In an article published on March 20, on the CNN website, tuba player turned MBA grad student, Andrew Schwartz, outlines the life lessons he learned in music classes.
Schwartz’s argument is that as education cuts are implemented in schools, music is usually the first to go. This is ironic, since music is perhaps one of the few subjects taught in schools that teaches students not what to think, but how to think. And ultimately, isn’t this what education is supposed to be about?
The life lessons that Schwartz identifies as having learned through his music education, include the following:
- Hard work pays off;
- If you want or need to have something happen, it’s up to you to make it happen;
- Know as much about the current situation as possible, to know where you stand, in order to move forward;
- Do your research;
- Everything in life is connected, find the links and make the connections;
- If you’ve ever played in an ensemble, you know that you have to work with others;
- Be responsible for your work.
When you’re performing music, you can’t cheat. You can’t say to the audience, “You don’t get it.” If they didn’t understand it or like it, you failed. You are completely responsible for your product being well-received.
Source: My View: Everything I need to know, I learned in music class, by Andrew Schwartz
This is not exactly rocket science, nor do you have to be a rocket scientist to grasp the above-noted concepts. Yet time and time again, we see elected officials making the same decision: There’s a budget shortfall, cut music and the arts.
Sports are sacrosanct, those won’t be cut. (Besides, there are lots of former high school jocks who will pontificate about the life lessons they learned through team sports.) The 3 R’s? You’re kidding, right? Readin’ ritin’ and ‘rithmetic are considered sacred in the minds of parents, most educators, and therefore by extension, the politicians who got elected by these 2 groups. Hell would likely have to freeze over before we see a cut in the 3 R’s. So that leaves us with the arts. So the kids won’t get their painting or music classes, so what. Thanks to calculus, at least they’ll know how to calculate the volume of the intersection of two perpendicular pipes of the same radius…. Yeah, sure they will… 
Unlike calculus, or any of the other 3 R and related subjects, music is a both an art and a science. It requires a person to think with both sides of their brain at the same time. This is what makes music so unique among school subjects, and exactly why it should be the one subject that should not be cut in this age of school budget shortfalls. What are the chances of that? 
