Secondary School Teachers to Convene at Pitt For "Voices Across Time" Institute

PITTSBURGH—High school teachers from across the country will gather at the University of Pittsburgh July 12-Aug. 13 to explore how music can be utilized to teach American history to our nation's young people. The five-week institute, "Voices Across Time: American History Through Song," is hosted by Pitt's Center for American Music and has attracted 25 participants from as far away as Alaska.

The teachers represent a broad cross-section of school locations, ages, and years of experience in the classroom. Assisted by a faculty of national historians, musicologists, and education specialists, the teachers will learn how the music and popular songs of particular eras in history can broaden and enhance a student's understanding of the people who lived the events, as well as the ethnic, political, and socioeconomic diversity of those eras.

"The sound of history is missing from our classrooms," says institute codirector and Pitt Professor Deane Root, director of the center and chair of Pitt's music department. "Over the years, songs have allowed everyday people to voice their attitudes, opinions, or beliefs. Music provides a very real soundtrack to events throughout history."

According to Root, studies have shown that music helps a student pay attention, retain information, and perform better on standardized tests. In a 1999 pilot project, teachers who used a "Voices Across Time" resource guide to integrate music into their social studies or American history curriculum reported that students who had been struggling beforehand were making significant progress in class. Students, for example, could listen to the spiritual "Go Down, Moses" to help them better understand slavery. They may hear Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" as a representation of the American populist movement of the mid-20th century. And John Lennon's "Imagine" could help them explore the idealism of the 1960s.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the summer teaching institute is one of 29 projects designated by the NEH as "We the People" projects, designed to explore significant issues in U.S. history and culture for teachers and the general public.

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