Two assassination attempts on a former president. Exploding beepers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon. Bombs threats in Springfield, OH. Lockdowns right here in our local schools.

It feels like the world is falling apart.

And everybody’s got a solution, right? Most have placed their faith in the upcoming election here in the US, the so-called leader of the free world. Just put the right people in power – whoever you think they are – and all our problems will fade away.

With all due respect to you dedicated partisans out there, I don’t believe it for a minute. Maybe I’ve just lived too long. Maybe I’ve studied too much history. But it seems to me that since time in memoriam, despite countless fluctuations in power and leadership – the waxing and waning of this party or that  – the world has ever been thus.

So I think it’s time to try something new. Something radical. Something completely revolutionary.

My friends, the time has come for Mandatory Choral Singing.

I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t want to hear it! Don’t even start with the “I can’t carry a tune in a bucket” business. This is choral singing we’re talking about. You don’t have to be Pavarotti! For those who truly are tone deaf, percussion instruments can be provided.

In my imaginary Mandatory Choir, everybody has something to contribute, because everybody has some degree of musicality. Okay, maybe not everybody – but those who don’t are few and far between. And typically sociopaths.

“The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,” wrote Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. “The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.”

And for the rest of us, let there be mandatory choral singing!

Seriously, we could start with the public schools. We could begin every school day, in every classroom, of every grade, with choir practice. What better way to start each day than with group singing? The birds do it, and look how efficient, functional, and happy they seem! Also, they’re survivors. As direct descendants of the dinosaurs, they’ve got to be doing something right. I can’t prove it’s morning singing, but can you prove it’s not? I don’t think so.

I can hear the pushback now: “But Margaret, public schools can’t just force kids to sing in choirs!”

Well, why not? We force children to learn reading and writing and arithmetic. We make them take science and social studies and PE. Why not mandate choral singing?

“Because those things – math, reading, etc. – are necessary for living and working in the modern world,” you might respond. “Choral singing is not.”

At which point, I’d make my case. I would start with this passage from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery:

“Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion…

“Every time, it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.”

This! Every word of this! Nobody need ever write about the power of choral singing again, because Barbery has said it so perfectly.

But that’s just the perspective of someone listening to a choir. I contend that people must actually sing in a choir if my world-changing vision is to be realized!

And yes, I’m being purposely grandiose and silly here, for funsies, but do hear me out. This is a serious proposal, and I’ve got science to back me up.

According to the Sing Up Foundation, there’s now a wealth of research proving the benefits of singing on health and wellbeing across a lifespan. The data suggests that those benefits are wide-ranging and holistic – psychological, physiological, behavioral, and social. You can read all about it at www.signupfoundation.org

Choral singing is particularly good for our purposes here, because it improves social bonding and cohesion. Singing, itself, is “an intimate activity,” and when we share it with others, it helps strengthen bonds, says the Sing Up Foundation. Group singing enhances empathy and generates feelings of social inclusion, the organization says.

As a veteran choral singer and current second soprano in the chancel choir at First Presbyterian Church, I can only say… Duh. I’ve been a chorister all my life and these “scientific findings” are not news to me. They’re just reality. Try singing in a choir with somebody whose politics you hate and continuing to harbor ill will toward that person. Go ahead. I dare you! It’s literally impossible.

So back to the mandatory choral singing in public schools thing…

My scenario would play out like this: By the time kids went off to college and/or entered the workforce, they’d be well-steeped in choir culture – its spirit and ethos – and choral singing would become an optional activity. But you know what? I’ll bet lots of people would choose to continue. People don’t stop exercising just because they no longer have to take PE, right? Some things are just too good – and too good for you – to give up!

There would be university and community choirs to join. (There already are!) Companies and corporations could “strongly encourage” morning choral singing for their employees if they wanted to  – it would surely increase job satisfaction and productivity – but, again, the government would be out of it by that point.

Hey, I’m not some authoritarian nutcase. I’m not envisioning some creepy, compulsory National Choir Corps, the likes of which you might see in a place like North Korea. No, I’m just a humble choral singer in South Carolina who believes she knows the secret to world peace and wishes to share it with the masses.

Is that so wrong?

If you have a better idea, bring it on. I’m listening. But I’d rather be listening to music. Or, better yet, singing it with you.