Fighting for Music and the Arts to take their rightful place in Education

Hoping to push Music and the Arts up the agenda at NEU Conference I had this mini speech ready as a support to an amendment about a broad and balanced curriculum. As nobody was speaking against the amendment I wasn't called on the day and so thinking I wouldn’t get to speak, I blogged and then deleted  said speech. 

The prepared speech is below, as is a video of the speech I ended up making when finally called to speak in "unfinished business". Traumatised by arriving at the podium to discover/remember the speech was deleted, what followed was more of a stand up routine. It served its purpose, but never again! The youtube video of the routine is below too.

"I am speaking in support of an amendment appointment 8.1. The motion itself talks about the stress caused by narrowing of curriculum, and instructs executive to campaign for a child’s right to access a broad and balanced curriculum.

I believe it should go further and talk about how music and the arts should take their proper place in the curriculum as equal in status to STEM subjects. 

Music and the arts give students a place to destress, and a place to find ways of expressing their inner feelings.  And where they can make a spiritual sense of the world around them. Arts are good for mental health. School should be the place where student can discover which is the artform that suits them best, and which they carry through to adulthood.

And for the school students music and the arts do all this without their having to be tested on them.

And can I emphasise that all children should have a right to a broad and balanced curriculum that includes music and arts. We should recognise and remember that music is no more for the future musicians of this world the maths for the future mathematicians. 

Music is for appreciate audiences, and the more you know by playing or by having played yourself, the more you get out of it.

Music is for dancers to dance to, workers to work by, gym bunnies to bounce to. 

I mention music in particular as it has its own practical problems for the school - such as the need for big rooms, expensive equipment and lots of storage space. But for too many primary schools a music room is a thing of the past.

Besides saying we should have a broad and balanced curriculum, let us say how we would broaden and it ,that would be through the life enhancing Arts, looking to the personal rather than professional. And who knows. Maybe through school the next Spice Girls or Nigel Kennedy might also discover their talent. Or even the next karaoke queen.

https://youtu.be/IXIEqAzZP04