An Intelligence View of Music Education - Essay Example

An Intelligence View of Music Education For quite some time now elementary school teachers have opposed music education, calling it a "waste of time". They argue that taking children out to music classes twice or thrice a week is nothing but loss of precious instruction time - a time which can be far better utilized by imparting more meaningful education. The music teachers, on the other hand, dutifully keep churning out popular music and nursery rhymes for the children. But there is much more to music education than nursery rhymes. Perhaps the teachers don't know the depth of this education or the recent research that has proved its worth sufficiently, therefore, they have done not too well in supporting their side of the story. As a result, parents and students are left in a quandary as to whether to go for music education or not. In this article Dr Arthur Harvey, from University of Hawaii (Manoa), puts up a forceful and convincing argument in favor of music education. Written primarily on the effects of music education on mental development of students, this article can broadly be divided into two parts. First part deals with "an awareness of the breadth and depth of resources and approaches to the relationship of music to brain function and development". Dr Harvey cites numerous books, magazines and even a movie which deals with the subject. This part alone can be of much help to any researcher or parent who wants to know more about music's effect on development of the brain. In the second part of the article, Dr Harvey touches upon the necessary role that music can play in education. This part is a learning in itself as it also mentions the seven intelligences mentioned in Howard Gardener's Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. A welcome departure from other articles of same type, this one gives a brief account of all the types of intelligences instead of leaving it to the reader to search for other books to learn about them. The controversial Mozart's Effect has been briefly referred to and that too only to highlight the positive side without fuelling the controversy. The article is indeed very informative and quite convincing. Dr Harvey proves, by referring to research, how music can have positive effects on mental, physical, social and personal development of a student. This certainly puts a whole new perspective on music education. Parents and teachers can now understand the great potential that resides un-explored in the mind of a child and know that music holds the key to unlock that potential. The narrative style is very simple and easy to follow. That is another achievement by Dr Harvey as he has spared us the high-sounding, difficult to pronounce technical jargon associated with brain studies. Sequential details make it easy to follow the chronology of development in this field. The under-tone of the article is that after knowing the unique qualities of music education, it does not have to remain an "extra-curricular" activity. As Ives said, "Music expands my mind and challenges me to be a true individual". That is good enough reason to make music education a part of education curriculum. Research Proposal Music Education - Just Arts or Smarts "Music is about communication, creativity, and cooperation, and, by studying music in school, students have the opportunity to build on these skills, enrich their lives, and experience the world from a new perspective". These words of former President Bill Clinton sum up the point of view of music education proponents. The advocates of music education consider music education essential for development of both intellectual and aesthetic faculties. Several studies have confirmed that music directly enhances learning through increased spatial development. Math and reading are improved by learning rhythms and decoding notes and symbols. So there appears to be cross disciplinary learning in music.[1]. On the internet, www.childrenmusicworkshop.com is a strong advocate of music education. They say that, "it is an anomaly that while music is undermined in our public schools as a legitimate subject for serious study, there is a rise in the body of research demonstrating that music is a valuable tool for educators. Those who consider music to be an extra-curricular activity unworthy of inclusion as a core subject are overlooking the unique qualities that music instruction provides to all children". [2]. In the words of Dr Arthur Harvey of the University of Hawaii (Manoa) :- "Three major developments in recent years have strengthened our position in promoting music as a significant and research supported discipline that ought to be the core of the curriculum. They are: (1) The extensive amount of Brain Research.; (2) Howard Gardener's development of the "Theory of Multiple Intelligences..; and (3) the highly publicized research on Mozart Effect, research that showed a casual relationship between music and aspects of intelligence". [3] On the other hand, another school of thought considers music education a waste of precious school time. They consider that all this excitement about new discoveries, especially Mozart Effect, is nothing but media hype. In the words of Norman M. Weinberger of the University of California, "As is often the case with public reports of scientific findings, emphasis was placed on the most "sensational" aspects of the findings, i.e., the apparent 8-9 point boost in IQ. Two critical and highly limiting factors were generally ignored - first that the effects were not on general intelligence but only for a test of spatial abilities; second, that the effects lasted only a few minutes". [4]. He goes on further to say that, "listening to ten minutes of Mozart could get someone interested in listening to more unfamiliar music, opening up new vistas. And many children get interested in playing a musical instrument after hearing any new music, including Mozart".