Why Music Should Matter
The holidays are over and the students have returned to school. The planning has been done and the classes are now coming through the doors for the first time in a long while. For some it is even longer than just the end of the last academic year as some of our classes have not had a 'proper' music lesson in over a year. This was due to cuts in the teaching staff and the prioritising of STEM subjects over the arts. Although it is early days of the new school year this is already throwing up some challenges as I have noticed that a lot of the students have 'forgotten' how to sing, how to hold themselves, even how to count in time. While this is disheartening, as we have lost our schools tradition of singing, it has opened up challenges and potential in now trying to reteach the students in the 'proper' ways of singing and performing. I have already found that some of the ideas that I learnt in San Francisco are helping - the opportunity to perform thei