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The importance of music in our schools is often overlooked, and its true power is unrealized. Music deserves a place with the core subjects of math, science, history, and language arts. If it is given the opportunity, music can make a difference in the academic achievement of our students.
As the twenty-first century approaches, educators and administrators face budget cuts and financial stress, demands for higher test scores and proof of student achievement, scheduling conflicts, overcrowding of facilities, and higher technological demands. There is also increased pressure on students to achieve higher grades and scores on college admission tests, so students are frequently steered toward the subjects that are tested on these exams.
Music and fine arts are greatly affected by all these demands. High school music programs are fighting a battle to maintain enrollment because of ever-increasing college academic admission requirements, which leave many interested students with no room in their schedule for music.
The future role of music and fine arts in the U.S. school depends on administrators, who will only make music a part of the curriculum if they are aware of the financial, academic, and aesthetic merits of having a music program (Robitaille and O'Neal, 1981; Gillespie, 1992; Miller and Coen, 1994; Anderson, 1995). The decision to support music cannot be made without knowing music's effect on academic achievement and its contribution to a student's education.
Music education has been advanced through history-by Plato and Socrates in ancient times; by Martin Luther in the Reformation; by Horace Mann and Lowell Mason in early America; and by John Dewey in the Progressive Age. Historically, music education has flourished in religious settings-in Puritan schools and churches in the Northern colonies, in parochial schools in the Middle Atlantic colonies, and in Lutheran schools and churches in the Reformation.
Music education has taken many forms. Singing schools, established in colonial days, concentrated on performance. When music was introduced into the public school curriculum in 1838, the emphasis switched to music theory and notation. In the Progressive Era the concentration changed to self-expression and musical activity, only to be replaced by "aesthetics" education in the post-Sputnik age.
Music in Today's Schools
Other countries, with Hungary, Japan, and the Netherlands leading the way, have already discovered...