Music is a field that is losing traction in schools across the country due to budget concerns and new national standards in education. Some people counter these budget concerns with ideas of fundraisers, booster clubs, and sponsorships.  Some defend music as core curriculum by saying that it: improves standardized test scores, makes you better at science and math, improve your chances of getting into undergraduate collegiate programs, as well as graduate degree programs and medical school. Others defend it by saying that it is a method of overcoming stress and emotions, and still some defend music for the way it trains your ears. Some more defend music by saying that it keeps students out of trouble, and that those at risk of graduating are kept from dropping out by music their music programs; especially students from low-income families. Others defend it is an outlet for non-athletes to learn teamwork and have mentors. Even more people defend music by saying that it teaches students to work hard thanks to all the time that they spend practicing. Along that same line of thought, some defend music because it teaches time-management like no other activity. Some people defend music by saying that learning to read music makes it easier for students to learn secondary or multiple spoken languages. By that same virtue, some people defend it by saying it is a language by which all people and even some creatures can communicate. Music is also defended by the fact that it develops the brains of young children; making them more creative and able to think more efficiently as they grow. On top of that, people defend music because it is one of the seven liberal arts grounded in ancient greek philosophy. Still others defend music simply for the friendships made by those who participate in it. Another group defends music for the way it teaches people to work together, and builds great leaders. Along that line of thought is perhaps the greatest of these defenses: music teaches you how to create a "win-win" in today's education system and subsequently modeled society; where everything else results in a "win-lose" or a "lose-lose". These are all extremely valid and perfect reasons to keep music in schools everywhere, but they are misled and thus they do not succeed. They are defending music for it's value in enhancing other things.To the contrary, music's greatest value, and the value that should be used primarily in it's defense, is in itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Beauty is it's own excuse for being." Music is defensible purely by the fact that it is it's own excuse for being. 

In California, the percent change in music course enrollment from the 1999-2000 school year to the 2003-2004 school year was -85.87%. Music programs in schools are dying not only there, but across the country; mainly due to: financial problems, new national education standards in other core fields and standardized testing, and the time that music can take away from those other fields. As budgets become tighter in schools, music is often the first program on the chopping block, and the leading reason is that it is very expensive. Just one instrument can cost between a couple hundred and several thousand dollars. Between band, orchestra, upright pianos, grand pianos, electric keyboards, world music groups, west african drum ensembles, and steel bands (to name a few), just getting the instruments so you can start playing is a huge expense. Maintenance of each is also a fiscal issue over time as strings pop, dents are made, reeds are worn out, valve oil is used, drum heads break, and irresponsibility takes over, potentially ruining instruments. Another issue is staff. On top of the salaries for the head directors for the band, choir, orchestra, and possibly guitar and piano programs, some programs mandate that one or two assistant directors are needed for each head director, plus you could end up paying private teachers for each instrument and/or voice part. One expense that every music program has is the need for sheet music. Schools cannot perform the same music every year; if they do then there will be no more learning or growth, and of course it would be boring. Buying new repertoire for your program is a major expense each year. Another overlooked expense is that of building and maintenance for large ensemble practice rooms, individual practice rooms, offices, music libraries, and instrument locker rooms. Nearly every music program needs uniforms for it's performers, and many schools buy those uniforms for the students to wear. These stock performance uniforms are replaced once every 5-10 years, based on how well they are taken care of. However, some groups, like marching band and show choir, can require new uniforms every year as they write, learn, and perform a new show each year. In this age of technology many programs also require full recording studio equipment for their rehearsals and performances, as well as speakers, mixers, amps, cords, adapters, and a variety of microphones for outdoor concerts or marching band shows. Many programs take performance trips to places like Florida, California, or Hawaii each year, they are not free. Teachers across the country said that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, colloquially known as No Child Left Behind, hurt their programs because of the extreme focus on testing. Music is time demanding. Every music student is asked to spend time practicing every day, in some cases 4 hours per day is the expectation. Music programs and ensembles also take trips throughout the year that remove students from class.  In addition to the aforementioned performance trips that programs take, musical students are also encouraged to audition for and take part in honor band/choir/orchestra or all-state clinics. Not only is there extra time spent preparing for these auditions, but upon admittance these programs take 2-4 out of a seven day week, all of this is time spent away from math, science, reading, and writing. When you consider the fact that each student can take part in several of the clinics or honor groups each year, it adds up to a few weeks spent out of class and in rehearsal instead of reading James Joyce, learning vector calculus, et cetera. Many weekends are 2/3 lost to music because of marching band alone. Schools will play for the football game every Friday night, then have a competition all of Saturday, for several consecutive weekends in a row. Almost like salt in the wound of time lost to music, concert season coincides directly with exam week, keeping students from studying because they are in long dress rehearsals or performing. To prevent all this time being lost to music without losing music entirely, people suggest that music should just be studied privately; outside of school.

