Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Music Education

I've spent the entire summer without much of an income and so am/was looking forward to returning to my music teaching duties at the elementary school in Redwood City where I taught last year. But then I come to find that the school district has knocked the arts down to an even lower peg than it was before--and believe me we were on a pretty low peg last year. Their thought is that if the children receive their music lessons twice a week for 9 weeks then that will be sufficient music education for them for the entire year!! 9 weeks, as opposed to the 28 weeks we were contracted for last year!! How is it possible that the administration of these school districts are still SO in the dark that they can't recognize the essential value of the arts in a child's life, as well as, education? There have been scientific studies proving the validity and strength of the arts, not only in helping to develop an appreciation for the arts, but in helping to develop cognitive thinking, discipline, mathematical skills, etc., etc. But it's because teachers are having to teach their students solely on the goal of good test scores that the arts are being relegated to the back burner. What is this saying about our society and the value we put on education? Will these children really get a well-rounded education that will inspire them to continue to develop their skills in college? And where will the new artists come from if we are not allowing our children to get a taste of the beauty of creativity in the schools? Will it just be the wealthy that are exposed to the arts since the poorer schools do not have the funds to support them? Yes, I am passionate about this and it boils my blood to think that test scores have become more important than the actual learning experience for our children. Even the teacher's creativity is being sucked out of them because of the pressure of delivering better test scores.

Taken from Making the Case for Music Education (http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr123.shtml)
"Early this decade, Gordon Shaw (University of California-Irvine) and Frances Rauscher (University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh) incited discussion of the connection between music and learning when they revealed the results of their work with college students. The researchers found that listening to 10 minutes of a Mozart piano sonata improved students' abilities to perform some spatial-reasoning tasks (for example, to see patterns in objects or numbers). While the benefits faded quickly after the music was stopped, that research opened the door to a follow-up study with preschool children.

In the follow-up study, 78 preschoolers were given tests designed to measure spatial abilities. Then a fourth of those students then were given a 12-15 minute private piano lesson each week for six months. At the end of that period, the tests were administered again. The results confirmed the impact of music instruction on students' spatial-reasoning skills. On one test that required students to assemble a puzzle of a camel, the students who received piano instruction show significantly more improvement than the other children did.

In another study, published by Martin Gardiner (currently at Brown University's Center for the Study of Human Development) in the May 1996 issue of the journal Nature, groups of first graders were given music instruction that emphasized sequential skill development and musical games involving rhythm and pitch. After six months, the students scored significantly better in math than students in groups that received traditional music instruction. (Reading scores for the two groups didn't show marked differences.) Follow-up studies with different groups of students showed similar results."

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