阅读理解。
When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably
at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as mere
entertainment, but certainly not an education priority (优先). This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education
is beneficial and important for all students.
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their
thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as
surely as does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into
their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our
character and values. It gives us identity as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception (感知) that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how
the sun rises and sets. The arts explore emotive (情感的) meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every
possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it
all. The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific
symbols. They are ways we human beings "talk" to each other. They are the language of civilization through
which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes.
The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When
we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away
from them the meanings that music expresses.
Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way
we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love. So music education is far
more necessary than people to realize.
1. According to Paragraph 1, students _____.
A. regard music as a way of entertainment
B. disagree with their parents on education
C. view music as an overlooked subject
D. prefer the arts to science
2. In Paragraph 2, the author uses jazz as an example to _____.
A. compare it with rock music
B. show music identifies a society
C. introduce American musical traditions
D. prove music influences people's lifestyles
3. According to the passage. the arts and science _____.
A. approach the world from different angles
B. explore different phenomena of the world
C. express people's feelings in different ways
D. explain what it means to be human differently
4. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Music education deserves more attention.
B. Music should be of top education priority.
C. Music is an effective communication tool.
D. Music education makes students more imaginative.