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 entertainment, but certainly not an education priority(优先). 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 does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that
George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their 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 emotive (情感的) 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, 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 an example
to_________ .
A. compare it with rock
music
B. show music identifies a society
C. introduce American musical traditions
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 feeling in different ways
D. explain what it means to be human
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.