Value Statements - Goals - Music Making             

The best way to "teach" music is to have students undergo experiences with and about music itself. The expressive import of music merits primary emphasis. Without this expression, music has no significant meaning.

The following are - and should be - the results of successful participation in any music program:

1)  enable participants to discover their level of musical talent and provide experiences with and about music to develop these talents.

2)  enable participants to develop their musicianship to the highest possible level. The goal is to develop the participants= musicianship and not produce ensemble members who only respond mindlessly to the cues of a conductor.

3)  enable participants to develop reflective discrimination that gives them a basis for controlling the aesthetic quality of their musical lives and makes that quality a matter of reflective choice not chance.

4)  reveal to all participants the richness and breadth of their musical heritage.

5)  induct all participants into a unique system of non-verbal symbols through which the most noble thoughts and feelings of humans have been expressed and can be communicated.

6)  engage and develop the imagination of all participants and enable them to develop these potentialities.

7)  admit all participants to a creative mode by which they can enrich their lives through expression and respond to the expression of others.

And in Public School or Church Music Settings ...

1)  prepare students to participate fully in the rites and rituals of society

2)  enable all students to develop resources for positive social interaction

3) enable students to develop resources for a rewarding life

4) provide a means for students to gain and develop self-confidence

5) provide a focus for both self and group discipline

6) enables a student to part of something Abigger than themselves@ - where the good of the individual is sublimated for the good of the entire ensemble