Music Advocacy
In an attempt to inform you of the benefits of having an arts education, I have included some articles and websites you can visit to educate yourself on why having a musical education is so important. Please feel free to share any of these articles or websites with your friends and family (each article's title links back to the original webpage the article was posted on).
Music Advocacy’s Top Ten for Parents
1. In a 2000 survey, 73 percent of respondents agree that teens who play an instrument are less likely to have discipline problems.
- Americans Love Making Music – And Value Music Education More Highly Than Ever, American Music Conference, 2000.
2. Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills
- Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.
3. A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background.
- Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.
4. A 1997 study of elementary students in an arts-based program concluded that students’ math test scores rose as their time in arts education classes increased.
- “Arts Exposure and Class Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, October, 1998.
5. First-grade students who had daily music instruction scored higher on creativity tests than a control group without music instruction.
- K.L. Wolff, The Effects of General Music Education on the Academeic Achievement, Perceptual-Motor Development, Creative Thinking, and School Attendance of First-Grade Children, 1992.
6. In a Scottish study, one group of elementary students received musical training, while another other group received an equal amount of discussion skills training. After six (6) months, the students in the music group achieved a significant increase in reading test scores, while the reading test scores of the discussion skills group did not change.
- Sheila Douglas and Peter Willatts, Journal of Research in Reading, 1994.
7. According to a 1991 study, students in schools with arts-focused curriculums reported significantly more positive perceptions about their academic abilities than students in a comparison group.
- Pamela Aschbacher and Joan Herman, The Humanitas Program Evaluation, 1991.
8. Students who are rhythmically skilled also tend to better plan, sequence, and coordinate actions in their daily lives.
- “Cassily Column,” TCAMS Professional Resource Center, 2000.
9. In a 1999 Columbia University study, students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident, and better able to express their ideas. These benefits exist across socioeconomic levels.
- The Arts Education Partnership, 1999.
10. College admissions officers continue to cite participation in music as an important factor in making admissions decisions. They claim that music participation demonstrates time management, creativity, expression, and open-mindedness.
- Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999.
1. In a 2000 survey, 73 percent of respondents agree that teens who play an instrument are less likely to have discipline problems.
- Americans Love Making Music – And Value Music Education More Highly Than Ever, American Music Conference, 2000.
2. Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills
- Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.
3. A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background.
- Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.
4. A 1997 study of elementary students in an arts-based program concluded that students’ math test scores rose as their time in arts education classes increased.
- “Arts Exposure and Class Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, October, 1998.
5. First-grade students who had daily music instruction scored higher on creativity tests than a control group without music instruction.
- K.L. Wolff, The Effects of General Music Education on the Academeic Achievement, Perceptual-Motor Development, Creative Thinking, and School Attendance of First-Grade Children, 1992.
6. In a Scottish study, one group of elementary students received musical training, while another other group received an equal amount of discussion skills training. After six (6) months, the students in the music group achieved a significant increase in reading test scores, while the reading test scores of the discussion skills group did not change.
- Sheila Douglas and Peter Willatts, Journal of Research in Reading, 1994.
7. According to a 1991 study, students in schools with arts-focused curriculums reported significantly more positive perceptions about their academic abilities than students in a comparison group.
- Pamela Aschbacher and Joan Herman, The Humanitas Program Evaluation, 1991.
8. Students who are rhythmically skilled also tend to better plan, sequence, and coordinate actions in their daily lives.
- “Cassily Column,” TCAMS Professional Resource Center, 2000.
9. In a 1999 Columbia University study, students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident, and better able to express their ideas. These benefits exist across socioeconomic levels.
- The Arts Education Partnership, 1999.
10. College admissions officers continue to cite participation in music as an important factor in making admissions decisions. They claim that music participation demonstrates time management, creativity, expression, and open-mindedness.
- Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999.
Importance of Music in Schools
Music Educaton Advocacy Resources
By Debra Levy
When we hear about music and other art programs in our school curriculum, most of us are guilty of putting it aside. For example, the focus is then put on the basic or standard studies in schools such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Little do a lot of us know that the importance of including music in that list is as crucial as the others.
Programs are being cut from school budgets at an alarming rate to save money, i.e. physical education, art and music classes. There is already a whole generation of teachers and parents who haven't had the advantages of arts in their own education. Many teachers don't know how to include any kind of art in their teaching these days and parents don't know how to ask for it. Studies have shown that including musical studies such as learning to play an instrument or class sing-alongs and even drama have impacted the way children learn and process knowledge.
