How are Music and Visual Arts Being Taught in Public Elementary Schools?
Music is almost universally included in the educational programs of public elementary schools in the United States. Visual arts also is offered in the majority of the Nation’s public elementary schools, but to a lesser extent than music (Figure 1). More than half of elementary schools that offer music include general, instrumental, and vocal music in their instructional programs (Figure 2); few offer only one of these three types of music instruction. One might expect that in this time of reduced budgets many schools would limit music instruction to general music, but only 10 percent of elementary schools indicated that this was the case.
