Music Education- necessary or not? (yet another essay from my English class. for all you morbidly curious out there)

Since the development of the Mozart Theory back in the early 1990’s (Rogers, Part 2), high school music programs have been thrown into the spotlight of debate. Continuing budget cuts for public high schools have created a dilemma on the part of administration: how to spread the money to keep the educational standards high enough that graduates will have every chance of success? According to Nicolas Johnson, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 36 states so far have proposed or enacted severe cuts, numbering in the billions of dollars per state, to educational funding for public schools from kindergarten through secondary school (Johnson). One area that has seen significant value debate has been music education. One high school vocal music and music theory teacher was told that, after a survey of area schools, his program was considered “fluff” (Subik). School districts across the country have been largely downsizing or entirely eliminating their music education programs for various reasons.
First of all, some feel that music education takes up time that could be used for other, more academically stimulating electives that would better prepare students to begin their intended college majors. Studies show, however, that after listening to Mozart for only 10 minutes, college students showed a remarkable improvement in nonverbal reasoning on a standardized test over those who listened to meditative sounds or nothing. This developed into a theory known as the Mozart Effect. More recent studies of that same theory have shown that learning to read and play music, whether vocally or instrumentally, improves verbal memory while simple exposure to music increases the production of certain proteins in the brain that prevent neuronic death and improve the ability to learn positive behaviors. This is especially evident in young children and can build strong nerve pathways in the brain, but if the child should lose interest or stop being encouraged or have access to participation in music, those neural pathways will begin to break down (Rogers, Part 2). In other words, “use it or lose it” (Rogers, Part 2).
“Whether we are seeking ways to build brain connections in young children or ways to prevent at-risk students from dropping out, music makes a difference. Earlier research showed that music students consistently scored higher than their counterparts on the SAT, but nobody really knew whether that was because the brightest students gravitated toward music or because music was making kids smarter. A more recent study in which students who studied piano or voice for nine months were compared to peers without musical training showed gains in IQ scores for those who took music lessons” (Schmidt).

This benefit to the cognitive development of students is why it is extremely important that music education programs not be cut from high school curriculums.
Unfortunately, some people are concerned that if a student chooses to take music education in high school, they may be psychologically hampered by insecurity if they consider their talent inferior to that of another student. They are also concerned that the insecurity would subsequently challenge the student’s self-confidence when it comes to the rest of their education. Representatives from the Vh1 Save The Music Foundation studied students across the nation and discovered this:
“As we examined the music education system throughout the nation, we found that music education is not only important for its intrinsic value, but research consistently demonstrated that students who study an instrument enhance their critical thinking skills and their ability to work together as a team. They are more engaged in school and less likely to drop out; and they do significantly better in all of their academic endeavors” (About Vh1 Save The Music Foundation).

Another advocate of music education is the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. In a recent speech, he said,
“It’s so important to me that we give our students a reason to be excited about coming to school every day, to be passionate. We have to dramatically drive down our dropout rates in this country. We lose 30% of our young people before they graduate from high school. They have no options in today’s economy. None. For me it was sports. For other students, it’s dance, or drama, or music, or band, or chess, or debate, or yearbook, or all those things that are seen as “extras” or extracurriculars—those are actually the heart of giving our students a reason to get up and go to school every day and to be excited.
The only way that happens is if our children have exposure to a broad range of activities, and music is a huge, huge piece of that” (Duncan).

The beauty of music education courses being electives is that, if a student truly dislikes music, they have the option not to take it. There is no reason for any student to feel threatened or insecure because of the superior talent of any other student. Choirs and bands are made to sound good because of the sum of their parts, not from the talent of any individual student. If a student truly loves music, their self-esteem will not be hinged on whether or not they sound like a professional, but that they are doing their part to make the entire ensemble sound as it should. Students in Brooklyn, New York, have become so involved in the family that musical ensembles often become that when their music program was severely cut, they and their parents gathered on the streets to protest (Monahan). Upon hearing of budget cuts to happen in Johnstown, New York, students and teachers alike shed tears as advocates of the music program formally protested (Subik).
The most often cited reason for the insignificance of high school music programs is that they fail to have impact on students’ intended college majors. Many people feel that music is unimportant academically because it does not obviously incorporate mathematic, scientific, or linguistic application or development into the subject matter. Luckily for music students, the people that feel that way are mistaken. Mathematics is a subject very intimately woven into music, so much so that if it were taken away, modern musical notation would not exist. Musical notation consists of a series of notes that are based upon numeric values and fractions of numeric values that add together to create a certain whole number in a somewhat complex system of measuring beats per section, or measure, and which fractional note gets the emphasis. Measuring beats per minute is another way mathematics is integrated with music. Science is another subject not easily seen to be related to music even though it is so intimately related that modern musical instruments and vocal techniques would not exist without scientific study and developments. The flute, for example, has a very unique sound that is created by the action of wind, (the breath of the flautist), over a hole that creates vibrations contained by the body of the instrument and allowed to escape at certain intervals in the body by holes covered by felt and metal dampers, thus creating higher and lower sounds depending on which damper is lifted (“flute”). Music and linguistics are, again, very intimately linked in various manners. The texts of many operas, musicals, and many single vocal or choral pieces are based off of or directly taken from classical literature and poetry. A huge number of musical pieces with vocal parts are in different languages, enabling those studying foreign languages, especially those based off of Latin, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, to practice pronunciation and fluency. Music and language are tied together in a much more complicated way as well: neurologically. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “music and language are stored in separate parts of the brain but utilize the same neural resources and neural networks for the processing of complex information. This organization, which so far has been supported by the results of several studies, enables rapid processing of information” (Rogers, Part 1). People that suffer from aphasia (speech confusion associated with a stroke or brain tumor) can regain some speech ability by being taught to sing the words they want to say, a form of therapy known as Melodic Intonation where words are associated with musical pitch. This therapy actually rebuilds the lobe in the patient’s brain associated with speech. “[This] ability of the brain to shift speech representation to an adjacent region through the formation of neural connections based on music (Rogers, Part 1)” is solid proof that music is a very important part of the progression of a student’s linguistic skills and can definitely aid their academic development.
Music education is an important part of the high school education process. It is indeed beneficial to the students’ personal and academic growth and success, as shown by scientific research. The United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, says that he is “...absolutely convinced that if more students had that kind of exposure, test scores would go up, and much more importantly, graduation rates would go up, students would feel better about themselves, and long term, their success in life would be dramatically better because they had those basic opportunities” (Duncan). The budget cuts occurring in high school music education programs are hampering students’ opportunities for success. People, parents especially, need to become more aware of the budgeting changes at their area high schools and take any opportunity offered to protest the short-changing of the importance of music education programs. The success of generations of students to come depends on it.