Just in: Bavaria slashes music lessons

Just in: Bavaria slashes music lessons

News

norman lebrecht

February 28, 2024

The southern German sdtate has announced plans to merge music lessons with other subjects in primary schools in order to shift resources to reading, writing and arithmetic.

They say no subject will be eliminated but art, music and design will be treated in future as a single subject.

There’s a huge political row blowing up over it.

Read here.

Comments

  • John Borstlap says:

    No wonder – for a country that understands itself as a ‘Kulturnation’, this is a serious matter. It seems that German children achieve quite badly along the whole range of subjects, so a shift is necessary to spend more time on the subjects which appear to have priority – and it is there where the problem lies: culture has no priority, according to the plans. Religion however will remain untouched, because we all know how ‘truly important’ religion is for the development of youth.

    • RW2013 says:

      This appears to be the sad result –
      https://swiftposium2024.com

      • John Borstlap says:

        That is clinically insane: ms X ‘…..has emerged as a cultural icon of extraordinary influence’ followed by woke nonsense, it reads as a Monty Python satire.

    • Shalom Rackovsky says:

      Actually, John, religion can be important for the development of youth. Perhaps, though, the decision as to that importance, and the implementation of religious instruction, should be left to parents, rather than public schools. That, of course, would free up time for the restoration of music lessons….

  • Margaret Koscielny says:

    Tragic idea. For a country which has created so many fine musicians, this policy is akin to some of the worst policies of some of the U.S.A.’s most
    Reactionary States. What will they do to ensure talent will be nurtured in anyMargaret area of the Arts, if there are not programs to develop the skills to make music and listen to it.
    I suppose they have reasoned that since everything in the future will be supplied by A.I., that the real thing doesn’t matter any more.

  • Margaret Koscielny says:

    My comment should be edited……..sorry!
    I hope it’s obvious where!

  • Jim C says:

    Sounds familiar.

    Welcome to the USA circa 1978 or so. That’s about when the public schools started cutting back on their art and music programs.

  • Vaughan Jones says:

    I absolutely love the stock photo used for this article! All those Bayern fans at the turnstiles, obviously celebrating cuts to music lessons!

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