The answer is YES. I didn't learn how to read music when I was a child and I'm sad about that.

Learning how to read music is like learning another language: a very useful thing to do.

"The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way" 

W.B. Yeats

Learning to read music is really only part of it. I bridle at the word "forced" but I would argue that there needs to be quite a lot more music in primary schools in particuar; especially collective singing and elementary instrumental playing.  I know that finding room in the syllabus is difficult, but the rewards are enormous, and in social terms every bit as great as the alleged benefits of school sport.

I sympathised with this comment:


That sounds exactly like me. I learned to read music at a very basic level at school (I didn't take a music O level) and I can still do it.

It gave me no end of satisfaction, when I sat at my sister's piano recently, to find that I could play (very slowly) a tune written in the book in front of me. Even though I have no need to read music, I'm very happy that I can.

Well, it makes playing music more easy, don't you think so, P-G?

It's the same with drawing. Learning about perspective, etc. can enhance one's appreciation of paintings.

The Devil's Tune Writer writes:
How else would I have come to be the best?

Thanks PW.

I can see the way all this is going - schools are stripping out all the paper-based stuff and relying on computerised everything.  By the time I was at school there was much less emphasis on mental arithmetic and we had calculator and non-calculator exams.  Now apparently spelling isn't important because of spell-check (don't get me started), and some schools are dropping joined up writing on the basis that people write much less these days so they don't need to be able to write fast (?).

I know we're all sat here typing away, but I can't help feeling that it's dangerous to think kids won't ever need paper in the future.  What happens if suddenly they don't have them any more?  This might be a little extreme but it bothers me.  Fine - teach them computer skills, but don't make them rely solely on computers.

I don't think children should be "forced" to do anything. But I don't see any reason on earth why learning music notation should not form part of a basic school music syllabus. To my mind the onus is on those who would remove it to explain why it's undesirable or unnecessary or whatever, in relation to other items which remain on the curriculum. It isn't quantum field theory, after all: a basic knowledge of music notation is not that difficult to acquire, in relation to the understanding, potential for further learning and lifelong pleasure it can unlock. So what's the point of excluding it? Of course many well-known and "successful" musicians have done what they do without learning to read music, but I don't see what that's supposed to prove - particularly in the oft-cited case of Paul McCartney, whose woeful attempts to "write" orchestral and choral music with the assistance of someone who can deal with the dots would seem to indicate, if anything, that it might have been a good idea for him to have had a few lessons in notation at some point.

It's enough to make one think that the purpose of our state education "system" is obviously just to produce compliant and passive consumers whose abilities are limited to those necessary to ensure the ascendancy of the moneyed (and therefore better-educated) classes. Sound familiar?