Music Advocate runs for President

I've been meaning to post this for some time. I doubt I'll get into much political talk on this blog - though I do have some rather political view.

I want to fraw your attention to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He is running for the republican presidential nomination. Huckabee is a strong advocate for music education. I had the chance to see him speak at the NAMM show in January.

While I don't think he has a very strong chance to end up being the nominee, he can certainly bring some attention to the importance of music education.

Here's what he had to say on Meet The Press a few weeks ago.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, I believe that song is “Born To Be Wild.” Is that your inner self?

GOV. HUCKABEE: It probably would be born to be mild would be a better one for me. I love music. One of the things that I’m very passionate about is music and art and education because it was life-changing for me. I think in a creative economy we’ve got to have a whole group of kids coming up and a generation whose left and right brains are stimulated. It’s something I pushed for as a governor in Arkansas where we are one of the few states that required both music and art education. I’m a musician, I’m passionate about it, but I think this, this country has made a huge mistake in cutting music and art out of school budgets. And it’s something we’ve got to address because the future economy is dependent upon a creative generation.

The more we hear of music and arts education, the better our case is to keep it alive in the schools.