Like many activities in our culture, education can be a competitive exercise. Students compete for grades, to join a band or a team, for entrance into special programs and colleges, and so on. Yet each student picks up on different aspects of the coursework and relates to various teachers in his or her own way. Each follows through based on personal interests, life experiences, and the support of family, friends, and mentors. Some students add to their school education with outside reading, extracurricular activities, and perhaps a job.

Furthermore, although competition is certainly meaningful in preparing one for the marketplace, a major purpose of education is to help one learn how to become a better person. In Western culture, we place much value on the balance between teamwork and individual achievement: while we compete, we also learn to work together. Those who fail to achieve this balance might achieve financial, and even personal, success, but they will find the going more difficult.

Teachers personify this balance between competition and cooperation. True, teachers compete for resources, for teaching positions, for tenure where that is available, and to further their educational philosophies. But in my experience, teachers also share their educational techniques and resources more freely than do most professionals. Teachers are not unique in this, but they are remarkable — and admirable. You are very special people, whether you realize it or not.

One of my favorite quotes in this month's cover story (“Spotlight: Technology Fosters Growth at Brookwood High,” p. 16) is music-technology program director Ken Simpson's assertion that “Those who have been successful using technology in their teaching are some of the most helpful, encouraging people you will ever know. They feel that we're all in this together, creating something new, and that's wonderful.”

Exactly so. Not only are music educators in this together, but so are the companies that manufacture music-tech products for education, as well as organizations such as NAMM, MENC, VH-1 Save the Music, and TI:ME. So is the staff of MET magazine. Only if we all work together toward our common goal of improving music education through the application of technology can achieve that goal.

We have much work to do together. To successfully create this new educational approach, we have to teach more than the students. We must teach each other how to use modern technological tools effectively, because these tools represent a significant part of the future of education and of music production and performance. We must teach each other how to find funds to pay for these tools. We must educate not only music teachers and students, but administrators, parents, politicians, the media, potential funders, and the public. In short, we have to build a new movement within the educational community and related industries.

Only when all of us understand what we're doing and why, and we are ready, willing, and able to support this great cause, can we truly raise music education to the level we believe it can reach — and keep it there for the long haul.