We all love music (at least, I would hope everyone amongst the audience of a Steinway Society blog does), and for good reason. Music is lauded by some as a language that transcends barriers while remaining reflective of the style from which it originates.
Music is one of the easiest ways to enjoy cultural diffusion, and can tug on the heartstrings or get one’s blood pumping. More simply stated, music is awesome.
To add icing to the cake, large amounts of research have shown that music may even facilitate one’s intellectual and social growth, particularly when training starts at a young age. I think it’s a shame that music education in schools is not taken more seriously, and here are the reasons why.
Music education and cognitive benefits
Some of the main cognitive benefits that have been demonstrated include significant growth of reading skills, spatial-temporal reasoning (which is a valuable skill in mathematics, science, and architecture), skills involving the imagination, and general memorization. Musicians have been shown to score higher on average on standardized tests such as the SAT. Studies have shown that a music education can bridge the education gap between low-income students and “regular” students. Music students’ social skills are also likely to rise, for the group settings of classes such as Choir or Orchestra “force” the students to develop teamwork skills to perform a piece of music well.
Benefit of music to schools
In addition to carrying benefits for students, good music education programs provide significant benefits to schools, the first of which being the relatively low cost of implementing decent programs. The average cost per student to fund music education programs is actually less than two percent of the total average cost per student (calculated in 2013). Another benefit to schools is the higher level of engagement and lower dropout rates of students who partake in music learning programs.
The pieces of evidence outlined in a separate blog entry (Why We Should Support Music Education) have been gathered through researching a multitude of sources, and they (and many more) are more deeply elaborated upon in them. These sources were compiled for a college research paper, and I thought I would share my thoughts and research here.
