Why Should the Children Sing?

A few words on the subject.....

From the American Choral Directors Association ...

Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation, said “Music stimulates the mind, opens the eyes to inspired vision, and stirs the deepest yearnings of the human spirit. Music is the language of young children, and if civility is to be sustained, introduction to music in all its richness surely must be at the very heart of the core curriculum in every school.”

“Rebirth of arts in schools pushed.”

An article from the Sacramento Bee on the subject of music in the public schools entitled “Rebirth of arts in schools pushed.” The following are excerpts from the article:

Educators say that research is proving what they have known for years - the arts keep students interested in school, raise their self-esteem, develop their creativity and even help them perform in subjects such as math and reading.

Educators believe that the rebirth of the arts in schools is being driven by research such as linking the study of music to critical thinking skills needed for complex math.

Another analysis, by the College Board in 1995, showed the students who studied the arts for more than four years scored 59 points higher on the verbal and 44 points higher on the math sections of the SAT than students with no arts course work. They also were less likely to drop out and more likely to have a good self-image. More and more businesses, too, are saying they need workers with the creativity and problem-solving skills that the arts foster.

“Academically, the arts (especially music) are the best way to increase a child’s overall achievement in his life.”

~Albert Einstein

A Quote from Plato on the value of music education . . .

Musical training is more potent than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful; and also because he who has received this true education becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes, he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education had made him long familiar.

Quoted from Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas Doubleday

Vocal music is an attempt to take the whole human being and project it into space. It is the ultimate gesture of getting out of yourself. You take a part of you that is most private, most personal, most inward, and you hurl it out into space — you project it as far as you can. That gesture of opening this whole region of the body results in an enormous spiritual release, and is felt by other people with tremendous impact.

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