Tap, tap, tap. The maestro rapped her baton on the music stand, and all eyes snapped to the front of the room.

She raised her arms, and, in the tradition of a true orchestra leader, commanded, "Tonettes up!"

Twenty-eight fourth-graders, back in their desks after a peanut butter and jelly lunch, pressed their sticky lips up against slabs of brown plastic that more closely resembled fat cigars riddled with holes than any sort of musical instruments.

We called them Tonettes in our school ... you may have played a similar instrument called a recorder. For many of us it was our first experience creating music.

I must admit, I wasn't exactly Kenny G. While others in the class managed to fill their Tonettes with beautiful sounds, I could only fill mine with saliva. If anything did miraculously squeak out of the holes, it was that kind of sound only dogs could hear ... and I'm lucky the SPCA didn't charge me with cruelty to animals.

Needless to say, I couldn't have carried a tune if my Tonette had come fitted with a handle. Music just wasn't my thing.

Still, I had the opportunity to find out, thanks to a public school system that exposed us to a wide variety of cultural and educational activities back in the 1950s and '60s.

Kids today might have that opportunity snatched away from them.

By the time I reached junior high school, I knew that music was not for me—with the possible exception of the music featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. But there was so much more offered in my school, I didn't even miss it.

Through junior high school electives, I was able to quickly discover that I was just as inept in wood shop, drafting and art classes as I was with the Tonette. My mother, bless her heart, still has the cheese board with the slice of green tile in the middle that I made for her in the seventh-grade wood shop ... but even she couldn't save that brownish ceramic ashtray from art class that more closely resembled a petrified pile of something the dog might leave in the backyard.

Then in eighth grade, I got the opportunity to take a journalism class as an elective. We put out the school newspaper as our class project.

I can still remember my first story. John Glenn had just come home from three spins around the globe, and John F. Kennedy was staring down Khrushchev, but I didn't care—I was too busy working on my exclusive: "Mr. Barker is 'sum' math teacher!"

Who could have imagined then that my participation in that class would be the first step on my career path? Certainly not Mr. Barker.

But my exposure to so many different educational opportunities helped me make important choices, even at that young age. I'd hate to think that students today might not have the same options.

Because of the proposed budget cuts in education, kids could face a curriculum that's only a shadow of that which we enjoyed as youngsters. Some of our schools have already lost electives and other programs, and now they face the prospect of losing teachers.

It's not a pretty picture, and it won't get any prettier if we don't do our part and step forward to do what we can to help, whether that means supporting the schools financially or contacting state legislators to let them know what we think of their idiotic plan.

I knew in the eighth grade what career path I wanted to follow. Who knows? Had it not been for that elective, I might have had to get a real job.

And had it not been for fourth-grade music class, I would have never known my aptitude for music ... or rather, my lack thereof.

Tonettes up!

Want to talk? Call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31, or drop me a note at dsparrer@svcn.com.