There is something worse than a student who never participates in the arts at school.
It is a student who participates — but never encounters the arts at their best.
A person with no arts experience at all may at least remain open-minded. Music is an unknown quantity, something that might be important, something others speak passionately about. But someone who has lived through a mediocre programme believes they already understand. They possess what feels like evidence.
Crucially, they have nothing to compare their experience to. If the programme was uninspiring, technically shallow, or emotionally inert, they assume that this is simply what school music is — perhaps even what music itself is.
And the more prestigious the school, the stronger that assumption becomes. Students naturally trust that a well-resourced, high-status institution offers high-quality experiences. If the music programme fails to move them, they conclude not that the programme was weak, but that the art form itself is limited.
Music was simply another school activity — no different from the clubs or sport. Pleasant, perhaps. Occasionally entertaining. But hardly essential.
When such individuals later become administrators or policymakers, they do not approach arts advocacy with curiosity. They approach it with quiet scepticism. In their minds, they have already tested the proposition and found it wanting.
Music advocates then appear, in their eyes, as a small minority of enthusiasts arguing for something nice but expendable.
The Experience That Changes Everything
I often describe music as a language for communicating feeling — a medium whose purpose is catharsis. Playing or listening can produce physical reactions: a tightening of the throat, tears without sadness, or the unmistakable shiver we call goosebumps.
I still remember the first time I felt that sensation while playing in a school band. The memory is as vivid as any major event of adolescence. I can recall where I was sitting, the sound around me, and the sudden realisation that something extraordinary was happening — something beyond notes and rhythms.
Those moments stay with you. If you become a teacher, you spend the rest of your career trying to create them for others. If you leave music for another profession — business, law, politics — you carry an enduring respect for what music can do.
These are the people who become allies of the arts later in life.
The Difficulty of Reaching That Level
Creating such experiences in school ensembles is extraordinarily difficult.
It requires far more than enthusiastic students and a competent teacher. Timetables must allow rehearsal time. Budgets must provide instruments and music. Administrators must protect the programme from competing demands. Parents must support it. Above all, the conductor must possess deep knowledge — not only of technique, but of repertoire, programming, and the psychology of performance.
Technical proficiency is only the threshold. Catharsis occurs when everything aligns: composition, performers, acoustics, occasion, audience, and emotional intent.
Many school programmes never reach this alignment, not through negligence but through structural constraints. And the number of teachers who succeed consistently in creating such moments is painfully small.
A Moment That Worked
At one school, I conducted Alfred Reed’s Alleluia! Laudamus Te for the yearly speech day in Brisbane City Hall, accompanied by one of the country’s finest organists (the amazing Christopher Wrench) on that magnificent instrument.
The performance was not technically perfect — school ensembles rarely are. But the music, the venue, the organ, the occasion, and the audience combined to create something memorable. You could feel the sound filling the hall, the students rising to the moment, the audience responding in kind.
Experiences like that imprint themselves on everyone present. Students may forget the notes, but they do not forget the feeling.
A Moment That Didn’t
At another school, the same annual event had a vastly larger budget. There were giant screens, professional video packages, sophisticated lighting, and elaborate staging.
But the musical programme was controlled administratively rather than artistically. The school’s established ensembles were merged into a temporary “scratch” orchestra. Repertoire was chosen to support a series of amplified soloists performing popular songs. The distinctive identities of the wind band, string orchestra, and choir disappeared into a generic backing ensemble.
The result was polished, loud, and superficially impressive.
It was also forgettable.
Within days, many students could not recall what they had performed. There were no moments of stillness, no sense of shared discovery, no emotional release. To administrators and uninvolved parents, the event appeared to be a triumph of production values. Musically, it achieved almost nothing.
The Scale of the Problem
Attend a large school band festival and the magnitude of the issue becomes painfully clear. In the space of a single day, many hundreds of students may perform. The standard of effort is admirable. The logistics are impressive. The atmosphere is supportive.
And yet, one can leave with the uncomfortable sense that very few — perhaps none — of those students have actually experienced music in the deeper sense.
They have played notes. They have fulfilled requirements. They have participated.
But participation alone is not transformation.
If anything, these events can unintentionally reinforce the idea that music is simply another competitive or performative activity — something to prepare, present, and move on from.
The Long-Term Consequence
Students who experience programmes like this do not become opponents of the arts. They simply conclude that the arts are pleasant but dispensable — interchangeable with any other extracurricular activity.
Worse still, they believe this conclusion to be well-founded. They are not indifferent through ignorance; they are indifferent through experience — albeit an incomplete one.
When such students later occupy positions of authority, they do not cut music programmes out of hostility. They cut them because nothing in their experience suggests that music is uniquely valuable.
In this way, weak arts programmes inadvertently undermine the very cause they intend to serve.
The Advocate’s Blind Spot
Many passionate music advocates assume that exposure alone is enough — that participation automatically produces lifelong appreciation.
But participation without depth can produce the opposite outcome. It normalises mediocrity. It strips the arts of their aura. It reduces music to background entertainment rather than foreground experience.
We may therefore be creating something worse than adults with no arts experience at all.
We are creating adults who believe they understand the arts — and have concluded that they are non-essential.
A Sobering Conclusion
The tragedy is that teachers cannot manufacture transformative experiences at will. They depend on conditions largely outside their control. Even with ideal circumstances, such moments remain rare and fragile.
The quest to ensure that every child experiences music at its most meaningful level can feel almost impossible.
And yet it is precisely this quest that justifies the work of the most passionate music educators — those who continue to fight for time, resources, repertoire, and artistic integrity even when success seems uncertain.
Without those rare moments of genuine encounter, we risk producing generations of well-meaning, culturally indifferent decision-makers — people who believe they understand music because they once participated in it, while never having encountered its true power.
They do not oppose the arts; they simply see no reason to protect them. And indifference, in the long run, is more dangerous than ignorance.