Music provides a basic learning tool. Music makes specific and essential contributions to intellectual and aesthetic development, the education of feeling, the exploration of values, the development of physical and perceptual skills, and personal and social education.
Music provides ways of knowing and expressing. It is a dynamic part of our life and culture, providing insights and awareness as well as pleasure and enjoyment. Music also enables a sense of community within a school, playing a significant role in the development of a vibrant learning culture. Music simultaneously engages the learner’s mind, body, and spirit.
The fundamental belief that underlies this curriculum is that music provides a range of unique experiences that are essential for the development for all students. The challenge for schools is to devote time and resources to music at all levels, so that students may experience a broad range of cumulative music experiences in a regular, planned, and
co-ordinated way.
Intelligence theories indicate that all human beings possess several types of intelligence, each one a potential way to create meaning. While all learners possess the potential to develop each of these, every learner has strengths and aptitudes in certain areas.
While music education develops musical intelligence, it can also develop several other intelligences: bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and spatial. It is also important to note that an education in music can contribute to the development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow students to create, understand, and develop meaning in other areas of the curriculum. ( NS EECD Band Instruments 7–9: Curriculum Framework (Draft 2011))