The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

In my grade school in the 1960's we had musicians come in and play. I remember one classical violinist, marvelous. Everyone learned piano in the 3rd grade and there was at least one field trip to hear the Seattle Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House. By the time we graduated high school everyone had at least some exposure to classical music and learning an instrument, and probably at least a third had been in band, orchestra, or choir. By the time I graduated I could play French Horn, trumpet, piano, and harmonica pretty good, and could of course read music. That wasn't exceptional, a good share of my friends were the same only with different instruments. Then of course in learning the instruments you just naturally learned the music, which was selected at least partly to encourage musical development. So you just naturally were exposed to what I guess you could call music theory, although it was more by example than academic lectures.

Look back in history, even any period piece movie is going to show the young people learning piano, harpsichord, singing.

Yeah, it is a tragic decline for sure. 

I'm going to play the contrarian here, though I'm from the generation born in the mid-'50s, so had the exposure to the local symphony (Steinberg in Pittsburgh), the music lessons, theory, etc. 
A lot of pop music from the era- I suspect any era since the emergence of recorded sound (and perhaps before) -- was pretty banal- fluff, either following a trend or little better than Muzak.  A lot of my peers when I was growing up had little interest in music other than the usual party music or the same/same stuff that everyone was listening to at the time- hard rock, whatever was on the radio at the time. 
We are a niche- people who are more interested, involved, take time, care passionately about sound and I think are unusual compared to the majority of people. 
I meet a lot of young people who have musical training, though very few make a living doing so. Some are classically trained, or went through jazz programs at the university level. I think new music is out there, you may have to wade through a lot of crap, but wasn't it always so?

Interesting article, thanks.  As for the quality of music that he wrote about...I remember realizing that intuitively at the age of 14 when I started hearing that abomination called "new wave", some of the coldest, most artificial music ever recorded.  When I turned 18 I couldn't even walk into bar full of attractive young ladies if that music was playing, so disturbing was my visceral reaction.  My threshold for today's popular music is about 10 seconds.  

I’m paraphrasing here, but Russ Kunkel, one of the best drummers of our time (James Taylor, Stevie Nicks and a million other hit records) was asked if he could read music and his answer was "Not well enough to hurt my playing." An interesting answer, but I think many trained musicians will understand what this means. The position that music is in decline has been around forever and I won’t be drawn into that argument. What I do think is that listening to music as a solo activity, the way audiophiles do and the way many more used to do it, is on the decline. Now, people are listening to music constantly on their headphones, but mostly as a backdrop to other activities or to occupy their brains while on the subway or whatever. Personally, I do think musical literacy has declined, but I’m old so nobody is marketing music to me. I’m ok with that. Time marches on. Live life the way you want and don't expect others to conform to your views.  

. In the Western world music music was on the up for centuries . 
  ALL aspects of society are in decline , History is the most important element in a liberal education and in the US  95% of the population
is totally ignorant of it . Not entirely their fault , in all high schools
and most colleges every word they tell you is a complete lie .