Six No-Nonsense Reasons to Encourage Students to Study Music from Ms. Voigts' Guide to Raising Excruciatingly Correct Choristers

1. A good education should develop the mind. The systematic study of music develops higher order thinking skills. These skills include discipline, problem solving, attentiveness, reflection, and curiosity-qualities that animate us as individuals and are represented in cultivated minds.
   
   
2. Music study provides unique opportunities for self-expression and creativity, providing a grounding in an essential human experience. In a highly technological, materialistic society, we need the special pleasures that music can provide. The study of music helps establish the quality of our survival in a world preoccupied with quantitiy.
   
   
3. Music study is not just for the gifted or privileged. It's availability is a matter of individual intellectual freedom and development, essential to an active democracy and a vital music culture. Music study enables us to make personal distinctions: to describe, interpret, and evaluate independently; and to make informed decisions about the music that we like. This "independence of mind" is something we value as Canadians, cultivate in other fields, and should treasure in music study.
   
   
4. Music study promotes cultural awareness, which is essential if individuals are to become strong contributors to their society. The greater our investment in our young minds and the more access we provide to our culture, the more likely that society will be repaid in the form of individual accomplishment.
   
   
5. Music is a thing of profound beauty and the study of it is intrinsically worthwhile - a field with its own unique body of knowledge and skills. As the mark of our civilization it should be cultivated.
   
   
6. Music provides an avenue for unparalleled social interaction and growth.