Nonmusical Benefits of Music

There are many nonmusical benefits to learning music.  Studies over the years have linked higher test scores with involvement in the arts.  According to David Levitin, “Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about, and nearly every neural subsystem” (Levetin pg. 299).  Because of this music is said to help improve our reading skills, speech skills, ability to focus for long periods of time, and helps us learn to empathize with others.  Those who study music have higher IQs, more grey matter in their brains, and better information processing.

In addition to all these things, students who are involved with music have increased spatial awareness.  With greater spatial awareness, one has the ability to better perceive the world and to form mental pictures.  This link has twelve benefits of musical education: http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/12benefits.html that talks about the link between spatial awareness and music education.

Despite all the nonmusical benefits to studying music, we can’t be 100% sure that music is the cause of these things.  It has been theorized that people who are involved in music have all these things naturally which causes them to become involved in music.  Music in turn may enhance these already natural abilities, therefore making it a cyclical relationship.

In order to maintain support for music education, music teachers should be able to support their desire to keep music in schools by using musical benefits as support.  Musical benefits include learning to sing, play, compose, and improvise.  We cannot simply rely on nonmusical benefits to support music education because they are not going to be the same for every person.  Music educators who advertise that music education will increase a student’s IQ might see that happen with some of their students but not all.  In a way, this would be false advertising.

In addition, we cannot rely on the support of nonmusical benefits because they can be taught in other subjects as well as music.  For example, we may learn good citizenship through music.  However, you can also learn this in a government class.  If students can learn these things in other subjects, why would we need to teach music in addition to those subjects? 

One more reason to be cautious when supporting music education with nonmusical benefits is that it is easy to forget that we should be teaching our students music.  If we state that learning music will help raise test scores, increase spatial awareness, increase IQ, and teach students to focus for longer, we will be forgetting about all the musical ideas that students must learn.  Teachers will be so focused on teaching the nonmusical ideas that they will let the musical ideas fall to the wayside.  

Teachers need to be careful when showing evidence that music education is necessary.  There are many nonmusical benefits to teaching music.  But we must remember that our goal is music education.  If teachers provide a balance of nonmusical benefits and musical benefits to support their program, they will be in good shape.

References:

The Benefits of Music Education. (2014, April 1). . Retrieved May 1, 2014, from https://www.rcmusic.ca/sites/default/files/files/RCM_MusicEducationBenefits.pdf

Twelve Benefits of Music Education. (2013, January 1). . Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/12benefits.htm