The first step is to repeat the question or prompt to which you are responding.

Is music education important enough to keep in the curriculum?

The second step is to list the criteria that will be used, or to list several criteria then select the ones that will be considered in your writing.

Criteria:
1. What is the importance of music to human survival? What does survival mean in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of human actualization?
2. Does music education contribute to content areas being tested?
3. Do we have the right music education?
4. Are students interested in music?

The third step is to write the paragraphs that will consider the selected criteria, noting the criterion and reasoning for or against the question given the specific criterion. This becomes a series of mini-dicisions.

1. Music and survival
My judgment based on this criterion depends on which definition of survival educators choose to use. If survival simply refers to hunting for food, defense against enemies, and building shelter against the elements, then tooting "whistle while you work" in the midst of a rock or sword fight would probably not have given the competitor much of an edge. By this line of evolutionary thinking, human interest and practice in music should have become extinct or be poorly distributed and practiced. Yet, it hasn't. The practice of music goes back as far as recorded history in every culture known to us. Is music then just a form of evolutionary cheesecake that is appreciated as mere entertainment but not really essential to a well balanced meal? A more in-depth answer requires a deeper examination of the potential of being human. Maslow's theory of self-actualization raise the definition of human beyond that of animalistic survival to consider additional stages of human growth:  Biological / Physiological Needs; Security / Safety Needs; Social (Love, Affection and Belongingness) Needs; Ego / Esteem Needs; Self-actualization or Fulfillment. "Each level of the pyramid is dependent on the previous level. For example, a person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied"  (http://www.connect.net/georgen/maslow.htm). Music has always played an important role in discovering and enhancing what is important in the latter three. What is surprising given this line of thought is that music and other fine arts are not given far greater attention and support. One must then in turn ask if reducing music and other fine arts instruction does not work against our public education system's ability to graduate the best kind of human beings. Based on this reasoning, I find that music may not be essential to survival in its lowest sense, but music is a major contributor to the survival of those higher elements of our humanity.

2. The right music education
So, assuming that music is valuable to humanity, is the music education in the curriculum the right education to draw out the character of being that is sought? Here I am less certain of my conclusions. Music, in the experience of own my children, has been taught primarily if not exclusively as a performance art. Reaching for the most of what humans are capable would appear to require something more creative than interpretation. What if reading never extended to writing, but was left with a creativity that ended with creative oral reading? I conclude that our current music education is not the right one, especially in a digital age in which the opportunity for creating musical expression is so vast.

The Fourth step is to comparatively weigh the thinking of the considered criteria and come to a conclusion.

[The reader will have to fill in the remainder of this essay and come to their own conclusion.]