The horn call announcing Til’s antics resounds in our kitchen as the grandkids dance about the sun porch listening to a recording I just purchased from Maestro Classics. This one presents Richard Strauss’s 1895 tone poem Til Eulenspiegel, a brilliant cinematic composition that portrays the clever, sometimes mean-spirited, antics of the legendary German trickster in luscious Romantic style.

By the third playing of the CD (how kids love to replay things!), the distinctive horn call and orchestral twitters—Til’s signature themes—have embedded themselves into the musical memory of these preschoolers. Great music works that way, striking first the ear, then intensifying the excitement while deepening the comprehension.

Maestro Classic’s productions are designed to ensure this process. They are logical, consistent, and wonderfully effective, regardless of which composition is featured. Every work is presented initially as a whole, conducted by Maestro Stephen Simon and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and interspersed with an easily absorbed narrative by literary scholar Dr. Konrad Czynski (under the moniker Yadu).

After this power-packed “track one,” Czynski is joined by the voices of the series’ masterminds, Bonnie Simon and her husband Maestro Stephen, who split the work into tracks expanding the composition in a myriad of ways. Some tracks provide points of musical analysis geared to the ear of a child. Others give pertinent background or offer hands-on activities tangential to the musical or literary content of the piece. Often a final track presents themes of the work in alternative styles, such as an Irish jig, calypso, or rock guitar.

All told, Maestro Classics over the years has provided the keys to unlock an array of masterworks like Til Eulenspiegel, Prokofiev’s Peter and the World, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, or Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice, planting them unforgettably in the ears and hearts of countless children. The Simons have transformed these pieces from the intimidating world of tuxedo-clad grownups on a distant stage into delightful dramas that can be sung, danced, and narrated back by children.

For even littler children, the Simons bring musical life to beloved stories like Mike Mulligan and the Steam Engine, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Juanita, the Spanish Lobster by means of similar sets of illustrative and explanatory tracks. These lay the groundwork for a child’s seamless transition into a love of dramatic genres like opera.

Those are fine accomplishments for a series of CDs, don’t you think? Everyone would profit from having several, if not the full range, of these recordings in a school or home library.

But that’s not really my point. My point is something else entirely.

Here’s what I want to know: why are resources like Maestro Classics a rarity? Why are so many educators and parents unconvinced of the need for such resources for the proper cultivation of children’s minds? Despite lip service to the essential role of the Fine Arts, why do we regard the core human activity of artistic creativity as an elective or frill?

Across each conference hall Hank and I attend, we see racks overflowing with quality pedagogical materials that illuminate the full range of levels in history, science, mathematics, and particularly literature. Where are the tables piled high with materials that open up the world of the Fine Arts?

This question motivated us ten years ago to start Professor Carol, beginning with what we now call our signature course: Discovering Music. In fact, while writing this, I realized that we are about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Discovering Music, published first in September 2009.

Thus far, though, our materials at Professor Carol largely target older students—high-school, middle-school, college prep—as well as parents and teachers (adult lovers of learning). Some titles are accessible by a younger group, especially those materials rich in musical and visual demonstrations. And we’ve just unveiled a theory course that is geared to children beginning at approximately age 9.

But as anyone in the arts knows, the real problem isn’t the paucity of materials. The real problem lies in convincing educators of the irreplaceable value of Fine Arts’ education. Even top educators do not always sense this imperative.

Consider this. We revere and nearly uniformly agreed on the value of works by Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and the epics of Ancient literature. We slice and dice such works methodically so as to send them meaningfully into our youngsters’ hearts. We aver that even a superficial understanding of characters like Odysseus, Hamlet, or Raskolnikov helps us grow in heart and mind, strengthening a child’s emotional resources for a lifetime.

So why do we not approach the masterworks of Western music this way? Why do we give only cursory nods to our treasuries of visual art, and barely a nod to dance? Why are we not rushing to make sure that students have fluency in at least one Beethoven symphony before graduating high school? Or that fifth-graders can hum, or at least recognize, a smattering of famous melodies by Brahms, Mozart, or Chopin?

For that matter, why do we not enter regularly into debates with our co-educationalists (professional teachers, lecturers, publishers, homeschool parents) about the merits of starting with Donizetti rather than Rossini to introduce the vast arena of 19th-century operatic drama? Or discuss the different ways children respond to the sound qualities of the harpsichord or piano, the oboe or trumpet? The soft clouds of Cézanne or the stark contrasts of Hopper? The classic lines of Swan Lake or the folk spirit of Appalachian Spring?

These are my questions today. I won’t belabor them now. But do know that more about this problem is coming. It’s time!