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Music Beats Computers at Enhancing Early
Childhood Development
A research team exploring the link between
music and intelligence reports that music
training—specifically piano instruction—is
far superior to computer instruction in
dramatically enhancing children’s abstract
reasoning skills necessary for learning math
and science.
The findings published in the 1997,
Neurological Research, are the result of a
two year experiment with pre-schoolers, led
by psychologist Dr. Frances Rauscher of the
University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and
physicist Dr. Gordon Shaw of the University
of California at Irvine. As a follow-up to
their groundbreaking studies indicating how
music can enhance spatial-reasoning ability,
the researchers set out to compare the
effects of musical and non-musical training
on intellectual development.
Says Frances Rauscher, Ph.D. and Gorden
Shaw, Ph.D. of the University of California,
Irvin; “Music lesson have been shown to
improve a child’s performance in school.
After eight months of keyboard lessons,
preschoolers tested showed a 46 percent
boost in their spatial IQ, which is crucial
for higher brain functions such as complex
mathematics.”
Commentary
Re-educate the politicians
Music has everything to do with math, science and education.
To substantiate this premise, we can
quote statistics and studies that show how a large portion of scientists, mathematicians and
doctors are amateur musicians with a
solid background and training in
music. But to discover how music is of such fundamental
importance to the education of our
children, we need to dig even deeper and
ultimately answer the real question;
how and
why
has our modern culture
disconnected music study from education?
As this is a very complex issue, we
can only answer this question
in part, since a thoroughly
comprehensive answer is beyond the
scope of this article
But first we need to go back 3000
years or so. In the ancient Greek
civilization, music was considered
along with science, astronomy and
mathematics as a primary and
necessary study in the pursuit of
truth and knowledge. Philosophers
and thinkers of that era
mathematically calculated the
musical scale and tonal system and
applied additional calculations in
designing the musical instruments so
musicians could express the
cultural esthetics of that time.
Indeed, the musical and tonal
systems and instruments that
have been used by all civilizations
throughout history were conceived in
a similar fashion. Through
imagination, calculations,
esthetics, practical application of
esthetics or what is known as music
and art.
The modern piano and
twentieth century piano tuning
resulted in a similar fashion.
Essentially, you had over a period
of roughly 150 years, extended
debates, discussions, experiments,
disagreements by theorists,
mathematicians, many of whom were
musicians or who worked closely with
musicians about what a piano should
look like, sound like and what kind
of tuning would best support the
music. All the while music was
being played and instrument design
and tuning was continually modified
in order to
accommodate the ever changing musical
esthetics.
The purpose of this brief historical
exposition is the following. Here we
are in the 21st century and we have
as a civilization and certainly as a
culture lost sight of these
important connections. If there were
a process in all past civilizations
whereby man inquired into the nature
of the universe and connected music
with astronomy and philosophy, where
does that leave us in the present.
Have we really evolved or are we
devolving.
Mathematics, science, music, art all
have one thing in common which is
higher thinking,
creative thinking, critical
thinking; in other words, the ability to
think.
So I have to conclude that the
problem with our politicians and
education bureaucrats who declare
music as an unessential and as
a casualty of budget woes, is a symptom
of their inability to think and make
the right decisions and choices in a beaurocracy
embodied with a hubris of
misplaced priorities. Their line of “reason” that
declares music as an unessential is
also a result that delivers music
education as a casualty of our modern American
compulsion of relentless commoditization of esthetics, art
and just about everything and
holding that up as the as the holy grail.
True art and beauty and expression
can never be a commodity any more
than a rainbow can. When we fail to
pass on to the next generation a
suggestion, a map or pointer to the
higher strata of human
sensibilities, and
consciousness, we end up
with .............. reality shows.
(Any points of view stated on
this website do not necessary
reflect the opinions or point of
view of the management or staff)
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