March is Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM®), the time of year when music education becomes the focus of schools across the nation. Celebrate MIOSM in your school and community and raise awareness of the importance of school music!
MENC asked students and teachers to submit questions to ask violinist Joshua Bell. Here is the final part in the three-part interview with Joshua Bell. Read Part 1. Read Part 2.
You’ve spent years training to be a professional musician and working as a professional and working with kids who are aspiring to be professionals. But there are millions of music students in our country, in school bands, choruses, and orchestras, who will go on to careers other than that of professional musician. Why do you think these kids should study music? – MENC Staff
Joshua Bell: Music is part of being a human being; if you look at every culture in the world they have music. To have music in one’s life is different than being a professional musician. How many people that learn to read are going to be authors? A small percentage, but yet we all need to learn how to read, even if we don’t go on to make writing a profession. Having music in your life enriches you as a human being and makes you a well-rounded person.
What music education advocacy activities have you been involved with? – MENC Staff
Joshua Bell: Education Through Music — they bring music programs to inner city schools that are challenged financially and have no music programs at all. I visit these schools on occasion in New York and Los Angeles. It’s amazing what music does for these children. I am also a part- time professor at Indiana University, which is where I went to school.
Listen to Joshua Bell’s “Why Music?” PSA
— Nicole Springer. March 17, 2010. © National Association for Music Education.
