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As a music educator, I am appalled with the decision of WGCU-FM officials to stop broadcasting classical music on the regular FM frequency.

Several years ago WGCU severely cut back its classical music programming, so its recent decision did not come as a total surprise.

The reasons given then and just recently were monetary. Since fewer people, according to Amy Tardiff, managing director, listened during the time that classical music was programmed, fewer contributions came in during that time.

If WGCU can’t afford to broadcast classical music, then I wonder how other stations are able to do it.

I am always amazed that when travelling across the country I can find a National Public Radio station from small towns or large cities that carry classical music all day. Apparently those stations don’t have the same financial crisis as our own local station, or perhaps their priorities are just different.

Telling people that they will need to buy a special converter to receive classical music that is being outsourced from Minnesota is not a solution. That approach only helps to promote the idea that classical music is an elitist form of entertainment.

I think that Tardiff and the management of WGCU have succumbed to the lowest common denominator, money, which always wins out in the end. But as a university-based public radio station, part of WGCU’s responsibility to the community — the community that provides part of its funding through their tax dollars — is to provide artistic-based programming.

So, goodbye Beethoven. Goodbye, Mozart. Goodbye, Naples Philharmonic and the Southwest Florida Symphony. Goodbye, Metropolitan Opera.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, who always said everything best: “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov’d by the concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils. Let no such man be trusted.”

Goodbye, WGCU!

Jack Berry teaches middle-school band at the Village School in Naples and is the director of the Performing Arts School there. He also teaches students privately.