Why music education must be an important part of our school curricula - 1999 Commonwealth Day Statement

With its chosen theme of 'music', this day will bring to centre stage the richness and vitality of the Commonwealth's many musical traditions and at the same time celebrate the cultural diversity of our 54-nation community. We in the Commonwealth family believe that music is a universal means of communicating, a language which knows no boundaries or tongue. The theme of music will also make the 50th anniversary year of the modern Commonwealth a truly memorable one.

Ever since the first person blew air through a conch shell or sang through a hollow tree branch, music has been a part of the human experience. Those first notes have long since receded into air, unknown and unrecorded, but the pleasure those sounds gave our ancestors has grown and multiplied with a variety of more complex musical forms and traditions - each one of them as important and as spiritual as the next. Listening to music from other countries, therefore, opens doors to societies we rarely appreciate or fully understand. To hear the music that others enjoy is a marvellous way to discover our common humanity, and to appreciate the things which make us all sing and dance.

Like painting or drawing, music is also an important form of expression, with wider significance than we may realise. Modern studies have linked music skills with a greater ability to learn other subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic. And yet, on ever crowded school curricula where foreign languages, science, computer and business studies all vie for our attention, music can seem an unfashionable choice. Despite this we must teach our citizens that a society educated on only facts and floppy disks is a society without heart or soul. I believe it is time that we ensured music education is, and remains, a part of the basic curricula of our schools.

This Commonwealth Day, the musical traditions of our family will be heard from sea to sea and coast to coast as we celebrate our cultural diversity, the optimism of a new millennium and a universal love of music. I urge you to participate in this day of international goodwill and understanding.

for Commonwealth Day
Monday, 8 March 1999