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6% of American children want to be President but 13% want to be musicians. (Busch Entertainment Corporation)
It has been found that music can change behavior. The right kind can turn depression into joy, anger to calmness, hate to love, and fear
to courage. Beautiful music has an effect on people and it can soothe and take away feelings of frustration and anger. Music definitely
makes a difference in alleviating tension. (L. Clarke, 2006)
Music has the power to relax, energize, and motivate.
A study from the University of Wisconsin and the University of California at Irvine found that 3 and 4 year old children who had
8 months of musical instruction, including singing and keyboard lessons, scored 43% higher on IQ tests than those who received no music lessons.
Fetuses in the womb show measurable response to musical stimulation.
In the year 2000, 19 million children in the United States were under the age of 5. Of those children ages 4-5, over 6 million will be enrolled in
daycare, an industry with some of the lowest paid workers in the United States.
When "Child Care", a public service campaign in Rochester, Minnesota, asked 800 children what they enjoyed most about their experience at daycare
or in family childcare settings, over 40% said singing. Over 60% said playing musical instruments.
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Statistics from Statistical Abstracts and Rauscher |
The benefits of quality music education are immense. Beyond the sheer joy
that people experience in making music, studies over the past decade have shown
us some amazing things about music and the development of young minds. Study after
study has demonstrated that the process of learning to read and play music actually
stimulates important areas of the brain. This can lead to accelerated rates of
learning and comprehension in math, science and reading which, in turn, results in improved attitudes
towards learning and better behavior in schools.
The following is only a sample of the research that is currently available.
The American Psychological Association wrote:
“Piano lessons pay off in unexpected ways: According to a new study, children with
music training had significantly better verbal memory than their counterparts without
such training, plus, the longer the training, the better the verbal memory.
Psychologists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys between age six
and fifteen. Half had musical training as members of their school’s string orchestra
program. The other 45 participants were schoolmates with no musical training.
The researchers, led by Agnes S. Chan, Ph.D., gave the children verbal memory tests, to
see how many words they recalled from a list, and a comparable visual memory test for
images. Students with musical training recalled significantly more words than the
untrained students. There were no such differences for visual memory.” 1
Music lessons have been shown to improve a child's performance in school.
A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reports that
music training - specifically piano instruction - is far superior to computer
instruction in dramatically enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills which
are necessary for learning math and science. This experiment included three groups
of pre-schoolers, each group was given different training:
- private piano/keyboard lessons and singing lessons
- private computer lessons
- no training
After six months, those children who received piano/keyboard training performed
34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than the others. These
findings indicate that music uniquely enhances higher brain functions required
for mathematics, science and engineering.2
A research team studying first graders from two Rhode Island, US elementary
schools found that students who participated in an "enriched, sequential skill
building music program" dramatically increased their math and reading performance.3
Music study can help children understand advanced math concepts. A grasp of
proportional math and fractions is a prerequisite to math at higher levels
and children who do not master these areas cannot understand more advanced
math critical to high-tech fields.
Music involves ratios, fractions, proportions and thinking in space
and time. Second-grade students were given four months of piano keyboard training
in addition to use of a newly designed math software program.
The group scored over 27% higher on proportional math and fractions tests than children
who used only the math software.4
Musical activities provide children with important experiences that can help them
develop physical coordination, timing, memory, visual, aural and language skills.
When they work to increase their command of music and exercise musical skills in the
company of others, they gain important experience with self-paced learning, mental
concentration and a heightened personal and social awareness.5
Data from the US showed that music participants received more academic honors and awards
than non-music students and that the percentage of music participants receiving grades of
A, A/B, and B was higher than the percentage of non-participants receiving those grades.6
A ten-year study tracking more than 25,000 students shows that music-making improves test
scores. Regardless of socioeconomic background, music-making students get higher marks in
standardized tests than those who had no music involvement. The test scores studied were
not only in standardized tests, such as the SAT (school admission test), but also in reading
proficiency exams.7
The world's top academic countries place a high value on music education. Hungary,
Netherlands and Japan stand atop worldwide science achievement and share a strong
commitment to music education. All three countries have required music training at
the elementary and middle school levels, both instrumental and vocal, for several
decades. The centrality of music education to learning in the top-ranked countries
seems to contradict the United States' focus on math, science, vocabulary and technology.8
1 Music Training Improves Verbal but Not Visual Memory,” American Psychological
Association, Neuropsychology, Vol. 17, No. 3.
2 Neurological Research, Feb. 1997; Shaw, Rauscher, et al.
3 Nature, May 23, 1996; Gardiner, Fox Jeffery and Knowles.
4 Neurological Research, March, 1999.
5 "Music and Your Child," American Music Conference publication; Frank R. Wilson, M.D., Associate
Clinical Professor of Neurology - University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.
6 National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 First Follow-Up (1990), U.S. Department of Education.
7 Dr. James Catterall, UCLA, 1997.
8 1988 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IAEEA) Test.
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