Musical education as the construction of personal existence and meaningfully arranged cultural behavior is a democratic civil right … Every citizen has a right to 'his' music and cultural fulfillment of life. Musical education therefore has to involve different musical forms of behavior and disparate meanings of music in today's society. … Didactic openness means versatile and differentiated stimulation of learning and motivation.

Heinz Antholz²⁾

Confusing social work and music education is disastrous. And many a music teacher has gone down the tubes because they did that. Now, it doesn't mean that a music teacher can't be very interested in social programs or that you shouldn't do good things for kids. I can give you a list a mile long of good things that I tried to do for unfortunate kids. But when you make that the important thing instead of teaching them music you're failing. And you will fail. And if you start your program and you fail musically and it's supposed to be a music program, you're out of business and you'll never get the chance to do any social work or anything else.

Chalmers Doane³⁾

I could observe that students who were less successful and frustrated in regular classroom work suddenly developed unexpected abilities when dealing with the instrument. These achievements were always recognized by the classmates, which had a good influence on the self-esteem of those affected. Their position in the classroom improved and it became apparent that they were now ready to deal with other tasks of everyday school life with renewed courage. Pretentious, uninhibited children learned in playing instrumental pieces that great words must also be followed by deeds, as here only the ability of the instrument was evaluated. The highly introvert was made to communicate his own feelings and experiences through music. In interaction, the contactless outsider of the group had the opportunity to interact with his teammates and make contacts.

Renate Egelhof⁴⁾