This past weekend, I received a message from my old high school’s current music teacher, asking me for a quote about what music education has done for me so she could incorporate it into the music program newsletter.
This question really got me thinking. How could I sum it up in a sentence or two when I have written entire articles on what music means to me. But the value of an education in music is so much more than just loving music or enjoying playing an instrument.
For me, personally, my initial introduction to music in elementary and throughout junior high and high school has led me to participate in ensembles at the collegiate level. I’m a member of both my school’s concert band and marching band.
Marching band helps me pay for school, and I’ve made some wonderful friends through both groups. Without my foundation in music, I wouldn’t be at the level I am today, nor would I be the person I am today without music.
On a more major scale (ha, see what I did there?), music education is important for everyone because it is one of the only activities that engages both hemispheres of the brain at the same time. Performing, composing, or analyzing music are incredibly cognitively stimulating exercises - in short, they help strengthen the brain.
Music promotes focus and it teaches discipline and accountability. When you’re a member of an ensemble, it’s not just yourself you’re letting down if you don’t practice, it’s everyone. That’s a rather eye-opening lesson for an eleven-year-old when they go to band and feel the shame of being woefully underprepared.
In a society that constantly undervalues and cuts the arts and humanities to make way for STEM programs, it is now more important than ever that the value of arts education - particularly of music education - be defended.
There’s a lot of information that I didn’t retain from high school - I remember very little of the obscure biology we studied and I can’t offhand remember how to do an accounting spreadsheet.
But music has, while not my primary field of study, gotten me pretty far. Music helps me even in my job. I work as a barista, and because music notes are essentially fractions and I spend a lot of time subdividing as a flute player, I can quickly, easily, and accurately add up fractions and prices in my head.
Music is applicable in practical ways in everyday life, more so than many other traditionally taught school subjects. Music education is valuable because it teaches art and math and science and discipline and integrity and beauty all at once. Value music as an art, but also value what it teaches us, and perhaps above all, those who teach it to us.