[5]. It is amid such opposing ideas that my research paper takes up this topic. I intend to study the effect of music education on brain development with special emphasis on Mozart Effect. My preliminary research shows that advantages of music on brain development are more scientifically substantiated. The "opposition" so to say, is not really to music education but to the results of scientific research. That, too, is based more on a debate rather than any scientific studies. I will discuss both the pros and cons of music education. But on the whole my paper will focus more on the scientific basis of music's role in brain development. A brief description of seven intelligences and the effect of music on each of them, has been included to support my point of view from another angle also i.e. education psychology. Music Education - Annotated Bibliography Harvey,Arthur. An Intelligence View of Music Education. Leka Nu Hou, The Hawaiian Music Educators Bulletin. February 1997. In this article Dr Arthur Harvey has very convincingly advocated the importance of music education. It gives a brief overview of the seven intelligences theorized by Howard Gardner and then goes on to describe music's effect on each of them. Also gives a brief account of Mozart Effect. www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/benefits.htm This site advocates music education. In this article the MENC staff has compiled a list of facts regarding music education. These cover benefits conveyed by music in Society, School, Developing Intelligence and Life categories. The basic message is that music helps our children and communities in substantial ways. www.menc.org This site has a compilation of research quotes from eminent researchers in the field of music education. It provides a good source for further research. www.educationthroughmusic.com/brainarticles.htm The site has a collection of articles on music education. These articles include some technical information also like exploring the neurobiology of music. Music Education - Just Arts or Smarts Premise The human brain has always intrigued scientists and philosophers. Its potentials are infinitely more than any that have been discovered so far. To access and explore that undiscovered, so far elusive part of the brain and tap its potentials is the "last frontier" for scientists. We know that brain has two parts - left part which controls logic and right part which controls artistic or aesthetic sense. Researchers have been trying for decades now to find ways to enhance the ability of a person to use both sides of his brain as that will enhance his mental abilities - in short it will make him more intelligent. Mind exercises, food supplements, physical exercises.. the list is endless. At the same time, the importance of making music education a core subject in schools has also been a much debated topic. Until the 1990s, music education remained relegated to an "extra-curricular" activity. Teachers objected that taking children out for music classes was a waste of precious instruction time. But then the 1990s was declared the Decade of the Brain. An extensive amount of research, most of it involving studying the effects of music on brain development, was carried out. Around the same time, Howard Gardner put forth his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, in which music occupies a significant place in education reforms. Both these factors were enough to give strength to supporters of music education in their claims that music is an important factor in education. But it was the ground breaking research of Dr Francis Rouscher and Dr Gordon L. Shaw, which was dubbed The Mozart Effect by the media that really fuelled the interest in using music education to enhance mental development in students. This study has sparked a lot of controversy also. But the fact remains that further research has shown similar encouraging results regarding music's ability to enhance mental capacity. An Overview of Research Results Students taking courses in music performance and music appreciation scored higher in the SAT than students with no arts participation. Music performance students scored 53 points higher on the verbal and 39 points higher on the math. Music appreciation students scored 61 points higher on the verbal and 42 points higher on the math. (Source: 1999 College-Bound Seniors National Report: Profile of SAT Program Test Takers, The College Entrance Examination Board, Princeton, New Jersey) According to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, music students received more academic honors and awards than non-music students. A higher percentage of music participants received As, As/Bs, and Bs than non-music participants. (Source: NELS:88 First Follow-up, 1990, National Center for Education Statistics, Washington D.C.) Lewis Thomas, physician and biologist, found that music majors comprise the highest percentage of accepted medical students at 66%. (Source: As reported in "The Case for Music in the Schools," Phi Delta Kappan, February 1994.) Research made between music and intelligence concluded that music training is far greater than computer instruction in improving children's abstract reasoning skills.