I agree completely Richard. When I did some music support work in primary schools I was told I wasn't to teach notation ( I was teaching the teachers who were basically unable to teach the Key Stage music curriculum)

I did anyway, and they loved it. There was no force involved , just a natural progression from games involving blobs, blue tac and a couple of lines... they learnt quite a lot even in the classroom environment, not the easiest place for this to be taught.

I have to say I have been lucky enough to be able to read music since I was six, and learnt it pretty much alongside reading ( as I guess most of you too!) I can't imagine a world in which I couldn't read music

A

This is probably a good place to make the admission (which may be surprising to some) that I'm not at all a fluent reader, to the point where I even wonder whether there is such a thing as musical dyslexia. Apart from my Grade V Theory, I'm almost entirely self-taught, and although I can just about cope with a vocal line sight unseen, I'm completely in awe of friends who can sight-read anything I set before them, no matter how complicated. I know exactly what all the notes are - I've been writing music since I was eleven, but that's a slow process which I can take at my own speed - but put a four part harmony in front of me at a keyboard, and there'll be total panic. Reading a score whilst the music is playing is nothing like as difficult, and my musical memory is pretty keen - in rehearsals, I'm usually off the score way ahead of most of the excellent readers, and  I often remember all the other parts as well as my own, even where there's really complex multi-layer stuff going on. Just the way my brain's wired, I suspect.

 Reading words has never been a problem, but I have the distinct impression that if anyone had tried to force me to read music without being aware that there might actually be a problem which makes it difficult for me (no matter how much I want it to happen) it might have been a somewhat tempestuous enterprise.

This is probably somehow tied in with the dethronement of 'classical' music from its previously central place on school (and university) curricula. This is arguably the primary literate musical tradition in the world, but there are many others which frequently do not rely fundamentally, or at all, upon a written musical text - most obviously popular music and a lot of jazz (though this should not be exaggerated in the case of the latter, bearing in mind the importance of the sheet music industry which was at least linked in the earlier years of jazz). So, the argument goes, if many of the people who produce the music that seems to be considered most relevant to younger people (and certainly if listening figures are anything to go by, is the music they themselves find most relevant to their lives) do not (and cannot) read music, why is it such an important skill? One might say that learning to appreciate, analyse, understand music is a different skill (but highly valuable in its own right) to writing and performing it - and I would definitely agree with that - but then one could point to a wide range of rock and jazz journalists and critics (and a number of academics) who themselves can't read music.

And one might lead on from this to arguing that understanding music's social context, its cultural meanings, and so on (which are issues that in one form or another underly a lot of sub-cultural musical identifications, which are certainly very potent issues for teenagers), is more important than grasping the technical minutiae. I wouldn't disagree there at all, though would argue that some tools to understand the latter help to focus better study of the latter. With all of this in mind, I'm not sure if I could make a strong case for the necessity of reading music, and indeed can see how in some cases an extra-literate approach has its own individual benefits, but I can't see that there could really be any palpable harm done by making it a key part of the syllabus.

The question seems to imply that we all agree what "Music" is (or should be). If by "Music" a particularly eccentric person such as myself may suggest a meaning such as "all surviving music of the past that now exists in written form" (thinking of all the music of Gregory the Great through the Middles Ages, the wonderful sacred and secular music of Machaut through to Josquin, the magnificent works of Monteverdi through to Bach, the innovatory symphonic and chamber music of Haydn and Mozart through to Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, or the ground-breaking compositions of Wagner through to Schoenberg and Webern, etc. etc. etc...............) surely the question should be the opposite: "How can children not be encouraged to read music?" Forceful reading as such should not be an element for studying musical sources any more than it is for the study of literary or scientific sources - it should simply be a matter of normality in the acquisition of a basic visual and mental skill that enables an understanding of the written text.

"Music" is not (and has never been) merely a "performing art", and even if it had been those who choose to perform it ought (rationally speaking) to be equipped with a fundamental capability of reading and understanding the directions that have carefully been given by the person who composed it.

Regrettably many of our current "educators" now feel that Music is so tangential (or even recreational) as an educational pursuit that its study can be honed down to a few "bargain basement" elements that merely create a physical awareness rather than a serious study. Some of this nonsense thinking is even creeping into Further and Higher Educational thinking too - so we may yet have felt only the thin end of the wedge I fear.

Baz

I can work out rhythm, and I can pick out a simple melody on a recorder or piano, but I have been completely awestruck all my life by the ability to read pitch and harmony. 

Incidentally, the fact I have a clue about musical notation is not due to my school, but to the eccentric piano teacher (a distant and physically ailing relative of Stanford who appeared to be unaware of any music written later than Brahms) to whom my mother sent me on Saturday afternoons.

Yes, pupils should be given the opportunity to find out how musical notation works.  If they don't get it, then they should not be cast into the outer darkness, but they may find it a great opening.

A and Baz, you are both limiting your definitions of 'music' to a Western classical tradition, founded upon the notion of the 'work' (as being the object of paramount importance, much more so than particular performances, improvisations, forms of communal music-making, etc) - actually a relatively recent phenomenon even within the classical tradition. There's very much more to music than that.

I feel weary at having to compare performances.  That is why I probably think that the typical work of art is the novel, where there is no performer to come between me and the work. I realise that is a rather late, and probably protestant, outlook.

(Another late at night, probably ill conceived post.  Ignore if you want.)