There is a trend that has started elsewhere in the world, and is spreading worldwide, that embraces the approach that Art and Music Education must start with Early Childhood Education (ECE). Issues will now consider some of that debate. ECE is very important as it both challenges the current received truth in Botswana that ECE can be deferred, delayed, put on hold; the claim that it does not deserve a priority.

The first example used here on Early Childhood Music Education (ECME) comes from an international foundation.The Barenboim-Said Foundation was established in 2004 in Spain. The famous orchestra conductor Daniel Barenboim (Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 15 years), composer and musician and the author of Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society has turned his attention to peace work, conflict resolution and ECME.

Barenboim was born in Argentina in 1942. He now works to promote music and co-operation through projects targeted at young Palestinians, Arabs and Israelis and to develop opportunities for children.

The Foundation is also named for Edward Said, who died in 2002. Said was the great Egyptian intellectual, famous for his book Orientalism. Said also wrote Music at the Limits (2009) for which Barenboim wrote the foreword. What is significant is that these two individuals agreed to establish a foundation that works to develop ECME. Their first efforts were in an Academy of Orchestral Studies in Seville and then in the Middle East to develop an Early Childhood Music Education (ECME) Project.

Daniel Barenboim says about the objectives: "We must make people aware of the need for music education as an organic element of culture. Even when there is music education, it is carried out in a very specialised way. In the best of cases, young people are offered the opportunity to practice an instrument, to acquire inevitably necessary knowledge of theory, of musicology, and of everything that a musician needs professionally.

But, at the same time, there exists a widespread and growing incomprehension of a simultaneously simple and complex problem: that is, the impossibility of articulating with words the content of a musical work. After all, if it were possible to express in words the content of one of Beethoven's symphonies, we would no longer have a need for that symphony. But the fact that it is impossible to put into words the content of music does not mean that there is no content." There are precursors to these approaches. The Early Childhood Commission of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) was established in 1982. Its key objective is to "further the quality of research and scholarship in the field of early childhood music education and, through that, to stimulate thought and the practice of music in early childhood throughout the world".

The ISME Early Childhood Commission's goals are to:

* Promote music in the lives of young children, regardless of talent;

* Create an enhanced environment that will result in the well-being and development of the whole child;

*Exchange ideas regarding music and the young child, birth to age eight (and even pre-birth, as more scientific knowledge becomes available in this area);

* Stimulate the growth of quality music instruction, teacher training and research in musical development and instruction with the young child;

* Learn ways that various cultures approach musical enculturation in the young child (i.e. natural absorption of the practices and values of a culture);

* Compare and discuss similarities and differences in music instruction and music learning across cultures; and,

*Consider the future of music in the lives of young children including the influence of mass media and technology, the impact of rapid changes in society plus the role of the family in musical development, the role of culture and schooling in musical development and preservation of cultural traditions in the light of the breakdown of cultural barriers.

This is all a tall order, but it should not be put on hold in Botswana. Early Childhood Music Education (ECME) is relevant to the future of the country and should not be neglected. The benefits are profound. Next week Issues will look at how some of these ideas have been implemented elsewhere.