The Value of Music Education
I just thought I would share a few examples of what research is discovering about the value of music education beyond the intrinsic value of learning music
From “A User’s Guide to the Brain” by Dr. John Ratley, M.D.
“The musician is constantly adjusting decisions on tempo, tone, style, rhythm, phrasing, and feeling–training the brain to become incredibly good at organizing and conducting numerous activities at once. Dedicated practice of this orchestration can have a great payoff for lifelong attentional skills, intelligence, and an ability for self-knowledge and expression.”
Michael Gazzinaga, University of California Santa Barbara “Learning, Arts, and the Brain”
Overall, then, what is emerging is a picture in which there is a mediational path that governs the now amply documented effects of arts traning on memory. The path goes from skill in the arts, to heightened use of effective strageties, to better memory. We do not yet understand the mechanisms at work in learning in the various arts domains that … See Morelead to this path, but the tentative conclusion that the mediational path governs the effects of arts training on memory opens up the field for studying how training in the arts, and in other domains, can have such beneficial effects.
From a 2007 Harris Poll
Music education is associated with those who go on to higher education. In looking at what groups may have participated more in music, education shows the largest differences. Two-thirds (65%) of those with a high school education or less participated in music compared to four in five (81%) with some college education and 86 percent of those with a… See More college education. The largest group to participate in music, however, are those with a post graduate education as almost nine in ten (88%) of this group participated while in school.
Music education is also associated with higher incomes. Three-quarters of people (74%) with household incomes of $34,999 or less and 72 percent of those with incomes of $35,000-$49,999 participated in music, compared to 83 percent of those with incomes of $150,000 or more.
Dr. Laurel Trainor, Prof. of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior at McMaster University in Canada
Young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do not receive musical training. The brains of musically trained children respond to music in a different way to those of untrained children, and that the musical training improves their memory. After one … See Moreyear the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, Visio spatial processing, mathematics and IQ.
“The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994
Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate majors of medical school applicants. He found that sixty- six percent (66%) of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. Forty-four percent (44%) of biochemistry majors were admitted.