Music 314
Foundations & Principles of Music Education

Dr. Peter LaRue, Instructor

Handout - Talking Points #4

More "Quotable Quotes" for Music and our Music Programs

As teachers of music, we must touch the hearts of students, stir the feelings of students and kindle the imagination of students.

We, as teachers, must remember that responsiveness to music is "TAUGHT BY EXAMPLE AND LEARNED BY CONTAGION." Only to the extent that we as teachers are moved by the expressive import of music  , can we lead our students to responsiveness of that import.

The primary purpose of the arts in general is to ENHANCE, VIVIFY, INTENSIFY AND CLARIFY human experience and emotion.

If art education (music, dance, theater, etc.) is Perceived as peripheral, if people see it as "icing on the curricular cake".....AS THEY DO, then there is s serious misperception of art in our culture and art education in our schools and. colleges.

Every child is capable of developing some kind of relationship with music as creator, performer or listener. Interest and motivation can be sparked at any age. Music educators must try to help all youngsters understand the elements of music and become discriminating and enlightened consumers.

The primary role of the music program in the public school is to stimulate thoughtful feeling and feelingful thought. The program should involve processes in which the imagination is freed, stimulated and taken into flight. In this role, music educators will be in a position to counter the sterility and depersonalization which pervades contemporary society.

In a rapidly changing society beset by problems and issues of almost overwhelming magnitude, it is essential that opportunities for individual performance and expression are encouraged and expanded. It is these programs in our schools, identified as "arts education"  [i.e. music, dance, theater and art]   which most fully allow for such performance and expression.

The arts are one of the avenues through which children can enter the world of learning, and schools are making insufficient use of art and music and drama and story telling to awaken curiosity in young people and motivate them to learn.

Aesthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and celebration of the life of a civilization, a means of promoting its development, and is the ultimate judgment upon the quality of a civilization.

**the above taken from writings of Dewey, Leonhard, Fowler, Senator Pell, Feldman, Eldman**