I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

Secada contrasts his earlier life as an educator—teaching practical musicianship (voice, theory) alongside broader cultural study (humanities)—with what he sees as a contemporary decline in institutional support for the arts. The quote functions as both personal testimony and critique: his credibility comes from having worked inside a community-college setting, while his lament about “funding” frames the problem as structural rather than a lack of student interest. Implicitly, he argues that music education is not a luxury but a foundational part of a well-rounded education, and that repeated budget cuts threaten the pipeline that develops future performers, teachers, and informed audiences.