I wish I’d taken a spoken language in High School. I took Latin, which is not so much a communication as a repository of history. I loved it. But it really didn’t function as communication.

I took Spanish in college. I was dreadful at it. There was no one there speaking to me in Spanish about anything I wanted to know.

Language is not vocabulary and grammar. Language is communication. I was in my forties when I realized that not only were languages different from each other, but the words that created the thoughts in that language likely couldn’t be reproduced precisely in another language.

I had a family of Bosnians move into my building and spent time doing homework help with the kids. I had days where I never heard an English word.

I never learned to speak Spanish. I got quite good at communicating in Bosnian. The difference was my need to do so. I wanted to understand and to make myself understood. The surprise with different languages is that they don’t always have the same words. And since our thoughts are expressed in words, you think differently in another language. The language forms the way we think.

When I hear school organizations suggest removing art and music from their programs, I feel like rushing into the room with the bean counters and explaining to them that they are removing major education from our children. Art and music are not enrichment. Art is the language of emotion. Music is the language of mathematics. You can’t say or think certain things without knowing their languages. Take away art and music and you might as well tie blinders on them. There’s a whole way to think and express themselves they may never learn.

Schools may not be able to afford to teach art and music. But we can’t afford not to teach it. Or learn it. It changes how the mind develops, what it can think, how we feel, what we can say.

I am studying singing with Gail Masinda and Masinda Music Studio. Because of the weather, my first class was on Skype. It was incredibly personal and fun. It also was a fair amount of exercise, which I need right now. But mostly, I could feel my brain and lungs both expand at the same time.

I hope you reach for every language available to you. I hope you learn to think in music and color. I hope you speak to your children in songs and in images. Because it doesn’t just change how we communicate. It changes how we are able to think.