Stated from an interview with Tom Home, Arizona's state superintendent of public instruction, "There's lots of evidence that kids immersed in the arts do better on their academic tests."
The connection of math and music is in the note reading for instance. Quarter, half and whole notes can be applied to fractions, and numbers as well as symbols can also apply to mathematics. The word reading in songs can apply to languages arts, just to mention a couple of ways music is useful in academics, says Dr. Diana Hollinger, Music Education Instructor, San Jose State University.
In 2006 a national survey found that in the five years after enactment of NCLB, that 44% of the school districts increased time spent on academic classes like English language arts and math and decreased time on other subjects. The follow-up analysis in Feb. 2008 showed that 16% of the school districts decreased class time for music and art. In California participation in music courses dropped 46% from 1999-2000 through 2000-2004 and total enrollment increased 6%.
It is known that we are still feeling the impact from Proposition 13 from the 1970's. This is partly because we tend to cut art programs instead of what is visually seen first like transcripts or report cards before the long term effects are realized. There is a primitive approach to music classes in schools to this day and by reading the studies out there and seeing the growth of technology, maybe there is a more modern way to go about teaching these skills to our kids. For instance. the Hilltop High School in the Sweetwater District in California, has introduced electronic music courses to their students and they are learning music without even knowing it.
"After all we ask our kids to read Shakespeare, why don't we still teach Mozart? It's the classics we aspire to not the comic book level learning that we want for our students." Samuel Hope, executive director of the National Association of Schools and Music, says that the five ways we communicate and organize thought is first in letters and words, which is our language. The second is numbers and symbols which is mathematics.
And the next three are still images like architecture and design, moving images like in dance and film and abstract sound that is in music. The emphasis is only driven to the first two as it appears most obvious of the outcome. Children still have the thirst for performing and teaching each other music, they show it in their ipods and other electronic devices that they carry or possess. So keeping music classes in schools seems more important than ever.
Do we want superheros to inspire our children or real heros of history like Mozart and Bach? I think the answer is more simple than we think. The arts feed on each other and develop self esteem and confidence. It is also known for the development of social interaction, small and large motor skills. For instance, children can learn as a group and dancing or playing an instrument helps develop social and motor skills alike.
These budget cuts are taking the opportunities to learn through different mediums right out of our childrens hands. Besides not being able to teach them how to work together, like in a large group such as a music class, they don't learn simple tasks like taking turns, listening for their cue to participate and the respect of personal property, like instruments.
They are missing out on developing crucial social skills. These are ALL important to their overall development. Often music classes involve such things as clapping of hands, stomping of feet, basic dancing and singing at the top of your lungs; who wouldn't have fun doing that? Some studies have shown that developmentally or physically challenged children have responded very positively to music programs and that breathing and speech disabilities improved over time. For example, using these skills in therapy, it helps to develop breathing and hand mouth coordination.
For the first time in thirty years in the Dallas Independent School District students receive forty-five minutes a week of art and music instruction. Gigi Antoni, president and CEO of Big Thought which is a non-profit with the district, explained the rationale behind what was then called the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative: "DALI was created with the idealistic and meticulously researched premise that students would flourish when creativity drives learning."
And more than sixty other local arts and cultural institutions agreed with this statement. Following suit throughout the United States is something to strive for in the future given the astounding studies done on this subject floating out there. It is understood after reading several of these studies that music is indeed an importance in the growth of our children and music should be kept in the core curriculum of their studies.
Debra Levy is student at Front Range Community College. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
Read more: The importance of music in schools - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14992491?source=pop#ixzz2YfqJLOpA
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
Follow us: @Denverpost on Twitter | Denverpost on Facebook
Music Educaton Advocacy Resources
By Debra Levy
When we hear about music and other art programs in our school curriculum, most of us are guilty of putting it aside. For example, the focus is then put on the basic or standard studies in schools such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Little do a lot of us know that the importance of including music in that list is as crucial as the others.
Programs are being cut from school budgets at an alarming rate to save money, i.e. physical education, art and music classes. There is already a whole generation of teachers and parents who haven't had the advantages of arts in their own education. Many teachers don't know how to include any kind of art in their teaching these days and parents don't know how to ask for it. Studies have shown that including musical studies such as learning to play an instrument or class sing-alongs and even drama have impacted the way children learn and process knowledge.
Stated from an interview with Tom Home, Arizona's state superintendent of public instruction, "There's lots of evidence that kids immersed in the arts do better on their academic tests."
