Benefits Of Music On Overall Education Incomplete list by Nick Page
MUSIC AS BENEFIT TO EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Music making and performance builds confidence. This confidence carries over to other experiences.
Music, along with dance, is an extremely emotional expression.
Music provides emotional outlets that children desperately need. Music making shows students that being emotional in an academic setting is acceptable.
Music provides emotional outlets that children desperately need. Music making shows students that being emotional in an academic setting is acceptable.
The child transcends confidence to reach awe and wonder.
An aura of power is created with great music making. The student is filled with a strong sense of self-worth as well a sense of connection to a greater community. This power is far preferable to the allure of guns, drugs, cigarettes, and sex.
Music provides communication possibilities for those who have difficulty expressing their emotions. This is part of the basis for music therapy.
Music making and performance provides needed “adrenaline rushes” and ecstatic peak experiences that our evolutionary ancestors required, but which out “civilized” selves have lost.
MUSIC AS BENEFIT TO READING, WRITING AND OTHER SKILLS
Music activities require listening. All listening skills for all academic subjects are aided by music activities.
One cannot accurately sing a note without first accurately hearing it. This internalization of sound helps children in their transition from reading out loud to reading silently (hearing words in their heads.) Similarly, this “inner hearing” is an aid to all silent problem solving like math and science.
Alfred Tomatis believes that there is a correlation between the hunger to listen and the hunger to learn. This hunger, he says, begins in the womb with the fetus’ brain being fed with sound.
Nick Page believes that there is a correlation between the ability to sustain a pulse and the ability to sustain one’s attention span.
Music making is a natural extension of our tendency to play. The elements of play are the same as the elements of music; imitation, repetition, contrast, variation, and exaggeration.
Music is made of patterns. Becoming aware of these patterns, both consciously and subconsciously, helps a child with patterns (often similar) in math, science, and general cognitive skills.
Memorizing music helps with other memorization skills.
Like learning the alphabet through the alphabet song, songs can be a powerful learning and memorization tool.
Tomatis and others believe that sound charges the brain.
Georgi Lozanov believes that certain background music enhances some forms of learning.
When our brains entrain to slow pulses, we become relaxed—slow music can remove stress.
When our brains entrain to fast pulses, our brains become more active—often more creative.
Entrainment can be used to solve discipline problems or to change the mood in a classroom.
In the overall rhythm of a child’s day, music activities make great transition vehicles, particularly simple call and response.
Songs with lots of movement, particularly dance, help with body/mind coordination.
The act of improvising and writing songs helps children synchronize their left and right brains.
Group singing creates vibrations throughout the body. Sound healers believe that these vibrations are good for us—they are healing.
We instinctively make a loud sound when we hurt ourselves. Sound healers believe that this is our natural way of using sound to remove pain.
The mind/body coordination required to play musical instruments aids all other areas of learning.
The student/teacher relationship is an ideal model for future learning relationships.
MUSIC TO BENEFIT GROUP SKILLS
Group singing strengthens cooperation skills.
Children who sing and celebrate together create strong bonds with each other and with their schools. Group singing increases their sense of belonging.
Rehearsing for concerts helps discipline by creating focus.
Simply by having singing celebrations (group sings), we demonstrate to children that celebration in life is important.
When children perform for each other, they radiate with pride and joy. Radiance is good.
When we create a supportive environment, we develop cooperation skills where problem solving becomes a group event, not a dysfunctional denial of the problems.
The divisions between the talented and the untalented are not as great as our hierarchical mass culture would suggest. Group music making helps students to see that everyone has talent.
MUSIC FOR MUSIC’S SAKE
Simply being musical is enough of a reason to keep music in the schools.
The Hindu expressions, “Nadha Brahma, the world is made of sound,” applies to us as well. We are resonant beings and making music is a natural response to being alive.
The Navahos say we “Walk in Beauty,” meaning we are part of the harmony of all things. The harmony becomes alive when we sing.
The universe works as an interdependent self-organized, creatively unfolding event—an event that seems to seek harmony. When we make music, particularly in harmony, we become an event that is interdependent, creative, and self-organizing. We become like the universe.
Music strengthens our cultural bonds with the past and future. Music helps to define who we are culturally.
Music strengthens our cultural bonds with each other. Music helps us to cross cultural borders.
