Music Lessons

The petition is entitled ensure that our children are offered 'music' as a means of expressing themselves within the education system, even if it means that such absolutely stupid activities such as 'Religious Education' and 'Citizenship' are abandoned in its favour and the explanatory notes say

"The current (grossly misguided) UK system of education includes some really obtuse matter relating to how our young folk should (should?) relate to 'life' (dumbing-down of personal development skills, such as the outragious 'Citizenship' lessons that our children must endure, for half a GCSE).

Our young folk should have the opportunity to express themselves through music, an undeniable right that is constantly denied by most state schools. Without a source of well-trained musicians, our orchestras will become totally populated by foreign players (who continue to receive excellent musical tuition).

The sad thing is, that whilst the UK has the very best violin making school in the world (Newark, Nottinghamshire), there are not so many players in the UK that could benefit from owning a violin made by a Newark graduate! Such is the standard of musical education in the UK!

I don't know that I disagree with the basic principle that music lessons are at least as valuable as "Citizenship" and "Personal and Social Education" and the like.

However, the frothy madness with which this petition is expressed gives me the screaming ab-dabs. And I particularly take exception to the petitioner's objecting to pupils being taught how "to relate to life" while yet thinking that music lessons are necessary for pupils to learn to "express themselves".

Both these phrases push my mumbo-jumbo-speak buttons. Personal and Social Education, as I was taught it in school, involved a wide assortment of things including sex education, morality, environmental issues, all sorts of, well, useful and useless things that didn't fit into other places in the curriculum and yet have a certain value. And my understanding is that subjects like "Citizenship" are on a similar basis: seems quite logical for them to be taught.

I do think that Religious Education as it was taught to me had both too large a part in the curriculum and too much emphasis on Christian history, but at the same time, there's clearly both a place in History teaching for an examination of religion and also, to my way of thinking, a discussion of comparative relition and religion in today's society should logically be included in PSE, PSHE, Sociology, Citizenship or some other catch-all subject.

A basic study of music is a good idea, partly in its own right and partly in order to identify talented pupils so that they can be encouraged to study further. The same goes for art. I object, however, to the implication that all children should be expected to express themselves through music; it has the obvious extrapolation that all children should be expected to express themselves through art, too, and since I have never had any inclination towards or interest in doing any such thing, I object to all children being forced to.

But mostly this petition makes me think that the author is a frothing maniac on his own particular subject (music) to the complete exclusion of assigning any importance to anything else at all.