I understand, maybe sympathise with, what is often called our “target culture": if you are putting X amount of public money into an institution, or set of institutions, then you should get Y amount of products or benefits out of them. So with Music in education & more money goes in to provision of, say, instrumental lessons, so more expert musicians should come out of the school gates at 16 or 18. But it does not seem to work that way and the reason is that success especially in something like Music which relies on sustained and appropriate nurturing, depends so much for success on the culture and ethos of an institution and the quality of its social environment, and these things are incredibly hard to set targets for!

I am a musician and a teacher, and I have spent most of my working life in educational establishments. I ought to like schools, but I do not. Sadly many people I know who also work in school share my feelings of dislike. I think of Mr M., a mild-mannered yet robust builder in a nearby village who no longer goes into local schools to do maintenance work: The children just push past and pin you to the wall as they go down the corridor “it's terrible!” he told me. I think of certain children I have known well - bullied or terrified about being bullied. I think of the noise at break time when the staff have retreated en masse to the staff room, the undisciplined mass of young people and their lack of self motivation or self worth displayed in the legs and the bags sprawled across passageways and depicted in their chosen grim black “uniforms".

What is lacking in these places is intrinsic or extrinsic behavioural guidance, derived from a preference for order over disorder. There is a lack of sensitivity towards the needs and feelings of others and, above all, there is no sense of discipline and patience as a means to achievement. I think of these elements as the Four Virtues and what Music education attempts to do very often, is to introduce into this kind of environment an activity, which just doesn’t work without these Four Virtues! You cannot, after all, be an effective musician without sensitivity (to sound, to other performers, to an audience), without order (music is just ordered sounds, ordered in time, after all), discipline and patience (both necessary for even the most basic musical skill acquisition). Not surprisingly it doesnt always fit in very well! Some children do manage it: they assimilate Music and all the virtues that make Music possible, and they deserve our praise and admiration for that. Its lovely to see heart-warming and moving in the same way as was Vedran Smailovics cello playing amongst the shell craters of Sarajevo in 1992. Such serenity is not mainstream, however, and in some schools it seems to be virtually absent, and thats a pity.

There needs to be an ethos in our schools, which values and promotes the Four Virtues if Music is to succeed in the way it should. Schools need to bring sensitivity, order, discipline and patience into their classrooms - and their corridors - and into their students lives, almost as an antidote to what society largely has to offer them obsessive acquisition, self-gratification, and the disorder and crassness associated with these things.

As a final thought, here is an example of how not to do it. In some schools, the caretaking staffs duties include clearing up the childrens litter from the grounds and surrounding streets after the lunch break. Thus the childrens loutish, inconsiderate, unecological and indeed illegal behaviour is actually condoned by the schools management. That is a disgrace in itself, but more than that it suggests that those particular schools have given up all attempts at instilling the kinds of qualities I have been describing - which are prerequisites not only for educating successful musicians, but ultimately successful human beings.