Thanks for the post. I agree, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just experience fine arts in the schools as smoothly as any other subject.

Thanks for your points!

I enjoyed this post and in particular, the paragraph regarding ‘Music and Arts Teachers having every bit of the educational credentials as other teachers’ and should be be afforded ‘the same rights, privileges, and facility spaces as other teachers’.

I would take this a step further and venture to say that music teachers put as much we if not more time into their craft as lawyers, doctors and accountants. These are the disciplines that we should be aspiring to emulate as far as compensation.

For far too long (dating back to Lowell Mason and the Boston School Board days!) music educators have been ‘giving away’ their expertise because by our very nature we are a kind and caring group, often putting students first and our own needs last. I fear we have gone too far down the road inside academia and now we may have few options (if any) as we attempt to gain back our budgets and programs, not to mention our rightful rewards as professionals.

It’s sad for students when programs continue to shrivel up and die. And even sadder for our profession as a whole which gave so much to ’school music programs’ over the years and had such little support.

My dream is that letters like yours will some day no longer be necessary!