Why Music and playing an instrument, you ask?
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 Kappa, February 1994.)
66% of all college freshmen drop out during their first year. In contrast, 96% of band students graduate from higher education. (Source: The National Association of Middle School Principals.) In a 2000 survey, 73 percent of respondents agree that teens who play an instrument are less likely to have discipline problems. (Source: Americans Love Making Music – And Value Music Education More Highly Than Ever, American Music Conference, 2000.) Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills. (Source: Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.) 78% of Americans feel learning a musical instrument helps students perform better in other subjects. (Source: Gallup Poll, American Attitudes Toward Music, 2003.) Students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident and better able to express their ideas. (Source: Study, Columbia University.) With music in schools, students connect to each other better, have greater camaraderie, are in fewer fights, display less racism and show reduced use of hurtful sarcasm. (Source: Eric Jensen, Arts With the Brain in Mind, 2001.) Arts Education aids students in skills needed in the workplace: flexibility, the ability to solve problems and communicate; the ability to learn new skills, to be creative and innovative, and to strive for excellence. (Source: Quote of Joseph M. Calahan, Director of Corporate Communications, Xerox Corporation.) The arts are one of the six subject areas in which the College Board recognizes as essential in order to thrive in college. (Source: Academic Preparation for College: What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do, 1983 [still in use], The College Board, New York.) A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background. (Source: Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.) The arts produce jobs, generating an estimate $37 billion a year with a return of $3.4 billion a year in federal income taxes. (Source: American Arts Alliance Fact Sheet, October 1996.) 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.) Nearly 100% of past winners in the prestigious Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology (for high school students) play one or more musical instruments. (Source: The Midland Chemist (American Chemical Society) Vol. 42, No. 1, Feb. 2005.) Children with musical training had significantly better verbal memory with those without such training, and the longer the training, the better the verbal memory. Students who continued training and beginners who had just started learning to play both showed improvement in verbal learning and retention. (Source: Summary of paper by Ho, Y.C. Cheung, M.C. Chan, in Neuropsychology, 2003.) Young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do no receive musical training. Musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, Visio spatial processing, mathematics and IQ. (Source: Dr. Laurel Trainor, Prof. of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior at McMaster University, 2006.) |
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