It is reported in today’s Times that, despite of music being a compulsory subject in school until age 14, less than an hour a week is devoted to it in most primary schools and that only 13 per cent of primary pupils learn an instrument. Apparently, a major contributing factor behind the current dearth of music teaching in our primary schools is the fact that student primary teachers receive no training in the teaching of music.
You may well be wondering, sad though the dearth of music is in our primary schools, what the early learning of music has to do with social cohesion. Well, Plato and Aristotle certainly both thought it has a great deal to with it.