first VP column continued...

state attendees. We hope this helps, and we hope that you make the extra effort to attend. We are also offering complimentary registrations to any of our members who find themselves in the unfortunate situation of seeking a classroom due to budget cuts, so please pass the word!

music facts:

this last June a delegation of omea members made the journey to Washington dc to lobby and to learn on your behalf. We met with all oregon senators and congressmen to plead the case of music as a core subject in the public school curriculum, and then we spent two days learning about federal policy that will affect us in the classroom now and in the immediate future. it was an amazing journey, if you are ever afforded the opportunity to visit our capital and learn about the political machine, it is well worth the trip.

We all need to keep up our efforts, carry them home, and positive change will happen for the good of all!

We need to favor an education that cultivates the critical capacities, that fosters a complex understanding of the world and its peoples and that educates and refines the capacity for sympathy. In short, an education that cultivates human beings rather than producing useful machines. If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away. They don’t make money; but they do something far more precious; they make the world worth living in.

– Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago; Newsweek International, August 21 – 18, 2006; “Teaching Humanity”; www.msnbc.msn.com