The connection of math and music is in the note reading for instance. Quarter, half and whole notes can be applied to fractions, and numbers as well as symbols can also apply to mathematics. The word reading in songs can apply to languages arts, just to mention a couple of ways music is useful in academics, says Dr. Diana Hollinger, Music Education Instructor, San Jose State University.
In 2006 a national survey found that in the five years after enactment of NCLB, that 44% of the school districts increased time spent on academic classes like English language arts and math and decreased time on other subjects. The follow-up analysis in Feb. 2008 showed that 16% of the school districts decreased class time for music and art. In California participation in music courses dropped 46% from 1999-2000 through 2000-2004 and total enrollment increased 6%.
It is known that we are still feeling the impact from Proposition 13 from the 1970's. This is partly because we tend to cut art programs instead of what is visually seen first like transcripts or report cards before the long term effects are realized. There is a primitive approach to music classes in schools to this day and by reading the studies out there and seeing the growth of technology, maybe there is a more modern way to go about teaching these skills to our kids. For instance. the Hilltop High School in the Sweetwater District in California, has introduced electronic music courses to their students and they are learning music without even knowing it.
"After all we ask our kids to read Shakespeare, why don't we still teach Mozart? It's the classics we aspire to not the comic book level learning that we want for our students." Samuel Hope, executive director of the National Association of Schools and Music, says that the five ways we communicate and organize thought is first in letters and words, which is our language. The second is numbers and symbols which is mathematics.
And the next three are still images like architecture and design, moving images like in dance and film and abstract sound that is in music. The emphasis is only driven to the first two as it appears most obvious of the outcome. Children still have the thirst for performing and teaching each other music, they show it in their ipods and other electronic devices that they carry or possess. So keeping music classes in schools seems more important than ever.
Do we want superheros to inspire our children or real heros of history like Mozart and Bach? I think the answer is more simple than we think. The arts feed on each other and develop self esteem and confidence. It is also known for the development of social interaction, small and large motor skills. For instance, children can learn as a group and dancing or playing an instrument helps develop social and motor skills alike.
These budget cuts are taking the opportunities to learn through different mediums right out of our childrens hands. Besides not being able to teach them how to work together, like in a large group such as a music class, they don't learn simple tasks like taking turns, listening for their cue to participate and the respect of personal property, like instruments.
They are missing out on developing crucial social skills. These are ALL important to their overall development. Often music classes involve such things as clapping of hands, stomping of feet, basic dancing and singing at the top of your lungs; who wouldn't have fun doing that? Some studies have shown that developmentally or physically challenged children have responded very positively to music programs and that breathing and speech disabilities improved over time. For example, using these skills in therapy, it helps to develop breathing and hand mouth coordination.
For the first time in thirty years in the Dallas Independent School District students receive forty-five minutes a week of art and music instruction. Gigi Antoni, president and CEO of Big Thought which is a non-profit with the district, explained the rationale behind what was then called the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative: "DALI was created with the idealistic and meticulously researched premise that students would flourish when creativity drives learning."
And more than sixty other local arts and cultural institutions agreed with this statement. Following suit throughout the United States is something to strive for in the future given the astounding studies done on this subject floating out there. It is understood after reading several of these studies that music is indeed an importance in the growth of our children and music should be kept in the core curriculum of their studies.
Debra Levy is student at Front Range Community College. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
Read more: The importance of music in schools - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14992491?source=pop#ixzz2YfqJLOpA
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
Follow us: @Denverpost on Twitter | Denverpost on Facebook
Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.Joyce Hesselberth
When children learn to play a musical instrument, they strengthen a range of auditory skills. Recent studies suggest that these benefits extend all through life, at least for those who continue to be engaged with music.
But a study published last month is the first to show that music lessons in childhood may lead to changes in the brain that persist years after the lessons stop.
Researchers at Northwestern University recorded the auditory brainstem responses of college students — that is to say, their electrical brain waves — in response to complex sounds. The group of students who reported musical training in childhood had more robust responses — their brains were better able to pick out essential elements, like pitch, in the complex sounds when they were tested. And this was true even if the lessons had ended years ago.
Indeed, scientists are puzzling out the connections between musical training in childhood and language-based learning — for instance, reading. Learning to play an instrument may confer some unexpected benefits, recent studies suggest.
We aren’t talking here about the “Mozart effect,” the claim that listening to classical music can improve people’s performance on tests. Instead, these are studies of the effects of active engagement and discipline. This kind of musical training improves the brain’s ability to discern the components of sound — the pitch, the timing and the timbre.
