Sigma Alpha Iota

MUSIC MEDLEY Preparing for a Lifetime of Music by Dr. Barbara Resch Dr. Resch was asked by SAI Music Director Dorothy Kittaka to write an article for the Music Medley column this issue. I t is impossible to listen to the media these days without hearing something about the state of education in our country. Policymakers are debating what should be at the core of the public school curriculum, and how we know that students are learning what they should. The central question (both now and throughout the history of American education) is driven by concern about schools adequately preparing today's students for the roles they will eventually assume as productive members of society. There seems to be widespread consensus that the K-12 school years are crucial for acquiring the knowledge and skills all young Americans need for a lifetime of contributing fully to their jobs, communities, and country. As musicians we share a fundamental point of agreement with this idea. Throughout his term of office, Scott Shuler, national president of MENC: the National Association for Music Education, is making the point that "Music lasts a lifetime," and that the goal of music education is preparation for making and enjoying music throughout the life span. As with the other core academic subjects, we can make the point that music needs to retain its place in the K-12 curriculum because it equips people for what they will do during the remaining decades of their lives when they are no longer in school. We have been convinced for some time of this value of music education, especially in early childhood. In the '60s, Edwin Gordon wrote about the importance of a musically enriched environment in cultivating a person's musical aptitude. His research suggested that the window of opportunity for developing music aptitude closed at about age nine, implying that the preschool and early elementary school years were crucial times in which the potential for lifelong musical learning was formed. Brain research, a field that has grown exponentially in the past fifteen years with the development of scanning technologies, also supports the foundational role of early experiences with music. The neural connections in the brain that are formed through repetition of a thought A June 2010 study by the National Endowment of the Arts considers the relationship between media-based arts activities and other types of arts participation, such as live attendance and personal arts creation. or action are established and retained most easily in the young — which is why a nine-year-old beginner will often learn to play the piano more fluently than an adult beginner, and why this music still "stays in the fingers" years later. It is also true that our brains form mental maps based on our musical experiences, and that music that is heard from a young age determines the musical syntax our brains come to recognize and expect. Just as children grow up pronouncing words with the accent that they hear around them, their brains are also programmed to recognize and accept the musical conventions in their environments. Thus the music of another culture or music that is consistently dissonant sounds strange to us: it doesn't fit the expectations put in place by our brain's maps. Similarly, an education that provides experiences with a range of musical languages at a young age will enlarge the brain's "open-mindedness" and acceptance. Finally, music-making is a whole-brain activity, involving cognitive processing, motor functions, memory, visual processing, and emotional responses, and it engages the brain more actively than almost any other human activity. These whole-brain workouts have the potential to transfer to other learning tasks and develop strategies that may aid the learner through the years of schooling and beyond. In addition, these salient musical experiences often become deeply entrenched in our autobiographical memories, tend to stay with us over the lifespan and often influence our attitudes toward music well into adulthood. A recently-released study by the National Endowment for the Arts offers additional proof for the impact of music education on lifelong participation in music. The NEA researchers analyzed data from 1982 through 2008 and determined that adults who had childhood instruction in the arts (music, visual art, theatre or dance) were 50% more likely to attend events like jazz or classical music concerts, plays, ballet, opera or art galleries. Arts education during the K-12 years is also one of the strongest predictors of adults performing or creating art forms, including music, later in life. The evidence, coming from music learning theory, brain research, and demographic survey data, is potent: directed musical experiences in childhood have an impact on the development of musical aptitude, skills, attitudes, and behavioral patterns that persist into adulthood. Given such a body of support, why then do most American adults interact with music passively through a set of ear buds instead of being actively involved with it? Why is the National Anthem sung by soloists instead of the whole crowd at sports events? And why don't we have a nation of enthusiastic and active music-makers who rise up in full force to protest whenever there is a hint of reducing arts education in our schools? I offer two possible characteristics of American music education that may actually deter the natural progression of musical involvement from school to adulthood. First, for decades, we have heard students talk about the disconnect between "school music" and "my music," between the music taught in school classrooms and rehearsals and the ways in which adult amateur musicians in America choose to make music. A 2006 Gallup poll noted that of those Americans who reported that they were playing instruments, 73% of the instruments were piano, guitar, bass and drums — the rhythm section — and only 27% were MEDLEY continued on page 5 CLICK FOR MORE For more information about MENC: the National Association for Music Education, visit menc.org sai-national.org SPRING 2011 PAN PIPES 3

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