Music Education

I just spent two days surrounded by Music Educators, and here's a thought: "Music Education" is the broadest, most vague job description I've ever heard.
I've spent two decades around music - practicing it, performing it, studying it, learning its history, writing it, arranging it, recording it, teaching it, doing the math on it, building instruments for it, etc – I’ve made a formal study of nine different instruments - and I don’t think I know more than a fraction of what there is to know about music.
Now I’ll say that although I think teachers are outgunned at every turn when it comes to doing their job the way I think it ought to be done, I will say that I’ve had some amazing teachers (mostly private) that I feel have been specially qualified to teach me some aspect of music I couldn’t have learned as well from anyone else. Thank you Mike, Dennis, Matt, Lisle, Victor, and the RubberBand (who I’ve stolen the most from!). But it took all of them, plus me, to get me to where I feel like I can call myself a musician. And that’s a vague term in-and-of itself…
Music is a living, breathing energy; an experience, a form of expression, give-and-take with the Universe. It is technique, feel, knowledge, circumstance, craftsmanship – a seldom-used channel that runs directly between your spirit and your body, that doesn’t require much thought at all, once all the framework is in place.
And we’re asking our Music Educators to do this with limited resources, mediocre pay, and combined programs. (My high-school guitar class teacher gave me an A and told me not to come anymore. He was, at best, one or two days ahead of his students on learning the guitar.)
So let’s do this – let’s get our kids out to shows. Let’s get our educators out to shows! Let’s LISTEN to music (it doesn’t happen in the background!), and talk about music. Let’s get our educators talking to the working performers, composers, conductors, engineers, and teach applicable skills! Let’s get our kids involved in music programs! Let’s put money into the programs! Let’s support the existing ones! You don’t have to have a kid in a concert to make it a good concert! Give your kids, yourself, lessons! Don’t like the piano? Buy a banjo! Don’t like the banjo? (C’mon, who doesn’t like the banjo?) Buy a flute! A recorder! I keep a Peruvian flute in my glove box. Music can be anywhere. In my opinion, it already is. But that leads me to whacky vibration talk that spooks folks, so back to the point at hand:
“Music Education” is an overwhelming task, and God bless those who undertake it. May we all do our best to support, contribute, and educate all who desire it, and may we all do our best to instill that desire in everyone we can.