Please Support Music Education

czarivey,

 Juilliard graduates, for example, have included: Miles Davis, Itzhak Perlman, Bernard Herrmann, Yo-Yo Ma and others.

czarivey said: "Once again it’s Talent + Courage and they were all waking up as musicians from day 1."

If that’s all it comes down to, then why did they even desire to go to music school?

ivan_
Because the ones born with talent and courage want to become better or best.

One wasn't born with such may only desire and given that as a fact, ones that desire even without talent can achieve some limited results. 

Providing solfeggio or music theory in public schools is mostly useless. That requires student to be able to sing over the sheet music and ones that weren't born with natural hearing for music will never ever succeed and always have bad grades.

Public schools can introduce classical music and jazz in free form listening lessons-sessions with no grading involved, but that's about as far as it can go.

Yea, all I'm sayin' is to tame your fanatic activism and think what actually can be done and HOW instead of blindly promoting an idea that is in general good, but there are known limitations to deal with. Have y'all been introduced to solfeggio or piano keyboard and at least singing basics before you start judging what's needed/not? It's HARD work for those who has talent and natural hearing for music and school such as Jilliard or Berkeley should intent to make it easier for gifted and talented. Has any of these world's known schools of music taken ones with no natural hearing of music huh? 

I've been born with natural talent for music and had been picking up tunes on my harmonica since I was 4, but having no sufficient courage and parental support, I did not succeed to professional level, but at least learned to appreciate the hard work necessary to achieve a descent level of musician. Even after you're pro, you'll need to practice and learn new repertoire on daily bases before, during and after group, band or orchestra rehearsals.

Erik,

Your OP is certainly worthwhile and Czarivey's response is what it is.  I agree that making music education available to public school students is valuable - for pretty much the reasons that you state.  Will that type of exposure create a musical "great" where one would otherwise not have been?  Who knows? (Other than Czarivey, I guess.).  

Broader cultural education is IMO a good idea that's getting lost in the cost cutting pressures of the modern world.  As you note, that means that it's up to those of us who care to provide support. And I, along with many others in our community, do just that.  Through pretty extensive fund raising activities for our school system, a fairly big group of active parents has allowed the school to provide music, art, and other programs that were not otherwise doable within the schools' budgets.

We can not support music and buy bombs at the same time, therefore music has to go. If we don't support defense "ISIS" (I forgot how to spell ALKIDA)   gonna gitcha.

No matter what intellectual reasons you give for supporting musical education in public schools, the discussion here is no more than mental gymnastics.

Sorry I busted the bubble.

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?