Parenting & Family Quote by Victoria Wood

Wood’s line sounds politely civic-minded, but it carries the steeliness of a performer who understood what gets lost when institutions treat “the arts” as ornamental. Coming from a comedian, “music” isn’t just about teaching scales; it’s a proxy for voice, timing, listening, and the confidence to occupy a room without apology. Comedy is built on rhythm and breath as much as punchlines, so her argument smuggles craft inside a supposedly wholesome policy statement.

The phrasing does quiet rhetorical work. “Element” makes music feel as basic as oxygen, not a luxury item for the middle class. “Should” is firm without melodrama; it’s a parental tone aimed at policymakers who prefer electives to entitlements. “Part and parcel” is old-fashioned on purpose: it frames music not as enrichment but as belonging, a built-in right of childhood rather than an optional add-on that disappears when budgets tighten.

Context matters: Wood lived through decades in Britain when arts provision in schools could feel like a political weather report, expanding in good times, shrinking under austerity logic. Her subtext is a rebuke to the idea that education’s only job is to manufacture employability. Music, in her framing, teaches a different kind of literacy: how to collaborate, how to fail in public and recover, how to hear patterns and make meaning with other people. It’s also an equality claim: the education system is the only delivery mechanism that reaches every child, not just the ones whose parents can pay for lessons.