thrown to the lions. After all, if students are not made to sing the right notes with the correct tuning, they will inevitably sing the wrong ones out of tune. In fact, the reverse is true. Putting your attention onto the well-being of others encourages you to be unselfconscious about your music-making. This means that you will perform technically at your optimum. This is the flipside of the well-known fact that you rarely perform your best when you are self-conscious or nervous. There is in fact a basic paradox implicit in conventional music pedagogy: overemphasis on technique ultimately undermines technique because it encourages self-consciousness in performance. This sad fact is the main reason why most students lose interest in making music as they get older. The solution is the Hand-in-Hand approach which turns the whole problem around (I have written more on this elsewhere on this website).

The unselfconsciousness of the Hand-in-Hand approach has other important musical advantages. The British educationalist Susan J. Garber, who recently spent two years researching the Canberra Hand-in-Hand program, concluded in her doctoral thesis “The Hand-in-Hand Community Music Program—A Case Study” that long-term students involved in the program had remarkably little stage-fright when performing music and a far greater than usual sense of enthusiasm for making music throughout primary school years (usually, children become increasingly less interested in music-making throughout their school years and display correspondingly more stage-fright when they do). She also noted the students’ strong emotional response to music. (1) In addition to all this, learning many songs by heart as is required for music outreach develops the memory and enhances musical ear. Garber was particularly impressed that the children on the program were able to learn complex songs very quickly, that they were empathetic with a wide range of musical genres, and had considerable skill at singing in parts. (2) So the Hand-in-Hand program delivers important musical benefits without in any way comprising traditional standards. If anything, it adds to those standards.

Let me now discuss the social benefits of the Hand-in-Hand program. Clearly the Hand-in-Hand program inherently enhances community ties. This manifests in a number of ways. First, the schools in question, by reaching out into communities of ailing seniors, are obviously setting a positive example of compassionate behavior for their students that can be highly influential. Furthermore, when many of the schools in a whole town or city actively support this philosophy, it can help enhance the climate of an entire local culture.

Second, the Hand-in-Hand format naturally creates intergenerational bonds between the students and nursing home residents. This is particularly meaningful for the seniors who often feel lonely and socially isolated by their circumstances. But it is also important for the students who can benefit from the relationship with an older person, particularly in a society that increasingly tends to place barriers between different generations. Perhaps more surprisingly, the Hand-in-Hand experience creates strong friendships between students, as has been noted by Garber. (3)

Finally, to the question of personal benefits gained from the Hand-in-Hand program. Clearly the residents of the nursing homes greatly benefit for three reasons. First, the special atmosphere of a Hand-in-Hand outreach encourages the seniors to become actively involved. Their music-making and dancing acts a positive expressive outlet which is in itself highly therapeutic. Second, the presence of children so often brings out a positive response in the seniors. Third—and most important—the Hand-in-Hand format encourages the seniors to think outward. It is this outwardness, this thinking of others that has been defined by John Diamond M.D., the holistic medicine whose philosophy is the basis for Hand-in-Hand, as the basis of all health.

The students on the Hand-in-Hand program benefit just as much. Although the program can be used effectively to target students with specific emotional challenges—those with low self-esteem, for example, or autism tendencies—it has enormous potential benefits for all students. The key is to get the outwardness encouraged by Hand-in-Hand to spread from the specifics of the program to the students’ lives in general. This can be achieved quite easily over time. And when this happens, it enhances the students’ lives in profound ways. As Dr. Diamond has expressed it:

The amount of vitality, the amount of exuberance, enthusiasm that [the students] displayed in [their] music-making, was fantastic. If they can carry that through into life…the incidence of crime, delinquency and drugs for them has to go down….What they are being taught is a way of living, a way of living through giving. If they carry that through they are going to be completely different citizens. (4)

The nurturing of the altruistic attitude which lies at the heart of the Hand-in-Hand approach makes it unique as both an educational and health modality. In an age where the arts seem to have little relevance to society at large, and hence have been relegated in importance on academic curricula, the Hand-in-Hand program offers an entirely new educational perspective that draws on the inherent power of music as a source of personal and societal development. The Canberra Hand-in-Hand program represents, I hope, the future of music education.

References

(1) Susan J. Garber, “The Hand-in-Hand Community Music Program: A Case Study,” Ph.D. Dissertaion, Australian National University, 2004, 218.
(2) Susan J. Garber, personal communication to author, March 16, 2005.
(3) Garber, “The Hand-in-Hand Music Program,” 215.
(4) J. Diamond, interview, ABC Radio, Canberra, 2003. Quoted, Garber, op. cit., 291.