Arts Education

Music

Rationale for Music Education

Music is a vital part of every student's education and contributes to deep and enduring student engagement that leads to learning success. Music education develops unique, powerful, and multiple ways of perceiving, interpreting, knowing, representing, and communicating understandings about self and the world. Through music experiences, students have opportunities to think creatively, explore ideas and feelings, and develop emerging personal, cultural, and social identities.

The social act of music making generates synergy and provides unique opportunities for students to be part of collaborative and diverse knowledge building. Learning music enables students to explore ambiguity, to think imaginatively, innovatively, and with flexibility and empathy, and to feel confident with uncertainty and risk. Music education promotes open-ended, critical, divergent, and dialogic thinking and encourages understanding and feeling mediated through body, mind, and senses.

Music helps students to appreciate and connect with others past and present, as well as to understand and celebrate their own distinctiveness. Mind, body, and spirit interact through music to engage students profoundly as they seek meaning in the world around them. Through music, students are empowered with the creative energies and sense of agency that are needed to consider diverse views and transform thinking and possibilities. Music has the potential to promote responsibility and leadership and to prepare and inspire future citizens of the world to understand and address the most critical challenges of their times.