When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as mere entertainment, but certainly not an education priority(优先). This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students.
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as does a Schubert song. The Jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception(感知)that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotive(情感的)meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.
The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses.
Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love.
So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.

当学生们和家长们被要求根据课程的重要性来给它们定级时，艺术课不可避免的被排在了清单的最后。人们常认为音乐很美好，但是不重要。音乐往往被视为单纯的娱乐，无疑它不是教育中优先考虑的事情。这是一种缺乏远见的观点。事实上，音乐教育对所有的学生都是有益的、重要的。
音乐告诉我们，我们是谁。因为音乐是它的创造者的一种表达，它反应了他们的思想和价值，以及音乐来源的社会环境。摇滚乐表现了一种如舒伯特的歌曲这样的生活方式。乔治格什温和其他音乐家引入到他们的音乐中的爵士乐，很明显地影响了美国 人，因为它来自于美国的音乐的传统。音乐表达了我们的特性和价值。它给予我们一个社会的特性。
音乐给予了我们一种用其他方法获得不了的感知。科学能偶解释太阳是如何生气和落下。 艺术探究了同一种现象的情感意义。我们需要用每一种可能的方式去发现和反应我们的世界，因为一个简单却很重要的原因：没有一种方法能够得到全部。
艺术是思想的形式，这种形式在人们的交流中如数学和科学的符号一样的有力。 这种交流的方式就像人们对其他人说话一样。


累了，睡觉去了，如果明天有空再帮你翻。