“To learn to read, you need to have good working memory, the ability to disambiguate speech sounds, make sound-to-meaning connections,” said Professor Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. “Each one of these things really seems to be strengthened with active engagement in playing a musical instrument.”
Skill in appreciating the subtle qualities of sound, even against a complicated and noisy background, turns out to be important not just for a child learning to understand speech and written language, but also for an elderly person struggling with hearing loss.
In a study of those who do keep playing, published this summer, researchers found that as musicians age, they experience the same decline in peripheral hearing, the functioning of the nerves in their ears, as nonmusicians. But older musicians preserve the brain functions, the central auditory processing skills that can help you understand speech against the background of a noisy environment.
“We often refer to the ‘cocktail party’ problem — or imagine going to a restaurant where a lot of people are talking,” said Dr. Claude Alain, assistant director of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and one of the authors of the study. “The older adults who are musically trained perform better on speech in noise tests — it involves the brain rather than the peripheral hearing system.”
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are approaching the soundscape from a different point of view, studying the genetics of absolute, or perfect, pitch, that ability to identify any tone. Dr. Jane Gitschier, a professor of medicine and pediatrics who directs the study there, and her colleagues are trying to tease out both the genetics and the effects of early training.
“The immediate question we’ve been trying to get to is what are the variants in people’s genomes that could predispose an individual to have absolute pitch,” she said. “The hypothesis, further, is that those variants will then manifest as absolute pitch with the input of early musical training.”
Indeed, almost everyone who qualifies as having truly absolute pitch turns out to have had musical training in childhood (you can take the test and volunteer for the study at http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/).
Alexandra Parbery-Clark, a doctoral candidate in Dr. Kraus’s lab and one of the authors of a paper published this year on auditory working memory and music, was originally trained as a concert pianist. Her desire to go back to graduate school and study the brain, she told me, grew out of teaching at a French school for musically talented children, and observing the ways that musical training affected other kinds of learning.
“If you get a kid who is maybe 3 or 4 years old and you’re teaching them to attend, they’re not only working on their auditory skills but also working on their attention skills and their memory skills — which can translate into scholastic learning,” she said.
Now Ms. Parbery-Clark and her colleagues can look at recordings of the brain’s electrical detection of sounds, and they can see the musically trained brains producing different — and stronger — responses. “Now I have more proof, tangible proof, music is really doing something,” she told me. “One of my lab mates can look at the computer and say, ‘Oh, you’re recording from a musician!’ ”
Many of the researchers in this area are themselves musicians interested in the plasticity of the brain and the effects of musical education on brain waves, which mirror the stimulus sounds. “This is a response that actually reflects the acoustic elements of sound that we know carry meaning,” Professor Kraus said.
There’s a fascination — and even a certain heady delight — in learning what the brain can do, and in drawing out the many effects of the combination of stimulation, application, practice and auditory exercise that musical education provides. But the researchers all caution that there is no one best way to apply these findings.
Different instruments, different teaching methods, different regimens — families need to find what appeals to the individual child and what works for the family, since a big piece of this should be about pleasure and mastery. Children should enjoy themselves, and their lessons. Parents need to care about music, not slot it in as a therapeutic tool.
“We want music to be recognized for what it can be in a person’s life, not necessarily, ‘Oh, we want you to have better cognitive skills, so we’re going to put you in music,’ ” Ms. Parbery-Clark said. “Music is great, music is fantastic, music is social — let them enjoy it for what it really is.”
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 11, 2012
A previous version of this post contained an incorrect hyperlink for a paper by Alexandra Parbery-Clark.
A version of this article appeared in print on 09/11/2012, on page D6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Brain Waves Stay Tuned to Early Lessons.
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.Joyce Hesselberth
When children learn to play a musical instrument, they strengthen a range of auditory skills. Recent studies suggest that these benefits extend all through life, at least for those who continue to be engaged with music.
But a study published last month is the first to show that music lessons in childhood may lead to changes in the brain that persist years after the lessons stop.
Researchers at Northwestern University recorded the auditory brainstem responses of college students — that is to say, their electrical brain waves — in response to complex sounds. The group of students who reported musical training in childhood had more robust responses — their brains were better able to pick out essential elements, like pitch, in the complex sounds when they were tested. And this was true even if the lessons had ended years ago.
Indeed, scientists are puzzling out the connections between musical training in childhood and language-based learning — for instance, reading. Learning to play an instrument may confer some unexpected benefits, recent studies suggest.
We aren’t talking here about the “Mozart effect,” the claim that listening to classical music can improve people’s performance on tests. Instead, these are studies of the effects of active engagement and discipline. This kind of musical training improves the brain’s ability to discern the components of sound — the pitch, the timing and the timbre.
