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04/18/2003 Archived Entry: "MUSIC IS A SWEET NOTE IN LEARNING"

MUSIC IS A SWEET NOTE IN LEARNING

There are plenty of armchair school superintendents who know how to solve school budget problems.

Cut the fluff, they say. Get ride of sports, music and other arts education. Stop entertaining these kids and focus on the basics.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Sports and arts are critical elements of a young person’s development. But those areas, and the arts in particular, are some of the first to suffer when budgets get tight.

Stories in Thursday’s Journal remind us of how important music programs are for educating young people. Reporter David Clouston reported on the Class 4030201A state music festival in Ellsworth. Dennis Bozarth, former high school and community college band director, wrote a commentary on the Class 6A and 5A festivals in Wichita.

Area music programs involve hundreds of students, providing a rich learning experience that teaches discipline, teamwork and so much more. Consider these excerpts from research compilations published by the National Association for Music Education:

*The Texas Commission on Drugs and Alcohol Abuse Report states that high school students in band or orchestra programs report the lowest use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. That trend continues for life.

*A UCLA study analyzed the U.S. Department of Education data on 25,000 secondary school students and found “significantly higher” mathematics proficiency among those involved in instrumental music programs. This improvement occurs regardless of socioeconomic factors.

*According to the medical journal Neurological Research, a study showed that music training is “far superior” to computer instruction in enhancing students’ abstract reasoning skills, which are necessary for learning math.

Other studies find that music lessons improve scores on IQ tests and college entrance exams. Musicians also undergo physical changes in the brains structure that enhance information exchange among sections of the brains.

It is no wonder the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 includes arts in the list of “core academic subjects.”

That designation means that arts education, including music, will be partially protected from the cost-cutting ax---and from those who view the arts solely as “entertainment.”

By Tom Bell…Editor and publisher of the Salina Journal, April 18, 2003