(Source: Shaw, Rauscher, Levine, Wright, Dennis and Newcomb, "Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning," Neurological Research, vol. 19, February 1997 ) The University of Montreal researched brain imaging techniques to study brain activity during musical tasks. Researches concluded that sight-reading musical scores and playing music "activate regions in all four of the cortex's lobes" and "parts of the cerebellum are also activated during those tasks." (Source: J. Sergent, E. Zuck, S. Tenial, and B. MacDonnall (1992). Distributed neural network underlying musical sight reading and keybpard performance. Science, 257, 106-109. ) Researchers in Leipzig discovered through the use of brain scans that musicians had larger plenum temporal, the region of the brain associated with reading skills. Also, musicians had a thicker corpus callosum, the nerve fibers that connect the two halves of the brain. (Source: G. Schlaug, L. Jancke, Y. Huang, and H. Steinmetz (1994). "In Vivo Morphometry of Interhemispheric Asymmetry and Connectivity in Musicians." In I. Deliege (Ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 417-418), Liege, Belgium. ) [1] From a historical point of view, education was considered to be a source of making a well rounded personality. Plato said that music is a more potent instrument for education than any other. In the Eastern culture, music was considered to be a part of training for a young gentleman. The Nawabs (rulers of Indian princely states) would send their children to singers to learn the finer details of culture. So the importance of music in formation of a cultured personality is evident from a study of different cultures also. But it was Howard Gardener who pin pointed the contents of a "well rounded personality". In his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, published in 1983, Gardener has refuted the traditional method of measuring a person's intelligence by a single measures and proposed that there are seven basic intelligences. Although in 1996, an eighth sense i.e. Naturalist (ability to distinguish plants and animals) has also been introduced. But for this study we will restrict ourselves to the seven intelligences proposed by Gardner. [2] Music's Effect on Multiple Intelligences In the January 1997 article, "The Musical Mind", Gardner was quoted as saying that music might be a special intelligence which should be viewed differently from other intelligences. He stated that musical intelligence probably carries more emotional, spiritual and cultural weight than the other intelligences. But perhaps most important, Gardner says, is that music helps some people organize the way they think and work by helping them develop in other areas, such as math, language, and spatial reasoning.[2]A brief description of Gardener's seven intelligences is as follows:- -Linguistic intelligence: The capacity to use words effectively, orally or written. In most cultures music enables people to communicate and express their emotions better. In an article in Readers Digest, Oct 96, titled You Can Raise Your Child's I.Q., it is reported that children taught with games and songs scored better by 10-20 points on IQ tests as compared to those without music.[2] -Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to use numbers effectively and to reason well. A study in Rhode Island has revealed that students who studied music showed dramatic increase in their reading and math proficiency.[2] -Spatial Intelligence: The ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations upon those perceptions. 30 minutes of group singing lessons and 10-15 minutes private keyboard lessons helped students score 80% more marks. [2] -Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: Expertise in using one's whole body to express ideas and feelings and facility in using one's hands to produce or transform things. Music develops motor skills and cognitive development. [2] --Musical Intelligence: The capacity to perceive, discriminate, transform, and express musical forms. Investigations are proving that by birth every child has a neural mechanism devoted only for music. The earlier the music education starts the better chances there are of this mechanism developing fully. [2] --Interpersonal Intelligence: The ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people. Music is basically a social activity and it improves a person's social skills. [2] --Intrapersonal Intelligence: Self-knowledge and the ability to act adaptively on the basis of that knowledge.