To keep music alive in schools, the direct rebuttal to the budget man with an axe is to say that each of these programs are capable of fundraisers, securing sponsorships or partnerships with local stores and businesses, and setting up booster clubs. As one example of this is that band programs are infamous in this country for their annual fruit sales. Another is that music programs are liable sell themselves to play gigs like: galas, religious ceremonies, athletic events, conference conventions, social gatherings, annual festivals or parades, town theater musicals, the local opera, and so on. Another solution for funding that music programs go to is advertising local stores, businesses, and entrepreneurs in their program books for their performances and concerts. These fundraising methods are made possible by booster clubs, nearly always comprised of parents, who give their spare time and money to help their children get the most out of their respective music programs. 

With the imposed focus on standardized testing that is contained in the No Child Left Behind Act, advocates for music in schools cry out that students who study music test higher than those who do not. The difference between musicians and non-musicians are drastically greater in the areas of science and math; and greater still as the musical group of students study music longer throughout their school career. Complementary to that, despite the fact that music students are more likely to miss time in class from their trips and spend more time practicing instead of studying, "sustained learning in music  ...  correlates strongly with higher achievement in both math and reading." One of the best statistics that proves music's enhancement for other areas is that, "66 percent of music majors who applied to med school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. For comparison, (44 percent) of biochemistry majors were admitted." This is likely attributable to the fact that musicians are performers. They repeatedly felt the pressure of performance throughout their careers, and learned to execute to the best of their ability in those situations. Biochemistry majors repeatedly read myriad vocabulary and scientific formulae throughout their careers. It is a matter of which one is more likely to succeed under the pressure of having a scalpel in hand and an open brain in front of them.

Other defenses of music in schools include higher functionality and efficiency in the overcoming of stress and in the use of a given student's ears. Musical students are performers, as noted before, and their ability to overcome stress is attributable to the gross amount of times they have performed; the amount of times they laid all those hours in the practice room on the line with a packed house watching, or a panel of judges behind a screen. When you learn to overcome stress in one situation, you can overcome stress in any situation by virtue of psychology. Musical students also achieve higher functionality and efficiency in the use of their ears. The concept is ear training is not only a foreign one to those who have not experienced it, but can be difficult at least to wrap one's head around. NPR's study on the matter concluded that musician's ears are no better than anybody else's, but they have trained their neuron pathways to better and more accurately interpret the sounds that are sent to the brain from the ears. The same neuron pathways that are trained in this way are the same neurons or are at least closely related to the ones that impede children with dyslexia or other language problems. Thus giving children with language problems training as musicians will also help them with language arts, literature, and speaking. Additionally, according to Dr. Nina Kraus, music can "fundamentally alter the nervous system to create better learners." This proves that musical training can go so far as to make your brain better at learning.

Music in schools has many advocates from those who claim that music programs: decrease the academic achievement gap between high-income and low-income students, motivate students that are "at-risk" of dropping out of high school to stay and graduate, and keep students from being tempted to take to the streets. A strong example of the academic achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is the Harmony Project, a non-profit that provides free instruments and instruction to at-risk youth in Los Angeles; as long as the students promise to stay in school. The student's of the Harmony Project musical training brains develop at an amazing rate. Playing music "involves the auditory, visual, motor, and emotional centers of the brain" and according to Dr. Norman Weinberger "there is more activity in the brain during a musical performance than there is during most other activities." This finding shows that the Harmony Project's students enhanced their ability not only to hear distinctively and read, but a control group of their peers who were attending the same school but not Harmony Project "showed a decline in reading skills between the second and third grade". When looked at in the context of the facts: "kids from poor homes are not learning to read in the first four years of school  --  while kids from middle class and affluent homes are", and that there is "an alarming disparity between the availability of music programs in high-poverty and low-poverty schools", there is a positive correlation between music education and literary education. 

