Music Advocacy
Did you know……..
Dan Pink presenting to the Texas Senate
Students who were exposed to music-based lessons scored a full 100% higher on fractions tests than those who learned in the conventional manner.
Neurological Research, March 15, 1999
Middle school and high school students who participated in instrumental music performances scored significantly higher than their non-band peers in standardized tests.
University of Sarasota Study, Jeffrey Lynn Kluball; East Texas State University Study, Daryl Erick Trent
"Music education can be a positive force on all aspects of a child's life, particularly on their academic success. The study of music by children has been linked to higher scores on the SAT and other learning aptitude tests, and has proven to be an invaluable tool in classrooms across the country. Given the impact music can have on our children's education, we should support every effort to bring music into their classrooms."
Source: U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (NM)
The world's top academic countries place a high value on music education. Hungary, Netherlands and Japan have required music training at the elementary and middle school levels, both instrumental and vocal, for several decades.
1988 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IAEEA) Test
96% of respondents to a U.S. Gallup Poll believe participation in a school band is a good way for children to develop team work skills.
Gallup Poll, "American Attitudes Toward Music", 2003
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Music Is...
I. Music is a Science. It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
II. Music is Mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions, which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
III. Music is a Foreign Language. Most of the terms found in music are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that used symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
IV. Music is History. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
V. Music is Physical Education. It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
VI. Music Develops Insight and Demands Research.
VII. Music is all these things, but most of all, Music is Art. It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically boring, (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate; humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.