“To learn to read, you need to have good working memory, the ability to disambiguate speech sounds, make sound-to-meaning connections,” said Professor Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. “Each one of these things really seems to be strengthened with active engagement in playing a musical instrument.”
Skill in appreciating the subtle qualities of sound, even against a complicated and noisy background, turns out to be important not just for a child learning to understand speech and written language, but also for an elderly person struggling with hearing loss.
In a study of those who do keep playing, published this summer, researchers found that as musicians age, they experience the same decline in peripheral hearing, the functioning of the nerves in their ears, as nonmusicians. But older musicians preserve the brain functions, the central auditory processing skills that can help you understand speech against the background of a noisy environment.
“We often refer to the ‘cocktail party’ problem — or imagine going to a restaurant where a lot of people are talking,” said Dr. Claude Alain, assistant director of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and one of the authors of the study. “The older adults who are musically trained perform better on speech in noise tests — it involves the brain rather than the peripheral hearing system.”
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are approaching the soundscape from a different point of view, studying the genetics of absolute, or perfect, pitch, that ability to identify any tone. Dr. Jane Gitschier, a professor of medicine and pediatrics who directs the study there, and her colleagues are trying to tease out both the genetics and the effects of early training.
“The immediate question we’ve been trying to get to is what are the variants in people’s genomes that could predispose an individual to have absolute pitch,” she said. “The hypothesis, further, is that those variants will then manifest as absolute pitch with the input of early musical training.”
Indeed, almost everyone who qualifies as having truly absolute pitch turns out to have had musical training in childhood (you can take the test and volunteer for the study at http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/).
Alexandra Parbery-Clark, a doctoral candidate in Dr. Kraus’s lab and one of the authors of a paper published this year on auditory working memory and music, was originally trained as a concert pianist. Her desire to go back to graduate school and study the brain, she told me, grew out of teaching at a French school for musically talented children, and observing the ways that musical training affected other kinds of learning.
“If you get a kid who is maybe 3 or 4 years old and you’re teaching them to attend, they’re not only working on their auditory skills but also working on their attention skills and their memory skills — which can translate into scholastic learning,” she said.
Now Ms. Parbery-Clark and her colleagues can look at recordings of the brain’s electrical detection of sounds, and they can see the musically trained brains producing different — and stronger — responses. “Now I have more proof, tangible proof, music is really doing something,” she told me. “One of my lab mates can look at the computer and say, ‘Oh, you’re recording from a musician!’ ”
Many of the researchers in this area are themselves musicians interested in the plasticity of the brain and the effects of musical education on brain waves, which mirror the stimulus sounds. “This is a response that actually reflects the acoustic elements of sound that we know carry meaning,” Professor Kraus said.
There’s a fascination — and even a certain heady delight — in learning what the brain can do, and in drawing out the many effects of the combination of stimulation, application, practice and auditory exercise that musical education provides. But the researchers all caution that there is no one best way to apply these findings.
Different instruments, different teaching methods, different regimens — families need to find what appeals to the individual child and what works for the family, since a big piece of this should be about pleasure and mastery. Children should enjoy themselves, and their lessons. Parents need to care about music, not slot it in as a therapeutic tool.
“We want music to be recognized for what it can be in a person’s life, not necessarily, ‘Oh, we want you to have better cognitive skills, so we’re going to put you in music,’ ” Ms. Parbery-Clark said. “Music is great, music is fantastic, music is social — let them enjoy it for what it really is.”
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 11, 2012
A previous version of this post contained an incorrect hyperlink for a paper by Alexandra Parbery-Clark.
A version of this article appeared in print on 09/11/2012, on page D6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Brain Waves Stay Tuned to Early Lessons.
Facts on Growth: Babies to Young Adults While experts warn that it's too early to get excited about magically turning children into super learners with a wave of the baton, here's a sampling of what some researchers have observed in their experiments:
- Preschoolers who had keyboard training did better at math reasoning than another group that had computer training instead.
- College students who had received musical training before age 12 remembered significantly more words from a list than other students.
- Infants can distinguish differences in pitch, melody and rhythm from very early on. In fact, they even seem to recognize music they were exposed to repeatedly in the womb.
- Students who received daily music training for seven months had higher reading scores at the end than did a control group. A year later, their scores were still higher than the control groups.
- Preschoolers were able to learn body parts better in a lesson that used music and dance as opposed to conventional lessons, or even one including movement but no music.