A Music Teacher! Is that a proper job?

On the ‘The Apprentice’ on TV3 on the 9th of November a music teacher, Sam Conroy was belittled for teaching “only music!” It was suggested to her that music wasn’t a real subject and “how could anybody teach, only music?” During a staff discussion on the topic the following day a colleague of mine said “That’s typical of what people think. You only have to look at parent-teacher meetings to know people don’t care about music, they never even make the effort to show up!” As a language teacher I was astonished at this. I always have a great turnout to parent-teacher meetings. This highlights the fact that parents place much more importance on languages than they do on the arts, a view that has to be altered, if students are to be true to their natural abilities and talents. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are and “Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world” (Robinson, K. 2009 p16). However, instead, we are educating people out of creativity, stifling their individual talents and “killing their motivation to learn” (Robinson, K. 2009 p 16).