Please Support Music Education

Inna,
Courage isn't talent. It's one of the partial derivatives. Billy Joel is clear example. He dropped out from public school early, because he had a GOAL to become musician and songwriter and decided not to waste his time and get into practicing for as long as possible. He had lots of private instructors and lots if personal courageous practice times to become world know songwriter and musician with multi-talent (Yea I can call him musician indeed).

So in math terms, Courage can be derived at least from Talent and Goal. 

No talent and natural hearing for music, trust me, no Jilliard no Berkely or no any other types of music schools will accept anyone without natural talents and perhaps never will. There's no program yet in the whole world created to 'train' these qualities in young humans. So is there anyone with experience on how to 'train' hearing for music and how far it can get to make sense? 

I find it odd that czarivey has such conviction on this subject yet, starts threads such as  (artists that died) well, you know....

+++... "The King Of?... disco.... and SO on....

Music education-- to address CZ’s point- isn’t about teaching people to be musicians. It is all about exposure. Who knows, someone who has only been exposed to pop music of a specific genre may find beauty in the precision of Bach. And, it isn’t just about the warhorses of classical western music either. Music is one way into understanding culture and history. But, that kind of exposure and "education" has to come early, I think-
I don’t know what public schools currently do- I gather that for some arts, the teachers are really 3d party contractors. One of our former neighbors actually built a business bringing music education to public schools in NYC.
It is an amazing process when you see kids who haven’t necessarily had the opportunity and do have talent catch the fever. I’ve been involved in a few of those programs- kids that would have never been exposed to dance, music or other performing arts. This also ties into the discipline of learning more generally. Granted, this is a small fraction of the population, and even fewer are likely to go on to careers as artists. But, the more general baseline of information and exposure--everything from rural blues to classical, eastern music to some of the roots of modern rock/pop/soul can be fun and engaging. Probably not a bad thing for adults either....

Thanks Whart!

Here I am trying to enrich children's lives and it gets hijacked by a discussion about what makes a great musician.

Best,


Erik