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Show School and V?J Home 7 by Dr. Daryl J. McCarty J Executive Secretary k Utah Education Association Even though I do well to distinguish between rock and Rachmaninoff, I have a great respect for .the value of music in schools. In recent months the Chicago Board of Education eliminated some music programs from schools there. It was an unpopular un-popular move. Parents and children marched through the city's streets in protest. I'm convinced that Utah parents feel just as strongly about music in their schools. Every year, there's a traditional closing for the Utah Education Association Convention. Con-vention. It's the Grand Festival Concert Scores of Utah's most accomplished high school singers, orchestral performers and band members do their thing for a standing room only audience at the Salt Lake Tabernacle. This is the event which proves that students don't have to be athletes to earn the desienation "All Stater." Every performer in the Grand Festival Concert is a member of the All-State Band, Chorus or Orchestra. All that musical excellence didn't just happen. Many of those talented students began playing musical instruments or singing with groups in school during the years w hen their baby teeth w ere still falling out. I say that parents need to be proud of their children. I see that kind of pride often in the eyes of a father or mother watching a son or daughter drawing musical notes from a violin or flute. Sometimes the fun of music classes stimulate students to do better work in other studies. "There is music in all children," says Dr. Emma D. Sheehy, professor of music at Columbia University. "All we adults have to do is allow it to come out." There would be a great emp-tinessn emp-tinessn life if it weren't for music, rhelieve we owe it to our children to "allow it to come out," to put music in their lives at home - and even to tolerate those fast, loud rhythms the younger generation finds so appealing. If little Brent gets an opportunity op-portunity to play a musical instrument, in-strument, it might be one of the most important trails in life he ever travels. What about your home, is it the kind that allows music to "come out of your children?" |