Piano Connections: The Studio of Megan Hughes

I don't know what this is all about but it looks like what is going on in our local school.

My local elementary school has music class for 40 minutes every 2 weeks, and for that whole 40 minutes the students get to watch the teacher do something. They don’t have time  for that messy, complicated, glorious stuff like actually learning to play and sing and dance. The Powers running the school feel that there is barely enough time in the school day to work on passing the state tests in reading and writing and arithmetic and so it can’t be frittered away on music.

Here’s yet another piece of research showing why this is a dumb way to try to make kids smart. After only 20 days of exposure to an interactive music training program preschoolers showed improvements in verbal intelligence .”Our findings demonstrate a causal relationship between music training and improvements in language and executive function”.

I’m a practicing musician and I have developed a high level of verbal intelligence, so I’m not fooled by the academic language in this quote. I know it says studying music makes kids smarter. And smart is as smart does, so the bit about  executive function is also important. If you’re not familiar with the term “executive function”,  it has to do with carrying out  your ideas and plans. Executing your intentions. It has nothing to do with the Fortune 500 per se, but I bet those CEO’s have it in spades.

Want to exercise your verbal intelligence? Here’s some nice clichés to use when you are talking about schools eliminating music so they can concentrate on their “core subjects”:

Throw the baby out with the bath water.

Cut off your nose to spite your face.

Rob Peter to pay Paul.

Dig yourself into a hole.

A few sandwiches short of a picnic.

I’m sure you can think of some more. Send ’em in.

Tagged: art, education, Elementary school, executive-function, Intelligence quotient, music, music education, Verbal reasoning

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