Importance of Music in Education
Plato in his Republic has dealt with extraordinary emphasis on
the importance of music in education; as is the music to which a
people is accustomed, so, he says in effect, is the character of
that people. The importance of painting and sculpture is hardly
less. The mind is profoundly influenced by what it sees and, if
the eye is trained from the days of childhood to the contemplation
and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in line
and color, the tastes, habits and character will be insensibly trained
to follow a similar law of beauty, harmony and just arrangement
in the life of adult man...
Poetry raises the emotions and gives each its separate delight.
Art stills the emotions and teaches them the delight of a restrained
and limited satisfaction, - this indeed was the characteristic that
the Greeks, a nation of artists far more artistic than poetic, tried
to bring into their poetry. Music deepens the emotions and harmonises
them with each other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect
education for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified,
self-controlled, deep and harmonious. These, therefore, are agents
which cannot profitably be neglected by humanity on its onward march
or degraded to the mere satisfaction of sensuous pleasure which
will disintegrate rather than build the character. They are, when
properly used, great educating, edifying and civilising forces.
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