Music Education – Curricular, or Not?

So I just got done reading an article for my MusEd 360 class entitled “Making Arts Education Curricular.” The basic point of the article was to explain why arts aren’t yet widely considered curricular and what we (as [future] music educators) can do to make the arts curricular. But I have some issues with this thinking. Here’s an excerpt from the article review I wrote:

If music is so critically important, as much so as English and Math and Science, then I agree with essentially all of the article – true curricula need to be written; teachers need to adhere to their curricula; schedules needs to be more reasonable; the arts need to be more inclusive; etc. But if music is not as crucially necessary, which I do not believe it is, then many of those points become moot – it can remain largely extracurricular; it can be more selective; a true curriculum becomes less important; and so forth.

Is this bad? Should I be fired as a music education major? In a sense, I truly think so… In the past, some of us ‘good’ music ed majors have scoffed at ‘bad’ music ed majors, wishing they’d leave the major so that we don’t license bad teachers. We’ve secretly rejoiced when some of these people have, in fact, left the major for performance, for example – jerks, bad teachers, people who don’t believe in music education? They’re welcome to play, just stay away from our students.

But now I feel like a hypocrite. I still fully believe in music education as being important. It has been a very important part of my life, and I am what I am today in large part because of it. But I just don’t feel it to be as completely necessary as some of my classes are trying to make me believe it is. And I feel like the only one in the music education department who still feels like this.

I just don’t know…