Why We Need Music Education

Sure.  I mean, we're always struggling to keep up with what kids are doing out in the real life.  You know, they-our kids are more savvy about music than ever before.  They all carry their own personal iPod, their own personal music collection.  But Russ is right, sort of the basics have not changed.  I want to respond to something that you asked earlier and also to the listener that called in about you know, why is this important and why do we teach this.  And Samuel Hope, who's the executive director of the National Association of Schools and Music, he says we have five ways to communicate and organize thought and knowledge.  The first one is letters and words, which is our language.  And the second is number and symbols, which is mathematics.  And-but the next three are still images, which is art in architecture and design, moving images which is dance and film, and abstract sound which is music.  And we tend to only place emphasis on the first two.  And if a child does not excel at the first two, then we spend more time teaching him that or her that rather than-at the expense of the other three.  And so there are other ways besides numbers, mathematics and language, to communicate and to organize sound, and music is one of those.  And if we have a child who doesn't communicate well with the first two, then he or she just doesn't do well in the education system as we have it set up today.  And, of course, we're going to have students at risk.  Imagine if you spend eight hours, as a seven year old, just studying words and numbers and you're bursting to express something and you can't do it.  I mean, this is just an accident waiting to happen.  And I don't - I mean, we don't - we can't just do a little music.  Let's outsource this and sing some songs after school.  That's not how you teach.  You don't teach algebra that way, you don't teach somebody to read that way, you don't teach science that way.  You cannot teach anything that way.  So it's very important that you have a structured, you know, step-by-step education so that students have access.  Understanding how to read music and to sing music and to play music is access.
-Dr. Hollinger, music education instructor SJSU