Should Musical Education be a Necessary Part of the School Curriculum?
Harris Ishtiaq Ahmed
Lahore School of Economics
If there is anything that dates as far back as mankind itself, it is music. With Wallin et al. (2001) suggesting musical instruments to have existed for at least 55,000 years, music precedes the vast majority of the modern fields of study and practice including Physics, Chemistry, Sociology, Math and even Philosophy. It is believed to have existed prior to the vast dispersal of humans around the world and is a pertaining feature in every known culture; past and present. With each culture possessing it’s own unique music and variation of instruments, it is unsurprising to see that people hold the music of their region in high esteem. Despite the universality of this activity, it fails to secure a position as a permanent field of study and practice in most of the general educational institutions around the world. …show more content…
The object of this essay is to discuss the positive socio-cultural, physical, cognitive and emotional characteristics of being adept in playing an instrument or being able to sing while comparing the various dimensions of an music-incorporating educational institution with a non-musical one. This would serve the purpose to answer whether or not musical education should be a necessary part of the school curriculum. By scanning a list of research literature available to us, we see that the pursuit of finding relationships between music education and intelligence has been a long one. With this in mind, let us continue by first emphasizing on topics such as IQ, verbal memory, spatial memory, and creative thinking which are considered to be some of the various dimensions of intelligence. We shall begin with a study on music and memory, published by Ho, Cheung, & Chan, (2003), that said that children with musical training had been observed to have enhanced verbal memory. They tested children by dividing them into two groups. Group 1 began music training while Group 2 was selected a control. The study was followed up after a year and children who had received musical training had demonstrated significant verbal memory improvement. Furthermore, Students who discontinued this training were observed not to show such improvements. Beyond verbal memory, school children are also seen to be more adept with spatial memory (the part of memory responsible for recording information about one’s environment and spatial orientation). Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky, and Wright (1994) studied preschool children who received singing and keyboard lessons for a specified period of time. The control group was matched with children who had not received such training and when tested for spatial competency using subtests of a standardized intelligence test, they children with musical training were observed to perform better than the control group. Through both these studies and their results we can conclude that musical training does pose significant positive changes to the processing of memory. Moving towards the relationship between music training and improved performance in reading, Hurwitz, Wolf. Bortnick, and Kokas, (1975) gave an experimental batch of grade school children melodic and rhythmic training and pitted them against a control batch of children who were of the same age and average IQ and had the same reading teacher. Reading ability of the students was tested prior to the training, which went on for several months. Afterwards, the students were tested on their reading ability once again in which the children with training scored significantly better. Additional musical training proved to be beneficial as the trained children still had superior results than the control group. Through this, the view that musical education helps to improve one’s ability to read is supported. A common argument against music education is the perceived opportunity cost, in the minds of parents and educators, that comes through forgoing time from the study of other subjects for learning an instrument or for vocal …show more content…
It, however, seems that students who have music training actually perform better while doing mathematics. Cheek & Smith, (1999) performed a study that used the Iowa test of Basic Skills to test young musicians and non-musicians. The 8th graders who received two years of music lessons performed better on the mathematics portion of their test on average as compared to the non-musically trained
Harris Ishtiaq Ahmed
Lahore School of Economics
If there is anything that dates as far back as mankind itself, it is music. With Wallin et al. (2001) suggesting musical instruments to have existed for at least 55,000 years, music precedes the vast majority of the modern fields of study and practice including Physics, Chemistry, Sociology, Math and even Philosophy. It is believed to have existed prior to the vast dispersal of humans around the world and is a pertaining feature in every known culture; past and present. With each culture possessing it’s own unique music and variation of instruments, it is unsurprising to see that people hold the music of their region in high esteem. Despite the universality of this activity, it fails to secure a position as a permanent field of study and practice in most of the general educational institutions around the world. …show more content…
The object of this essay is to discuss the positive socio-cultural, physical, cognitive and emotional characteristics of being adept in playing an instrument or being able to sing while comparing the various dimensions of an music-incorporating educational institution with a non-musical one. This would serve the purpose to answer whether or not musical education should be a necessary part of the school curriculum. By scanning a list of research literature available to us, we see that the pursuit of finding relationships between music education and intelligence has been a long one. With this in mind, let us continue by first emphasizing on topics such as IQ, verbal memory, spatial memory, and creative thinking which are considered to be some of the various dimensions of intelligence. We shall begin with a study on music and memory, published by Ho, Cheung, & Chan, (2003), that said that children with musical training had been observed to have enhanced verbal memory. They tested children by dividing them into two groups. Group 1 began music training while Group 2 was selected a control. The study was followed up after a year and children who had received musical training had demonstrated significant verbal memory improvement. Furthermore, Students who discontinued this training were observed not to show such improvements. Beyond verbal memory, school children are also seen to be more adept with spatial memory (the part of memory responsible for recording information about one’s environment and spatial orientation). Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky, and Wright (1994) studied preschool children who received singing and keyboard lessons for a specified period of time. The control group was matched with children who had not received such training and when tested for spatial competency using subtests of a standardized intelligence test, they children with musical training were observed to perform better than the control group. Through both these studies and their results we can conclude that musical training does pose significant positive changes to the processing of memory. Moving towards the relationship between music training and improved performance in reading, Hurwitz, Wolf. Bortnick, and Kokas, (1975) gave an experimental batch of grade school children melodic and rhythmic training and pitted them against a control batch of children who were of the same age and average IQ and had the same reading teacher. Reading ability of the students was tested prior to the training, which went on for several months. Afterwards, the students were tested on their reading ability once again in which the children with training scored significantly better. Additional musical training proved to be beneficial as the trained children still had superior results than the control group. Through this, the view that musical education helps to improve one’s ability to read is supported. A common argument against music education is the perceived opportunity cost, in the minds of parents and educators, that comes through forgoing time from the study of other subjects for learning an instrument or for vocal …show more content…
It, however, seems that students who have music training actually perform better while doing mathematics. Cheek & Smith, (1999) performed a study that used the Iowa test of Basic Skills to test young musicians and non-musicians. The 8th graders who received two years of music lessons performed better on the mathematics portion of their test on average as compared to the non-musically trained