Importance Of Music Education
Music education is becoming increasingly important as our schools drift closer and closer to the “go-at-your-own-pace-finish-the-bare-minimum-take-your-degree-and-run” mentality. Music is part of what makes us human, and the enjoyment inspired by units of all whole all working in tandem to achieve a common goal of making beautiful music is nothing short of euphoric.
But music isn’t just a touchy-feely experience. I think the importance of music education lies in the balance between the physical science of producing music, and the emotional responses associated with music. Robert Duke’s book, Intelligent Music Teaching does a wonderful job in detailing (and encouraging you to come up with your own) all of the physical processes that students need to be able to complete in order to be a successful musician.
It is often difficult for educators to know whether to talk about the inherent benefits of music education, as in why music is important in its own right, or whether they should appeal to the quantifiable advantages that music students have over non-music students. Often, I believe, most music educators move towards the latter, for parents, administrators, and other teachers who do not understand music because they have not had meaningful experiences in music. We see it as a quick fix; if we talk about how music students perform better on state exams, how more music majors get accepted into medical school than biochem majors, we instantly see parents’ eyes light up. Of course they want their student to be successful! But then we are equating music to success in other areas of life: so what happens when a student loses motivation, or hits a wall in their practicing (which also happens to professional musicians)? They feel unsuccessful. And if we equated music to success, then feeling unsuccessful lessens the importance of music to that student. Now music becomes something “hard” instead of something meaningful and beautiful. This generation of students is increasingly fixated on the world of social media and experiences that produce instant self-gratification. Putting in hard work to become an expert in your craft is something that feels entirely foreign to many students. Teaching students to relish their sound on their own instrument or voice as an enjoyable activity in itself is much more important than using the quick motivators, when down the road that can hurt their impression of the importance of music education in their lives.
