Let music lead Rudd’s revolution

This surely must be taken as testimony that music education is essential for all Australian schools.

Quality teaching of music must be in the core curriculum

As a musician and long-time music teacher I naturally have a keen interest in the issue. For me, music is real life. After all, evidence suggests that humans were singing and making music before they had language, and there is even a substantial argument that the ability to sing was the foundation for language.

But my advocacy for music in schools is based on a solid foundation of not only personal experience but also a growing body of educational research. Consider for example the following.

• Learning music enhances general memory and concentration.
• Children who learn music tend to handle stress more easily.
• Learning music significantly facilitates development in mathematics and English, both oral and written.
• Students who have regular music lessons are inclined to learn foreign languages much more easily.
• Children in a musical program tend to develop superior social skills and to manage their time more effectively.

Such findings provide a strong basis for including music in the core curriculum for all schools.

Yet most children in Australian schools do not have access to effective music education. A trained music specialist is essential to teach music properly in a school. The Music Council of Australia demonstrated that only 23 per cent of public school students had access to such a specialist, compared with 88 per cent of private school students. The same body also found that at least 74 per cent of the Australian public believes provision of music education should be mandatory in every school. (The figure was 87 per cent when the question was about “learning an instrument”.)

Music education excluded from the national curriculum debate

So it is clear that music is essential to quality education, that most children aren’t getting it, and that the Australian community wants it.

Yet the Federal and State governments do not propose to include it in the national curriculum. The four components are to be English, mathematics, science and history.

There is nothing surprising about the first three. More unexpected was the readiness to give history a guernsey ahead of all other possibilities. What, we might ask, does history have that makes it more important than music? For the evidence indicates that learning music could underpin students’ progress in history as well as English, mathematics, science and much else.

In contrast with Australia, in the last couple of years the United Kingdom has taken great strides. Its Music Manifesto aims to ensure that all schoolchildren get involved with music-making.

The education game - a match of mixed doubles

Now that the Australian Government is in the hands of the Labor Party, it will be interesting to watch the education game played anew. It will be a peculiar match of mixed doubles. On one side the two former Ministers of Education, Nelson now Opposition Leader, with Bishop as his Deputy and Shadow Minister. On the other side Prime Minister Rudd himself with Julia Gillard as his Deputy and Minister for Education. So far the government pair seems, by its silence, to be relegating music to the margin of the school curriculum at best.

Will Nelson continue to champion music education as he did before 2006? Will Bishop’s actions reflect her assertion that “music is integral” to our children’s educational success?

The Opposition could win plenty of electoral support by putting pressure on the government to give high priority to effective music education in Australian schools. The main winners, though, would be the Australian community, particularly the children.

Before long Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop should be settled into their new roles on the Opposition benches. Will they then face the music?