Julian Lloyd Webber joins pleas for music to survive Gove's exam shake-up

Leading musicians warns new proposals mean many children will 'never touch an instrument'

Vanessa Thorpe
The Observer, Saturday 22 September 2012
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/sep/23/michael-gove-ebacc-destroy-creative-education

 

 
This article describes and expresses sad feeling on the condition in which the public school system of U.K. is no longer available to provide the education for young musicians. If somebody wants to study an instrument, they should go to professional music school. This issue gives us serious messages to our future music, especially about music education.

While reading this article, I try to compare it to the situation of South Korea as well as the United States. In S. Korea, the statue of Music in public school is a risky position. Music, art, and other art/music related classes have been drastically decreased. In some extreme cases, some schools omit those classes from their curricular. Of course, it has conventionally known that schools put more effort on intellectually fundamental classes such as language, math, and science. This circumstance tells us two important points. First, by taking the opportunity of educating the artistic classes from students, the next generation may be numbed about the musical and aesthetic beauty surrounding us. Second, those who have musical and artistic talent lose many more chances to teach students. The student may think that music and art are not valued because those classes are not offered at schools.

Once I came to the U.S., I initially thought that the circumstance would be much different than that in S. Korea. after reading this article and contemplate the situation of the US, however, I come to realize that the situation is not much different in these days regardless of the boundary of country.

Music develops the artistic ways to see and understand the world. Without even offering a single chance to know music and art in the public school, the students have to find a specialized music institute to learn those attributes. This situation will produce a wider gap between the wealthy and the poor, even about discovering the musical talent, which is perceived as “neutrally given”. It might be a disaster for generations to come.