According to ancient greek philosophy, there exists a "quadrivial compass" that "represents the intersection of Astrology, Music, Number, and Geometry. With an understanding of these four art/sciences, you can orient yourself in any unfamiliar field of knowledge." These four sciences combined with the "Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric" to make the original seven liberal arts. Music is one of these ways to being able to understand any other field for a reason, we just discovered it with brain scanners and the Harmony Project recently. However, Plato and Pythagoras understood it's significance 2,500 years ago. In their time it was understood that if you trained in each of these fields equally, you would be a better learner. In other words, coordinating the neurons required to know each of the seven liberal arts will reform your brain in such a way that you can learn any other material with ease relative to the liberal arts. The fact that music is one of these seven is an insurmountable argument for music's place in schools.

Leadership development is one thing that music educators and programs take great pride in. Great leadership in music starts with an individual that is distinct, dynamic, and dependent. That individual lets the leadership role become the person through: service to the individual's peers, leading by example, and clear, two-way, oft used yet efficient pathways of communication. The leader is trained by the said acts of service, example, and communication to create win-win situations for everyone involved. Win-win situations is where music separates itself from the pack. In our academic system, those who do not do well, or lose, get extra tutoring, or a win. Those who lose in extra tutoring get remedial classes, another win for them. Those who lose in remedial classes get tutoring for those, and if they lose in the tutoring for remedial classes, they get to try the whole year over again. The worse this student does in school, the better it is for his peers grade point average. That is a win-lose. On the opposite side of that spectrum, you have the valedictorian. This person is so motivated to do well, it seems, for the rewards of achieving that honor. The way the system works though, is that as long as the valedictorian does what is expected, then this valedictorian will just get better from the valedictorian's peers performing relatively worse. This is also a win-lose. 9th grade math is the bane of many people's existence due to the facts: that high schoolers do not like math in general, that there are 30 hormonal 9th graders trapped in a room everyday to learn math, which they do not like, and that 9th grade math teachers cannot stand putting up with hormonal and crazy 9th graders. When you put 9th graders with other 9th graders, they act like 9th graders. This is a lose-lose. Our academic system is set up in this manner, and subsequently so is our society. On the other hand, music organizations are set up differently, to facilitate win-wins. When an individual in a choir struggles to sing in tune, it does not make the rest of the choir better, it makes them sound worse. The same principle transfers to any type of musical ensemble. The members of the group will either adjust to the individual who is out of tune so that harmony is resplendent, or they will stop, take time to teach the individual to sing in tune, then move forward together. That is a win-win. In marching band, there are not freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior divisions in practice, warm-ups, sectionals, meals, or any point at all. This principle is also applicable to any type of musical group. When you put 9th graders with seniors, and the same goes for sophomores and juniors, they all act like seniors. They all follow the example set by the individual who is distinct among them, dynamic in his/her actions around them, and dependent on those who follow for leadership. This system is only seen in musical ensembles, yet it makes the most sense. In this system everybody wins; and that is the greatest of defenses by which music enhances other aspects of life.

These are all just and true reasons to keep music in school. But, whether a defender is showing: how well musicians test, how they are developing their neural pathways, how the wisest philosophers in ancient history believe that music is fundamental to understanding anything, how music teaches win-wins and develops strong leaders, or just making a rebuttal to financial and legal restrictions; if it is their primary argument, that defender is wrong in every sense of the word. Music is the not just the story of our lives, our world, our history, our sacrifice, our faith, our doubt, our joy, or even our love. Music is woven through web of time as thickly as time itself. In Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan, the protagonists struggle to save humanity against the merciless laws of time and space. In the midst of their effort to manipulate gravity as a means of traversing time and space, the astronaut portrayed by Anne Hathaway, Dr. Amelia Brand, launches into a powerful monologue of love and finishes with this resounding line:

"Love isn't something we invented. It's observable, powerful, it has to mean something ...  Love is the one thing we are capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space."

This powerful statement is wrong though. Or rather, it omits part of the truth. Music is also capable of transcending the dimensions of time and space, giving us a portal that does not exist in time, but more out of it. A portal that leads to a realm of sacrifice, passion, faith, doubt, joy, secrecy, integrity, concordance, and ultimately the divine. Music is defined as sound organized in some way passing through time. A more in tune definition would be: sound organized in some way passing in and/or out of time. Music is love, and humanity would be lost without it. Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Beauty is it's own excuse for being." Music is it's own excuse for being. Music is it's own excuse for being in our schools.

