Advocacy Statement
Music is an important part of a comprehensive education curriculum. It provides an avenue for expression and imagination. Music can also be a tool used to keep students involved in positive programs and away from substance use and abuse outside of school. Music performance groups within schools can also be of a benefit to the outside community including playing or singing at retirement homes, parades, school board meetings, etc.
Here are a few facts about music education programs:
Here are a few facts about music education programs:
Students taking courses in music performance and music appreciation scored higher in the SAT than students with no arts participation. Music performance students scored 53 points higher on the verbal and 39 points higher on the math. Music appreciation students scored 61 points higher on the verbal and 42 points higher on the math.(Source: 1999 College-Bound Seniors National Report: Profile of SAT Program Test Takers, The College Entrance Examination Board, Princeton, New Jersey)
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Student involvement in extracurricular or cocurricular activities makes students resilient to current substance use among their peers, according to a recent statewide survey of Texas Schools. Secondary students who participated in band, orchestra or choir reported the lowest lifetime use of all substances. (Source: 1994 Texas School Survey of Substance Abuse Among Students: Grades 7-12)
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Want more facts about music education? Visit this page.
Why Music?
Music touches every human being from infancy to adulthood. The power of musical sound can be the vehicle for expression of a wide variety of human emotions. And not only does music move us emotionally, it activates our intellect.
It is difficult to ignore the sound of music. Music composed and performed by those who understand its aesthetic power can elevate our spirits, urging us to respond through listening, moving, and singing.
For more information, follow this link!
Why Teach Music?
Music is a science
• It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is mathematical
• It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a foreign language
• Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English--but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
Music is history
• Music usually reflects the environments and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
Music is a physical education
• It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Music is all these things, but most of all music is art
• It allows a human being to take all these dry technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.
That is Why We Teach Music!
• Not because we expect you to major in music
• Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life
• Not so you can relax
• Not so you can have fun
• BUT--so you will be human
• So you will recognize beauty
• So you will be sensitive
• So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
• So you will have something to cling to
• So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good--in short, more life.
That is Why We Teach Music!
This advocacy page can be found here.
Music is a science
• It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is mathematical
• It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a foreign language
• Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English--but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
Music is history
• Music usually reflects the environments and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
Music is a physical education
• It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Music is all these things, but most of all music is art
• It allows a human being to take all these dry technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.
That is Why We Teach Music!
• Not because we expect you to major in music
• Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life
• Not so you can relax
• Not so you can have fun
• BUT--so you will be human
• So you will recognize beauty
• So you will be sensitive
• So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
• So you will have something to cling to
• So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good--in short, more life.
That is Why We Teach Music!
This advocacy page can be found here.
Additional Websites/Resources:
www.supportmusic.com
www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/
www.schoolmusicmatters.com
www.amc-music.com
http://advocacy.nafme.org/
http://www.americansforthearts.org/get_involved/advocate.asp
http://www.aep-arts.org/
www.supportmusic.com
www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/
www.schoolmusicmatters.com
www.amc-music.com
http://advocacy.nafme.org/
http://www.americansforthearts.org/get_involved/advocate.asp
http://www.aep-arts.org/