When students and parents are asked to rate(排名) subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as only entertainment, but certainly not an education priority(优先). This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students.

Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the people who create it, it reflects their thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from . Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity(身份) as a society.

Music provides a kind of perception(感知)that cannot be gained any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotive(情感的)meaning of the same phenomenon(现象). We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.

The arts are forms of thought as powerful as maths and science. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language of civilization(文明) through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children some important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away the meanings that music expresses from our children.

Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, happiness, the meaning and value of peace and love.

So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.

小题1:According to Paragraph 1, students

A．regard music as a way of entertainment

B．disagree with their parents on education

C．view music as an overlooked(被忽视的) subject

D．prefer the arts to science

小题2: In Paragraph 2, the author uses jazz an example to

A．compare it with rock music

B．show music identifies(身份) a society

C．introduce American musical traditions

D．prove music influences people’s lifestyles

小题3:According to the passage, the arts and science

.

A. approach the world from different angles(角度)

B. explore different phenomena of the world

C express people’s feelings in different ways

D. explain what it means to be human differently

小题4: What is the main idea of the passage ?

A．Music education deserves(值得) more attention.

B．Music should be of top education priority(优先).

C．Music is an effective communication tool.

D．Music education makes students more imaginative.