Part 1 of 5: An understanding of how music expresses and evokes emotions will help us realize what an important role that music can play in the education of our children. References are in Part 5.
by Dr. Arthur W. Harvey, B.S., M.M., D.M.A.
During the summer of 2001, I taught a course at the University of Hawaii called The Music-Brain Connection, that explored what is currently known about the cognitive connections, emotional connections, educational connections, psychophysical connections and biophysical connections between music and brain processes. The following summer of 2002, I taught a course that focused on one of those connections called Music and Human Physiology.
As music educators, I believe we need to know all we can about the human brain, the control center for all learning, motor skills, and emotions. Understanding aspects of the duality of hemispheric perceptual and processing styles, as well the role of the limbic system in experiencing music, can enhance our teaching as well as facilitate more effective and affective learning. As music educators, an understanding of how music expresses and evokes emotions and its ineffable power will help us realize what an important role that music.,.and the other arts...can play in the education of our keiki [Ed. - Hawaiian word for "baby" or "child"].
A necessary and important component of my courses included an examination of research dealing with the recent interest in the ability of music to increase intelligence (l.Q.) ... or at least spatial-temporal intelligence, that which allows us to maintain, transform, and compare mental images in space and time.
This form of reasoning is especially suited for creating a visual picture of what's actually happening, enabling us to better understand the mathematical and scientific principles need to solve complex problems.
The seminal research by Gordon Shaw and Francis Rauscher of the University of California at Irvine, described in detail in the book "Keeping Mozart in Mind" [ 1 ] ignited an explosion of publications, media campaigns, recordings, ongoing research and debate concerning whether music (Mozart) really does make you smarter.
Don Campbell's 1997 publication, "The Mozart Effect", [2] and "The Mozart Effect for Children" [3] published in 2000, popularized the term "The Mozart Effect" and increased public awareness of the unique power of music to have not only an impact on cognition, but also on emotions and health.
The momentum started in the 1990's, the Decade of the Brain, to explore and promote the role of music in brain development continues to have ongoing advocacy support for the importance of music education, and several web sites [4] are aggressively promoting the benefits of music in education.
A few examples of data used to promote music education follow:
....High school music students at Mission Viejo High School in California have been shown to hold a higher grade point average (GPA) than non-musicians of the same school.
....Neurologist Dr. Frank R. Wilson believes that learning to play a musical instrument helps students to develop faster physically, mentally, emotionally and socially.
....In 1999, according to the College Board report, students with coursework or experience in music performance scored 53 points higher on the verbal portion of the • SAT and 39 points higher on the math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts, for a combined total of 92 points higher.
....A two-year Swiss study involving 1200 children in 50 schools showed that students involved in the music program were better at languages, learned to read more easily, showed improved social interaction, showed more enjoyment in school, and had a lower level/of stress than non-music students.
....Studies have found that elementary students who received daily music instruction had fewer absences than other students.
....According to a Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities report, there is a very high correlation between positive self-perception, high cognitive competence scores, healthy self-esteem, total interest in and involvement in school activities, and the study of music.
....Researchers at the University of Munster in Germany have discovered through tonotopic maps (pathways in the brain involved in determining the pitch of a note played on a piano) that music lessons in childhood actually enlarges the auditory cortex of the brain. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in musicians compared to people who have never played an instrument, as reported in Nature, April 23, 1998.
....Upon integration of the arts into major subjects in fourteen New York elementary and secondary public schools, student behavior improved strikingly in such areas as taking risks, cooperating, solving problems, taking initiative for learning, and being prepared. Content-related achievement also rose according to Dee Dickinson in "Learning Through the Arts" New Horizons for Learning. 1997.
....Music can make a difference for young people from low socioeconomic status (SES). A 1998 research study-published in the American for the Arts Monograph Series No. 11, found that low SES students who took music lessons from scores in math and scored significantly higher than those of low SES students who were not involved in music. Math scores more than doubled. History and geography scores climbed by 40 percent.
....A curriculum combining piano lessons, educational math software and fun math problems can help second graders achieve scores on certain tests comparable to fourth graders, according to studies by the Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute (MIND) in Irvine California.
....A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reported that music training - specifically piano instruction - is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning math and science. Neurology Research, February 1997
Raise Your EQ with Music - Part 2
Raise Your EQ with Music - Part 3
Raise Your EQ with Music - Part 4
Raise Your EQ with Music - Part 5 - References
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