Talking Up Music Education is a podcast from The NAMM Foundation about music education. Recorded live from The 2017 NAMM Show, episode 19 includes an interview with the former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
“[Music Education] is an issue that builds bridges instead of walls,” said Huckabee. “People embrace the value of music and the arts.”
Huckabee sat down with The NAMM Foundation’s Mary Luehrsen to discuss how he successfully helped legislation that requires all public school students to participate in music and the arts.
Sound Bites From the Podcast
“The people who are the true innovators, the people who are Bill Gates and Steven Jobs and Steven Spielberg, the people who come up with the amazing next thing, these are the right-brained kids, the ones that sometimes gets shoved over in the corner, and they’re considered to be slow learners, nerds, not cooperative, they’re all of those things. But what they really are is they’re brilliant, and they’re thinking in a way that is different than the left-brain-dominant kids who think very logically and in a linear way. Right-brain kids don’t think like that, but they’re the ones who create the magic things that we need. And if we bore them to death, instead of developing an Apple computer or software, what we’ll end up doing is we’ll see them drop out, and what a shame, what a loss—not to that kid, the loss to all of us.” - Mike Huckabee
“I was very passionate about music and the arts being a part of the curriculum for every student, K through twelve, but I also knew that it had to be delivered by certified teachers, people who knew what they were doing.” - Mike Huckabee
“You’ll never have music and arts in the schools if you don’t mandate it, because what you mandate, you will fund—because you have to, it’s the law. You find the funding, because you have to.” - Mike Huckabee
Talking Up Music Education is a podcast produced by The NAMM Foundation about music education. Host Mary Luehrsen chats with teachers, parents, students and community leaders who share stories about what they are doing to create music learning opportunities. Please download, share and subscribe to keep up with the stories that make a difference in music education advocacy.