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Did You Know?
Young
people who participate in the arts for at least three hours on three days
each week through at least one full year are:
- 4 times more
likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more
likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more
likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more
likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more
likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem
Young
artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to:
- Attend music,
art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently
- Participate in
youth groups nearly four times as frequently
- Read for
pleasure nearly twice as often
- Perform
community service more than four times as often
(Living
the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth
Organizations, Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie
Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph,
November 1998)
Music
education helps other disciplines of learning...
- According to Don
Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect,
tracing neurological development through childhood provides the answer.
Prior to a major spurt of neural integration in the brain during the
elementary school years, learning occurs through movement and quick
emotional associations. For example by age two, the brain has begun to
fuse with the body via marching, dancing, and developing a sense of
physical rhythm. The more music children are exposed to before they
enter school, the more deeply this stage of neural coding will assist
them throughout their lives.
- Skills learned
through music carries over into study skills, communications skills and
cognitive skills useful to all parts of life. For example, research supports
that music helps prepare the mind for specific disciplines of learning.
One such study referenced in a 1997 article in Neurological
Research indicated that music training is far superior to
computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract
reasoning skills, the skills necessary for learning math and science.
- Even our elected
officials have realized the importance of music for our children. Recent
federal law, No Child Left Behind Act
of 2002, states, “Studying music encourages self discipline and
diligence traits that carry over into mathematics, science, foreign
languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history and
geography.”
The
facts are that arts education...
- makes
a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has
proven to help level the “learning field” across socio-economic
boundaries.
- (Involvement
in the Arts and Success in Secondary School,
James S. Catterall, The UCLA Imagination
Project, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA,
Americans for the Arts Monograph,
January 1998) has a measurable impact on youth at risk in deterring
delinquent behavior and truancy problems while also increasing overall
academic performance among those youth engaged in after school and
summer arts programs targeted toward delinquency prevention.
(YouthARTS Development Project, 1996, U.S. Department of
Justice, National Endowment for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts)
For
more information on early childhood music education visit www.kindermusik.com
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