You always thought music education was important...Now you know!
A rising tide of research has linked music lessons to childhood brain development.
Childhood music lessons actually enlarge the brain. German researchers have found that the brain area used to analyze music pitch is an average of 25% larger in musicians. The younger the musical training, the larger the area. Nature, April 23, 1998.
Substance abuse is lowest in music students - A Texas Commission of Drug & Alcohol Abuse report showed that "secondary students who participated in music reported the lowest lifetime and current use of all all substances." Houston Chronicle, January 11, 1998.
College-bound seniors who had school music experience scored 52 points higher on the verbal portion of their SATs and 37 points high in math. (89 points combined) Music improves math and fraction comprehension along with spatial-temporal testing.
70 percent of the nation's major universities have state that high school credit and achievement in the arts are significant considerations for admission to their institutions.
Music teaches cooperative and leadership skills.
Music students have better attendance & are more often on honor rolls. WHY?
Music is MATHEMATICAL! It is rhythmically based on the divisions and subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a PHYSICAL EDUCATION! It requires fantastic coordination of fingers,hands, arms lips, cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Music is a FOREIGN LANGUAGE! Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or
French; and the notation, is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
Music is a SCIENCE! It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A
conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities,
volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is HISTORY! Music usually reflects the environments and times of its
creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
MUSIC IS ALL THESE THINGS, BUT MOST OF ALL MUSIC IS ART!
It allows a human beings to take all these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate.
Music may achieve the highest of all missions:
She may be a bond between nations, races, and states
Who are strangers to one another in many ways;
She may unite what is disunited,And bring peace to what is hostile. ...Dr. Max Bendiner