THE BENEFITS OF MUSIC EDUCATION

The Benefits of Music Education

Society / Life

Secondary students who participated in band or orchestra reported the lowest lifetime and current use of all substances. – Texas Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse Report.  Reported in Houston Chronicle, January 1998

“…Arts are a compelling solution to teen violence, certainly not the cause of it!” – Michael Greene, Recording Academy President and CEO at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards, February 2000

Disruptive behavior of frequent skipping of classes , times in trouble, in-school suspensions, arrests and drop-outs total 12.14% of the school population compared with 8.08% of students involved with music classes. – NELS:88, second follow-up, 1992

“Many colleges view participation in the arts and music as a valuable experience…” according to the U.S. Department of Education.  In addition, one year of Visual and Performing Arts is recommended for college-bound high school students.  – Getting Ready for College Early: A Handbook for Parents of Students in Middle and Junior High School Years, U.S. Department of Education, 1997

The very best engineers and tech designers in the Silicon Valley are almost all practicing musicians.  – Grant Venerable, “The Paradox of the Silicon Savior” as reported in “The Case for Sequential Music Education in the Core Curriculum of the Public Schools,” The Center for the Arts in the Basic Curriculum, New York, 1989

The arts create jobs, increase the tax base, promote tourism and growth in related businesses and the overall quality of life for local cities and towns. This results in $3.4 billion in federal income taxes from nonprofit arts institutions and organizations each year. – American Arts Alliance Fact Sheet, October 1996

School / Developing Intelligence

The “No Child Left Behind Act of 2002” defines 10 core academic subjects including the arts. – Title IX, Part A, Section 91011 (11)

Children receiving piano training scored 27% higher on proportional math and fractions tests than students that received computer math training. – Graizano, Amy, Matthew Peterson, and Gordon Shaw, “Enhanced learning of proportional math through music training and spatial-temporal training.” Neurological Research 21 (March 1999)

Math proficiency by 12th graders was significantly higher in students that received consistent high levels of involvement in instrumental music through middle and high school years.  This is true no matter the child’s socio-economic status and is more profound the more they are involved. – Catterall, James S., et al. “Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement in Music and Theatre Arts.”  Los Angeles, CA:  The Imagination Project at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 1999

Students with studies in music performance scored 57 points higher on verbal SATs and 41 points higher in math SATs.  Students with studies in music appreciation scored 63 points higher on verbal SATs and 44 points higher in math SATs than those with no arts courses.  College-Bound Seniors National Report: Profile of SAT Program Test Takers. Princeton, NJ: The College Entrance Examination Board, 2001

Pre-schoolers given eight months of piano lessons had 46% increases in spatial-temporal IQs (important for math-reasoning) – Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky, and Wright, “Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship,” University of California, Irvine, 1994

The percentage of music participants receiving academic honors, As, A/Bs, and Bs was higher than that of non participants. – NELS:88 First Follow-up, 1990, National Center For Educational Statistics, Washington DC

66% of music majors that applied for medical school were accepted, the highest percentage of any major.  Only 44% of biochemistry majors were accepted. –  Thomas, Lewis as reported in “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, February 1994

36% of minority students listed music teachers as their role-models, the highest of any category.  English Teachers  were the closest with 28% and physical education/sports teachers were only listed at 7%. – D.L. Hannan and L.M. Walker, “Music teachers as role models for African-American students,” Journal of Research in Music Education, 41. 1993

Two Rhode Island elementary schools implemented a music program that showed improvement in reading and math skills.  In fact, students that were behind their peer caught up in reading and pulled ahead in math.  – Gardiner, Fox, Jeffrey and Knowles, as reported in Nature, May 23, 1996.

Reading music scores and playing music activates areas in all of the brain’s four regions called “cortex lobes” and parts of  the cerebellum. – Sergent, Zuck, and MacDonall, B. (1992).  Distributed neural network underlying musical sight reading and keyboard performance. Science, 257, 106-109

Students participating in music education had significant increases in self-esteem and thinking skills.  – National Arts Education Research Center, New York University, 1990

Brain scans show musicians have larger planum temporales (a region of the brain related to reading skills) and thicker corpus callosum ( the bundle of fibers that connect the two halves of the brain) than those of non-musicians. This was even more dramatic in those beginning training before the age of 7.  – Schlaug, Jancke. Huang and Steinmetz (1994).  In vivo morphometry of interhem ispheric asymmetry and connectivity in musicians.  In I. Deliege (Ed.) Proceedings of the 3d international conference for music preparation and cognition (pp. 417-418).  Liege, Belgium

Researched & Prepared by Laura Bennett, Intern with Utah Conservatory, July 15, 2004