Music as a Teaching Tool
Most would dismiss music as just another form of entertainment, something to pass idle time with. Recent studies however, are revealing that contrary to this, music actually is a very powerful educational tool. According to some of these studies:
- piano lessons can increase a child’s abstract reasoning skills better than computer lessons.1
- music can stimulate “right brain” learning.2
- the appropriate kind of music can increase attentiveness and thus, when played in the background, it can help a child study better and perform well in tests.3
- music can foster creativity.4
- music can develop and improve one’s communication skills.5
- listening to music helps students recognize patterns better, a helpful skill specially when learning math and grammar.6
- music lessons at a young age develops ones’ math proficiency, a result, according to experts, of music’s ability to “strengthen the neural chords that transmit information” between the right and the left brain.7
- because students are made to understand concepts like “an eighth note is half of a quarter note,” studying how to play the piano and read music also increase the brain’s ability to “to visualize ratios, fractions, proportions and thinking in space and time.”8
Groups advocating the use of music as a teaching tool point to various cases to prove that music truly is a part of the formula for successful learning.
- In 1993, Japan, Holland and Hungary were the top three countries in terms of the students’ science ability. One of the common factors found among the three countries was that music is included in the country’s curriculum from kindergarten to high school.9
- Most of the leading technical designers and engineers in Silicon Valley play instruments.9
- After introducing an intensive music program, the St. Augustine Bronx elementary school improved their students’ reading skills from almost failing in 1984, to at or above the national average in just a few years.10
- The Davidson School in Augusta, Georgia, became the number 1 school in the U.S. academically a decade after introducing a music program.11
- Each member of the award-winning Palos Verdes Intermediate School (PVIS) math team plays an instrument.12
- A study conducted revealed that pupils who studied piano and played with a special computer math game during a four-month period scored 27% higher than a group that took English lessons and played the same game. The group that studied piano also scored more than 100% better than a group that had no piano lessons or did not play the computer game.13
- According to a study conducted in 1997 by the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 8th and 10th-graders with high exposure to music performed better in school were also less likely to dropout.14
Though the explanation as to how exactly music affects learning is till being studied and fine-tuned, as an educator, you must consider this as a real possibility and do what you can to incorporate music into your classroom and maximize its potential as a teaching tool.
Sources:
1 Lim, Ronald, “Never Too Highbrow.” http://www.mb.com.ph/archive_pages.php?url=
http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2006/09/20/YTCP2006092074961.html
2, 3, 6 Music in the Classroom, http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/blbrainmusic.htm
4, 5 Wikipedia, “Alfred A. Tomatis.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_A._Tomatis
7, 12 “Math and Music,” http://library.thinkquest.org/4116/Music/music.htm?tqskip=1
8, 13, 14 “Piano training is a noteworthy math teaching tool,”
http://library.thinkquest.org/4116/Music/piano.htm
9, 10, 11 Dickinson, Dee, “Music and the Mind.”
http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/dickinson_music.htm
