When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are
unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it
is viewed as mere entertainment, but certainly not an education priority (優(yōu)先).This view is shortsighted.
In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students.
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their
thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just
as surely as a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced
into the
ir music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music
expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception(感知)that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can
explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotional meaning of the same phenomenon. We
need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No
one way can get it all.
The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific
symbols. They are ways we human beings "talk" to each other. They are the language of civilization
through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, and our hopes. The
arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When
we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take
away from them the meanings that music expresses.
Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be
human. The arts do. Music is an important
way we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love.
So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.
1. According to Paragraph 1,students_________.
A. regard music as a way of entertainment
B. disagree with their parents on education
C. view music as an overlooked subject
D. prefer the arts to science
2. In Paragraph 2, the author uses jazz as an example to ___________.
A. compare it with rock music
B. show music reflects a society
C. introduce American musical trad
itions
D. prove music influences people's lifestyles
3. According to the passage, the arts and science________.
A. approach the world from different angles
B. explore different phenomena of the world
C. express people's feelings in different ways
D. explain what it means to be human differently
4. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Music education deserves more attention.
B. Music should be of top education priority.
C. Music is an effective communication tool.
D. Music education makes students more imaginative. '
