A Little Music, Please

Since my last blog entry (Was it really only yesterday?!) I conducted a little online research and found an abstract of an article entitled "The Effect of Early Music Training on Child Cognitive Development." from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 20 Issue 4, December 1999. Pages 615-636. The last sentence in the abstract says the following: "This study suggests a significant correspondence between early music instruction and spatial-temporal reasoning abilities." The age range of the children included in the study was four to six years; kindergartners fall right in the middle of that age range.

For the past several years, the term, "research-based," has become almost like a mantra in the educational community. The idea seems to be that teaching using strategies that are not research-based wastes precious educational time. Therefore, we must only use curricula that were published using research-based criteria. That is a very noble and understandable stance. Sadly, however, if I were to use time in my instructional day to directly teach music, and even if I provided proof of the research-based validity of such an endeavor, I would be told in no uncertain terms that I must not "waste" the time on music since that time needs to be spent only on language arts and math. Sigh!

I think back to my own elementary education. While dodging dinosaur legs and avoiding pterodactyl claws on my way to school, I eagerly looked forward to the songs our music teacher would teach us that day. I loved going to school for that fact alone. What an incredible value it was to me! I learned history when we learned folk songs. I learned simple fractions when we were being taught how to read music. I learned how to play what was then called a tonette, which was a simple recorder. And that was just elementary school!

Music kept me attending high school. I cannot imagine how boring and un-motivating school would have been for me had I not had music. In fact, when my academic grades were mediocre, my parents spoke to my academic counselor asking her to take me out of my music class. Thankfully, the counselor discouraged my parents from doing that by telling them that if they took music away from me it would leave nothing for which I would keep attending school.

Music and the arts have been essentially gone from the public school setting for too long. And they wonder why the high school drop-out rate is so high?