When budget cuts happen - which has been happening a lot in this country - after-school athletics and after-school music are some of the first things to go.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Funding for sports (and the arts) are often the first things facing the chop in difficult times.
More than 50 percent of kids who play an instrument go on to college, yet music education programs at the inner city public schools who need them most continue to be hit hard with budget cuts.
Whenever education budgets get tightened, art programs are the first to get cut. Like the enduring popularity of reality TV, this never ceases to amaze me.
You begin to see that all of these things are connected: The kind of cuts that mean less environmental protection are also the kind of cuts that mean less musical education for the schools and that also mean more overcrowded schools.
We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.
The unhappy irony is that, while 'Glee' is hitting the heights, school arts funding is being slashed across the country due to the steep recession and declining tax revenues.
In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.
In the United States, we spend millions of dollars on sports because it promotes teamwork, discipline, and the experience of learning to make great progress in small increments. Learning to play music does all this and more.
Most music careers slowly but surely go down.
If we don't invest now in so-called priority neighbourhoods with music classes, athletic facilities, and skills training and mentoring, we will all pay more in the long run.