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Paper The value of music education in society has been a significant subject since the time of Plato. Plato wrote about music education in his famous work the Republic: †¦Education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary. And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. (Mark, 2002, p.6) Music education is in danger of being lost to the new generations attending school. It is too important to be cast aside, and technology can be used to aid in the fight to save music education. Importance of Education The importance of music education can be seen by examining numerous scholarly articles. The National Association for Music Education (MENC) believes that music education will help children to grow and perform well in society, school, life, and increasing their intellect (MENC, 2002). According to the American Arts Alliance Fact Sheet from October of 1996, music helps in society because it will â€Å"create jobs, increase the local tax base, boost tourism, spur growth in related businesses and improve the overall quality of life for our cities and towns† (MENC, 2002). Music education helps improve test scores in school; the College-Bound Seniors National Report stated that students who took classes in performing music scored 57 points more on the verbal section of the SATs and 41 points more on the math. Music education increases the intellect of students. Instruction in music is better than instruction in computer literacy because it increases the ability for children to learn reasoning skills (MENC, 2002). Another article called â€Å"Music Makes You Smarter† discusses â€Å"an important link between musical training and other cognitive abilities, particularly spatial abilities – the abstract reasoning that is used for understanding relationships between objects such as, for example, when calculating a proportion or playing chess† (Rausher, 1997). Music education is very important because it challenges students to think ahead such as when reading lines of music before playing them (Rausher, 1997).