Music of The United States - Education

Education

Further information: Music education in the United States or Music schools in the United States

Music is an important part of education in the United States, and is a part of most or all school systems in the country. Music education is generally mandatory in public elementary schools, and is an elective in later years. High schools generally offer classes in singing, mostly choral, and instrumentation in the form of a large school band. Music may also be a part of theatrical productions put on by a school's drama department. Many public and private schools have sponsored music clubs and groups, most commonly including the marching band that performs at high school sports games, a trend that began with the wide popularity of Sousa's bands in the 1880s and 1890s.

Higher education in the field of music in the United States is mostly based around large universities, though there are important small music academies and conservatories. University music departments may sponsor bands ranging from marching bands that are an important part of collegiate sporting events, prominently featuring fight songs, to barbershop groups, glee clubs, jazz ensembles and symphonies, and may additionally sponsor musical outreach programs, such as by bringing foreign performers to the area for concerts. Universities may also have a musicology department, and do research on many styles of music.

Read more about this topic:  Music Of The United States

Famous quotes containing the word education:

    “The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
    —Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    “One of the greatest faults of the women of the present time is a silly fear of things, and one object of the education of girls should be to give them knowledge of what things are really dangerous.”
    —Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)

    “I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
    —William Howard Taft (1857–1930)