Help me describe why music education is important please

[Michaelangelica]

Musical Training Improves Your Children's Speech, Reading, Vocabulary, and More...

New study shows neuroplasticity benefits from learning an instrument

Musical Training Improves Your Children's Speech, Reading, Vocabulary, and More... - Planet Green

'Music in Hospitals' is Good Medicine for Anyone - Planet Green - Features

The Nature article reviews literature showing, for example, that musicians are more successful than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words.

 

Children who are musically trained show stronger neural activation to pitch changes in speech and have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who did not receive music training.

 

And musicians trained to hear sounds embedded in a rich network of melodies and harmonies are primed to understand speech in a noisy background.

They exhibit both enhanced cognitive and sensory abilities that give them a distinct advantage for processing speech in challenging listening environments compared with non-musicians. (Science Daily)

[paigetheoracle]

Mike, this may help you:-

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8526699.stm

Edited August 14, 2010 by paigetheoracle
want to change something

[niviene]

While my post may be completely unhelpful scientifically for you, I am going to make it anyway. I am glad to see your work and this information. I am an audiophile myself, and I have always found some connection between music and mathematics. I love the idea of expressing music mathematically, breaking it apart in my head, or expressing math as music; I've encountered some truly amazing musical artwork that was simply math stated in musical expression. I can't really contribute any scientific facts or data, sadly. But, this train of thought is definitely very close to home for me. I think that learning music and being capable of transforming music is an incredible way to learn and to open the mind for the study of other things, like math and physics. I think of things like transposing music and manipulating it in the same ways I think of being able to complete multiple-task calculations in my head. I guess the worst is never being able to explain exactly how I see the correlation as being as important as I feel it is, and instead rambling in circles. Ergo, I shall end my nonsense by restating that I think this is a fantastic project.

[ChristopherNicholls]

From the Report:

Venezuela. Proposal for a loan for a program to support the Centro de Acción

Social por la Música, Phase II - Inter-American Development Bank.

 

Benefits.

Sixty-three percent of the System’s beneficiaries have good or excellent achievement in school (compared to 50% among their classmates who do not participate in the System). Parents report substantial improvements in their children’s punctuality, responsibility, and discipline after going through the System (95%, 96%, and 86%, respectively, according to the 2004 ULA report).

 

According to the results of a recent cost-benefit study conducted during program preparation, there are important social benefits—representing about 1.68 bolívares for eachbolívar invested in the System—from the decline in the school dropout rate and the drop in victimization in communities where the System is present. The program’s baseline also confirms the benefits related to the training of human capital and individual behavior (two-thirds of parents surveyed report these as the primary advantages of their children’s participation in the System). As shown in Table I-2, there are also significant benefits in terms of social capital formation and improvement in formal employment expectations for boys, girls, and young people of working age (14 and up).

 

CN

[joekgamer]

While music can be enriching, if a kid is 'forced' to take a musical education class, they may come out of it with little/no improvement and a dislike of music (not (necessarily) listening to it, but playing/singing it). I recall I was forced in the fifth grade to take chorus (along with the rest of the grade), and I absolutely despised it. They were trying to get more people to sign up for the sixth-grade-and-up elective version the year after, but even though my grade was the largest they had had in years, the chorus group was minuscule once it became an elective class. The fact that everybody was forced into the class left a negative view of it the year after.

[Michaelangelica]

it’s not enough to want to make music in something like Guitar Hero, and music is very fun, but it’s also transformative. It’s very, very important, music can change your life, more than almost anything, it can change the way you communicate with others, it can change your body, it can change you mind.

http://blog.ted.com/2008/04/15/machover_ellsey/

[media][/media]

 

[Michaelangelica]

http://researchreview.unimelb.edu.au/2011/creating-musical-futures

 

“Without music life would be a mistake.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

Music is such a pervasive and widespread feature of our cultural life it ought to play a significant role in schools and communities – or at least given as much attention as sport in the education curriculum. By Silvia Dropulich

 

In schools, however, numbers studying and participating in music, especially in the upper years of high school, are extremely low, according to internationally renowned music educator, Professor Gary McPherson.

 

“Are the challenges of learning music too tough?”

 

“Or are approaches to learning music in schools inconsistent with young people’s expectations and needs,” he asks.

 

Professor McPherson is the Ormond Chair of Music and Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music within the Faculty of the VCA and Music.

 

His research output is prolific and he has published extensively in areas relating to music education, music psychology and performance science.

 

One of Professor McPherson’s current research projects is entitled ‘Creating musical futures in Australian schools and communities: refining theory and planning for practice through empirical innovation’, a four-year $385,000 ARC Discovery project.

 

[Jane515]

Music education is beneficial to the greater community because music education helps to create people who are able to think logically, understand complicated ideas and tune into their own emotions. 

[Gregb]

Music education is beneficial to the greater community because music education helps to create people who are able to think logically, understand complicated ideas and tune into their own emotions. 

I agree, the music dept usually get money cuts, but I think it's one of the most important studies. It opens kids minds and they realize there is more than just sports.