In this struggling economy, cutbacks are being made in every part of our life. One of the areas is the fine arts department and after school programs which have been reduced or eliminated in many of our school districts across the country. The first things to be eliminated typically are the non-core classes like art, music and physical education. These are all important things that young children need in order to be fully stimulated for their minds and their bodies. The problem now happens that only the kids that can afford to take music lessons or to buy a student violin or an electric violin will be able to experience the many benefits that learning how to play an instrument teaches. Because of this, many groups across the country have formed to try to help kids to have access to the arts or to try to bring back the arts to schools and why it is so important.
Learning how to read music and play an instrument have been shown to help kids in school later on. There have been studies to support this and state that kids, who are involved in music and learn to play an instrument at an early age, will perform better in math than students that have had no music lessons or training. This is why it is so important to have this offered to all kids, not just the ones who can afford private lessons.
One example of a group that is supporting music education in schools is called AMC which stands for American Music Conference and is a national non-profit group that is intent on teaching the importance of music education. Many well known musicians such as Nick Lachey, Run DMC and several actors and actresses have supported this non-profit group. This group has worked together with Teen people magazine to put on a huge artist of the year event celebrating those in the music industry and bringing awareness to the fact that music education in schools in important.
In addition to many different larger groups that are supported by various celebrities, many smaller grass-root advocacy groups have formed trying to support music in schools too. One such group is called Music Friends and was started by parents and a small community that wished to support music in their local school system. They are supported by MENC which is The National Association for Music Education that was formed in the early 1900's and encourages the importance of music education in schools.
This group advocates that music was stated as a core subject in the No child left behind education Act of 2002 and how important it is and should not be cut from school districts trying to save money.
Whether it is a large national group or a small group in your community fighting to keep music in your schools, the same message is being promoted. Music education benefits students; especially the younger ones in elementary school and districts should consider it as important as reading or math when making budget cuts.