[2] The Mozart Effect Two methods are used to study the relation between music and brain development. The first involves using brain imaging techniques (MRI, EEG, and PET) to map those areas of the brain which show response to music stimulus. The second is gathering behavioral data to prove or disprove a point. By using these methods, neuro-biologists study the effects of music on brain activation. In 1991, Drs Shaw and Xiao Dan Leng theorized that, "Music activity strengthens neural firing patterns organized in a spatial-temporal code over large regions of the cortex. These firing patterns are also exploited by spatial reasoning tasks". [3] In 1992-93, a pilot study by Drs Rouscher, Shaw and associates was carried out on a small group of pre-school children. The children were given music training for several months and then a specifically designed spatial-temporal task was given to them. All of them performed significantly higher than expected. [3] In 1993, the same team carried out another study aimed at finding the effect of listening to music on brain development. Students who had listened to 10-15 minutes of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos scored 8-9 points higher on spatial IQ tests as compared to other students. [3]As soon as the results of this study were presented to the media, they dubbed it The Mozart Effect. Although the researchers had specifically said that the effects are only temporary and last only 10-15 minutes, this fact was lost in the media fury and Mozart Effect became a phenomenon. The team of Drs Rouschers, Shaw and associates carried out further tests and found that this effect is linked only to Mozart's Sonata. This is very intriguing indeed. The team has concluded that listening, being a passive activity for most people does not produce the desired results. It is actively participating in making music that may have lasting effects on spatial temporal intelligence. [3] The spatial temporal tasks are responsible for arranging separate elements of an object in a single whole. So spatial temporal operations are successive steps, each step somewhat dependant on the previous ones. Spatial-logical operations, on the other hand, require recognition of similarities or differences between objects and are usually one step operations. For example classifying objects according to color or shape. The studies of Rouschers and Shaw demonstrate that music can have positive effects only on spatial temporal intelligence. [3] Conclusions The effects of music on brain development have been proven by studies and experiments. But as is the case with any scientific study, the media picks out only the most significant part of it and glorifies it. The same is the case with results on effects of music on development of mental faculties. It is obvious that music has a lasting effect on the personal development of an individual. Learning music requires using more parts of the brain. Resultantly the brain of accomplished musicians is relatively larger than average person. Moreover, since making music involves piecing together different notes and chords to make a complete rhythm, the spatial temporal development in musicians is more pronounced. The rhythmic motions of hands and feet in music improve a person's motor skills. In short music develops the brain. The reaction of general population over Mozart Effect is not justified. It does not provide any quick-fix solutions. True that it helps increase spatial temporal intelligence but it has also been proved that only listening to music produces only temporary results. To obtain long term benefits one has to work at making music. The younger one starts the better development will occur. Music education may well be the key to open the unexplored potential of the mind. And music educators hold that key. But with that comes great responsibility. Not all students have access to music education. What is more, not all students are gifted or talented. Then there is also the question of maintaining music's status as an art and at the same time using it as an educational tool. It falls to music educators to understand the dynamics involved in all this and use music education to the best advantage of their students. Research continues in this area. But the skeptics are also in abundance. They agree that music has physical and emotional effect on a person. But the results of the researches are viewed as a coincidence. Perhaps further tests or studies will show the permanence of music's effect on mental development. Works Cited 1. www.childrenmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/academicsuccess.htm 2. Harvey, Arthur. An Intelligence View of Music Education. Hawaiian Music Educators Association Bulletin. February 1997. 3. 4. 5. MENC&emdash; The National Association for Music Education "Benefits of Music Education" Brochure. Spring 2002 6. Altenmuller, Eckart. Music Education as A Powerful Stimulus for Brain Plasticity. ISME. 6/10/2003. 1. www.childrenmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/academicsuccess.htm 2. www.childrenmusicworkshop.com 3www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm 4."The Mozart Effect": A Small Part of the Big Picture Copyright 2000 Norman M. Weinberger and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved. 5. www.music-research.org/Publications/researchnotes/V711W00.html Read More