This morning we drove to my grandson’s solo high school competition. He performed a marimba ragtime piece and this afternoon he did a snare drum duet with a friend. Both times he was critiqued by a professional instructor receiving valuable hints of what went well and areas he could improved. He did well. I am glad that my grandchildren have such high exposure to music as part of their curriculum. Exposure to music is vital to the education process and in some countries, like Venezuela, it is available to all students, despite race or family income. Sadly this is not true in USA. Milwaukee Public Schools, due to budget cuts, had to make cuts in art and music. This is the sad reality of our county’s growing disparity.

This afternoon at my son’s home, I noticed my other grandson, who is a good athlete,between watching non-stop tournament basketball on TV, play a game of video game, “Call to Duty, a military game that shows your hands on a weapon of choice and the object is to shoot and kill every person in site. He shot reflexively, as the military trains our soldiers. When I asked him how he knew who was good or bad he said something about some time of sound. Since he was wearing earphones I could not hear what he heard but I could see he shot every person in sight as quick as he could. Sadly this kind of shooting experience is more available in the USA than music education.

Music soothes, firing a gun in rapid succession agitates. Music calms, firing a gun quickens. In USA music education has limited availability; firing a gun has universal availability. Yesterday I attended street prayer vigils for four of the many homicide victims in Milwaukee. Guns for killing are everywhere and now the State legislature is in process of eliminating the forty eight hour waiting period between purchase and receiving a gun. In Wisconsin we are making getting a gun and shooting someone out of reflex, like anger, easier, while making music education less available to youth.

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