My professional specialty is music theory, so I trust I won't be appearing to disrespect or undervalue music theory when I say that it's not at all clear to me that learning about music theory would enhance most people's lives at all.
Music is so wildly popular that nearly everyone listens to and enjoys it already, and there certainly is not widespread consensus that knowing about music theory makes you enjoy music more. I would say that it certainly seems to make some people enjoy music differently, so for some people it will tend to shift their taste in music toward different music, but it is certainly not as though listening to music without knowing any music theory is like reading physics papers on the arXiv without knowing any math or physics.
The inescapable description of music as "the universal language," despite being totally disastrously wrong in nearly every way, is founded on the grain of truth that people do seem to be able to enjoy music, and enjoy it in many of the same (or similar) ways, even when they can't communicate about it at all, or with each other. There just isn't any serious sense in which music theory is vital to enjoying music (at least not most music, with sufficient exposure), or in which listening to music without knowing music theory is, as you say, "not knowing what [you're] hearing." Even a lot of successful, talented, skilled musicians don't know much music theory.
The basic situation is that music theory is a lot like what linguists do, and no one says you have to know a lot of linguistics to know how to understand other people talking, or even to have a very sophisticated appreciation of fine writing. And my impression is that most professional linguists would be very cautious about even asserting a correlation between knowing linguistics and having those other abilities. (Again, don't read this as my endorsing a music=language claim, which I certainly do not endorse at all.)
One thing I will say is that appreciation for music does seem to increase with early training not in music theory, but in practical music-making -- singing or playing instruments. This usually does come along with a bit of music theory training, but I think more fundamentally, interest in music is increased by hearing professionally-made music as on a continuum with skills that one possesses oneself (at however low a level).
Finally, I very strongly advocate training in music theory for one specific group of people: those who would like to discuss music theory in public. For some reason it is an area (others like it include politics and language) where a lot of people feel qualified to hold forth with little to no real grasp of what actual professional music scholars do.
For some reason it is an area (others like it include politics and language) where a lot of people feel qualified to hold forth with little to no real grasp of what actual professional music scholars do.
If you wouldn't mind, please educate me! I have no clue whatsoever.
In school we learn wonderful things like how to find integrals, solve equations, and how to calculate valence electrons of elements based on their atomic numbers. Because, obviously, they will be very important in our futures -- especially if we become artists, musicians, writers, actors, and business people.
We learn so much in school. Yet, when most people look at paintings they don’t truly understand them. When most people listen to music, they don’t really know what they’re hearing. Most people would fail simple music theory tests, even though many have listened to music most days of the week since they were babies!
Similarly, if you have working eyes, you should ask “Why do shadows look like they do? What color is snow, really? Can I predict the colors of different colored materials at different times of the day? If not, why? I have been seeing them for years, haven’t I?”
I think the problem here is that people can’t understand what is really important. Calculus, mechanical physics, chemistry, microiology, etc. are interesting to learn, perhaps. But, they are relatively advanced topics. People don’t use them in daily life unless they are professionals. Why not learn things that we think about every day instead of those that will frankly be useless to most?
Why don’t we learn how to understand our senses?
Learning about sight, sounds, thoughts, etc. should fit in somewhere in the first year of high school. Everyone needs to learn the physics of art and color (e.g. this and this), music theory, rationality, and logic.
For example, why should people start learning (or pretending to learn) philosophy, the art of thinking, in college? Should we be able to make life-changing decisions without even knowing how to spot errors in our thinking?
As a science researcher, I know first hand how hard it is to find a good balance between being well versed in worldly topics and being focused on a field in order to excel in it. But, both of these areas of study should not be called the true basics, in my opinion.
As president of my school's philosophy club, I took a different approach to teaching the basics of philosophy and thinking than traditional classes do. Instead of asking students to discuss the lives and ideas of famous Greek philosophers, I asked them to analyze their own lives and make their own philosophies. As expected, they were terrible at it at first. But, by the end of the year people began to actually think about the world around them.
So, my point is that we should -- in life and in school -- emphasize actual everyday thinking more.
The biggest challenge is that it takes so long!