Before Steven Van Zandt’s glory days with Bruce Springsteen, going to school wasn’t high on his to-do list. Playing the guitar was. He was even expelled from his Jersey high school after refusing to cut his hair, although he later acquiesced to please his mom.
“I just couldn't wait for that bell to ring so I could get to band rehearsal,” he said.
“The one class I remember is a music class. We had music classes in those days. Everybody did, and a teacher was very, very highly evolved and let us bring in records to play, and then we'd talk about them, which was really quite unique at the time.”
After making his bones in music, Van Zandt spread his talents, wearing a variety of hats beyond his trademark bandana, including acting (starring as Silvio on “The Sopranos”), radio programmer and host, record label owner, and political and human rights activist.
Ironically, one of his biggest forays is in education, starting his Rock and Soul Forever Foundation and its flagship initiative, TeachRock, in 2007. The project develops tuition-free curriculums that integrate music into more than 70 core subjects.
Van Zandt says the “common ground of music” keeps the kids interested and enthusiastic, characteristics he didn’t remember from his schooling.
“The teacher accomplishes the main thing a teacher needs to accomplish, which is getting the kids' attention,” Van Zandt told WUSF’s “Florida Matters Live & Local” on Thursday.
Gene Simmons and the Holocaust
Among the offerings is a four-day course on Jewish heritage and the Holocaust, developed with Michael Igel, chair of Florida Commissioner of Education’s Task Force on Holocaust Education and chair emeritus of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.
The course was introduced at the museum during Holocaust Education Week in Florida, part of the statutory mandate in Florida to teach Holocaust education, Igel said.
The material examines Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust and traces how centuries of antisemitism and scapegoating escalated into Nazi persecuion.
Igel, a grandchild of three Holocaust survivors, says his early observations show “this stuff matters.”
“A student came up to me … [and] asked me, he goes, ‘How come you haven't done [frontman] Geddy Lee [Weintraub] and Rush?’ … That's an example of engagement. He was so into what we're doing that he wanted to know what the next one was.”
The four-day Holocaust program comes with slide presentations, art lessons, student journaling and, of course, music. It includes four acts with Jewish ties: Kiss and Gene Simmons, Leonard Cohen, the Grateful Dead and promoter Bill Graham, and Lawrence siblings Gracie and Clyde.
And it doesn’t sugarcoat. According to the course disclaimer, the lessons include real accounts of violence and loss during the Holocaust: "Some of what students read and hear may be difficult."
“These kind of subjects — especially this subject — can be obviously heavy and a bit depressing. Shouldn’t the music reflect that?” Van Zandt, 75, has been asked. “No, it’s quite the opposite. You want something up and positive and optimistic about learning.”
Then you introduce the content.
“But you start out with Gene Simmons with his tongue out,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said, laughing. “That’s the way you begin a lesson. You want to reach the kids. We have an intention here. It’s not just wasting an hour in school.”
Educators looking to engage will find a diverse and growing range of course topics: the cold war, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the New Deal, the science of sound, math and music, the climate crisis, language arts, activism, deindustrialization, 100 years of dance, and more.
All have music integration with likes of Aretha Franklin, Pete Seeger, Billie Eilish, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Common, Alice Cooper, Annie Lennox, Blondie, Chance the Rapper, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, DJ Kool Herc, Duke Ellington, Kendrick Lamar, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Pressley and others in most any pop genre one could think of.
Curriculums are developed for students in kindergarten to 12th grade.
Keeping the arts in education
Van Zandt has said he did set out to begin an educational foundation. Then politics pulled him in.
“It was the No Child Left Behind legislation,” he said.
The bipartisan measure, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, emphasized standardized testing and measurable academic performance, requiring schools to demonstrate yearly progress and holding them accountable for student test scores.
“That canceled all of the arts classes in public education, an unintended consequence, I'm sure,” he said. “But when the focus went to testing scores that had precipitously dropped, making people nervous, they decided to replace the arts with more testing or more math and science education.”
Van Zandt points out the numerous studies that show children who participate in some form of music education do better in core subjects.
“We realized we're not going to put instruments in kids' hands,” he continued. “Let's do this instead. Let’s teach all of the disciplines through music and keep the arts in the DNA of the public education system. And that was the main goal.”
Another goal is to reduce the dropout rate, especially in low-income neighborhoods. A 2019 Maryland study found that students facing both household poverty and attending high-poverty schools had just a 54% likelihood of graduating on time.
“I think we've created a class that that kids will remember,” he said. “Statistics show if a kid likes one single class or one single teacher, they will come to school."
“If they graduate high school, it's no guarantee but at least it gives them a shot at life. We want to be that class that brings them to school every day.”
This story was compiled from interviews by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live and Local."
