Why Teaching Our Children Mus is Critically Important
" Just as there can be no mucis withour learning, no education is complete without music..."
"Music is a form of beauty. It needs no one to justify it. We want our children to know and understnad music, precisely because it has this intrinsic value on many levels. Music makes a distinctive claim on the human soul, bringing each generation face to face with itself, and with what we sense lies beyand ourselves."
"Music is a dominant force in American life and culture, molding and shaping the public's sense, creating its meanings, and shaping its values."
"Music enables the citizens of a multicultural society to communiacte with one another, understand one another, and share in one another's lives."
"Music connects us to our history, traditions and heritage. It is critically important that our children, as Americans, make this connection."
"For its intrinsic value alone, a comprehensive music education should be available to all students. But the deeply disturbing fact is that in vast numbers of out schools, this vital dimension of human experience is given only lip-service or left to chance. The lack of a comprehensive music education is a form of dehumanization by default..."
"When a child studies music, significant elements of his or her education find focus and expression:
- Developing the ability to understand and use symbols in new context.
- Finding and directing the power of personal creativity and self-expression.
- Exercising the diverse skills of problem solving.
- Participating in the deeply human satisfaction of shared work and meeting new challenges...
"Education without music shortchanges our children and their futures. Education with music offers exciting possibilities in two directions:
- Musical interlligence: Research on intelligence and cognitive function points to the possibility that music may be a form on intelligence, not merely a manifestation of it. This exciting possiblity is well worth exploring for its potential to all of education.
- Developmental gain: Music education, especially at an early age, can help open the door to important benefits. Involvement in music powerfully reinforces such crucial characteristics as self-esteem, self-discipline, creativity, and self expression. It helps the curriculum, and correlates highly with overall academic achievement."
"Music education is basic education."
Quoted from Growing Up Complete: The Imperative for Music Education, a brochure published by National Coalition for Music Education, Reston VA.