Homeschool parents have the unique opportunity to raise culturally literate children. Many schools across the country are cutting back or eliminating their art and music programs, thinking that more class time studying math and English will produce higher test scores. Many years ago, however, a very wise principal at an exclusive New York City private school addressed a group of parents of incoming kindergarteners. “You sit here this evening worrying about how much math your child will learn and how advanced the math curriculum will be, but I can assure you, many years from now your child will not remember those things; they will remember the play they were in or the songs that they sang.” And, oh, how right he was. My son remembers his rooster presentation and the chicken costume I made for the performance and little else from those first years in school.

I also remember the first time I met Susan Wise Bauer, author of The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education.

​Susan opened one of our Stories in Music CD booklets, which always have some sheet music in the centerfold, and sang the melody. I was impressed... “My mother decided, I think it was in the 7th grade year, that we should all learn to sight sing” she explained. Now that is the benefit of homeschooling, namely you have time to do things like that.

Last evening I sat in Amsterdam with two older people from the ballet world. The man, a very handsome, agile man in his 70s is Dutch and was a dancer here at the ballet company in Amsterdam and then at the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich; the woman was a dancer at the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia and managed to come to the west in 1982 where she became a legendary teacher both in America and Europe. They met here in Amsterdam when they both had been invited to teach at the Dutch National Ballet. As we lamented about the state of the world, the woman said, “Education. That is what will change the world. And big education, the arts, music, this is what changes people’s souls and leads to understanding.” And I thought, “Yes, isn’t that the truth.” When two days before, I had sat with 1,700 Danes in the new opera house in Copenhagen, and we all cheered together at the conclusion of the opera by Carl Nielsen. Whatever our differing opinions and experiences may have been, for three hours music had brought us together and we could all agree that it had been a fantastic production.