A lot of people talk about how musical study can improve standardized test scores...

But this is not a good reason to study music.

These kinds of arguments grew out of the free-fall panic Americans experienced about the education system after the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 and the ensuing Accountability movement of the 1990's. In an attempt to fix the American education system, policy makers and school administrators turned to a "Back-to-Basics" agenda, emphasizing science and math above all else. Faced with the possible elimination of music programs, groups like the Music Educators' National Conference (now the National Association for Music Education) sponsored research that defended the role of music in education using the same language that that was fueling the educational reform movement.

The irony is that this wasn't the first Back-to-Basics agenda in public education in America. The rhetoric from the 1980's, calling for a massive investment in math and science and the elimination of "frills" like music from the curriculum, could have been copied verbatim from the educational reform agendas instigated by the free-fall panic the country experienced at the launch of Sputnik in 1957. In that case, many of the world's greatest scientists came to the defense of music and arts in public education, for they believed these things were essential to developing a great mind.

Contemporary research in neuroscience has proven what those scientists knew instinctively back in 1957:

But I've never met anyone who became a musician so they could improve their brain function...

Music isn't like a gamma ray that will give you super brain powers (well...I guess it kind of is...), but there's just more to music making than brain functions. Musicians develop a whole gamut of social, emotional, technical, aural, and kinesthetic skills that work in tandem and in real-time to create a musical performance.

Furthermore, musicians must learn to think creatively and solve problems by imagining various solutions... there's no one right answer in the arts, and this is more emulative of the real world than any other experience in the public school. Musicians learn teamwork, dedication, and discipline: everyone must work together toward the same goal, and they learn that an exceptional performance is the concrete reward for hard work.

Music is, in so many ways, the perfect vehicle to prepare students for the new, global, economy:

Arrgh! That's not a reason to study music either!!

Come on...seriously? Have you ever gone to a concert and thought to yourself, "Gee, Yo Yo Ma is a great cellist...I bet he'd be a real killer when negotiating multinational trade agreements!" Of course not! We don't study music so we can be better equipped to live in a globalized world (although we are when we do, as Mr. Pink demonstrates). We don't make music to get better test scores or to improve our brain functions or to enhance our social-emotional connections or to stave off dementia or to do any of the other SIDE EFFECTS of music.

We make music because music is the language of the SOUL! Music is NOT the international language (if it were we would all agree on what great music sounds like) but it IS an international experience. It's a transcendent experience that connects us all as humans and inspires us and moves our hearts and our imaginations. We make music because we've got one shot at this life and shouldn't we spend that shot making the world as beautiful or as inspiring or as heartbreaking or as joyful or as prayerful or as melancholy or as exultant as possible? We make music because our souls demand it.

This is why you should make music