Benefits of Music in the Learning Place

Music: one of the many controversial topics within the learning place. Some believe that music is distracting and hinders our ability to learn and retain information well. Some say the inverse, believing that music has benefits to the learning process and helps us focus. Ultimately, it's still up for debate, but I do believe that it’s a topic that should be reconsidered in our classrooms. Keeping the controversy in mind, I believe that music should be allowed in a learning space because of its benefits to stress and anxiety reduction, aiding productivity, and improving memory retention, all of which would be beneficial to the average student.

The first of the pros to listening to music while studying or learning is that it reduces stress and anxiety levels. A study was done in 2007 by a group of four scientists that compared the bonuses of music by genre with these levels (Wharton University of Pennsylvania). Among these categories were silence, self-selected music, heavy metal, and classical music (see figure 1). Relaxation ratings were lifted with all categories, but self-selected music and classical music seemed to be the most favorable genres. The research suggested that we can accredit this to the fact that only music that we find relaxing provides benefits (Wharton University of Pennsylvania). Otherwise, it can actually be detrimental to reviewing any kind of information that we want to memorize. Also looking at the graph, we can see that silence is useful when reducing stress as well. That poses the question: why listen to music when you can be in a silent room and have the same results? To that, I draw attention to the relationship between pre-music and post-music relaxation levels. The increase in relaxation levels from silence is lower than the increase in relaxation levels with self-selected music, and even slightly higher in classical music. The average increase for silence is about 2 levels, while the increase for self-selected music is about 2.5, and for classical music it’s 2.3 (Wharton University of Pennsylvania). This, along with the information provided prior, actively suggests that while both are beneficial, music trumps silence in terms of stress and anxiety.

The second virtue of listening to music while learning is increased productivity. The same group of scientists as previously mentioned also completed a study that suggests listening to certain genres of music benefits our mood. This study didn’t focus on stress levels, but instead focused on the correlation between anger levels and music. Similarly, the study showed that self-selected music was incredibly rewarding when reducing anger levels. Silence, heavy metal, and classical music all still had promising effects on reducing anger, but self-selected music exhibited the most change (Labbe). This by itself doesn’t hold much weight, but once we corroborate it with another study done by the Wharton University of Pennsylvania, we find that increased mood also leads to increased productivity. The university claimed that “moods, emotions, and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations, and leadership” (2007). All of these are helpful characteristics necessary for making quality work as a student. Seeing as music boosts mood and positivity boosts productivity, music can be considered as a direct path to efficiency.

The last main perk of music from an academic perspective is its amplification of memory. A study done by Harvard Health author Dr. Anne Fabiny demonstrated that “listening to and performing music activates areas of the brain associated with memory, reasoning, speech, emotion, and reward” (2015). This information later went on to help those who recently had strokes, giving them memory issues, recover through musical-therapy, so imagine how beneficial music could be for students attaining knowledge. There was yet another study done that proved favorable in the direction of music, stating that it not only helps to retain memories, but also make them. This supposedly ties back into the emotional assets of music, as a negative social climate is the main reason people forget things, and a positive is conversely an aid in remembering them. The same study also demonstrated that songs with a more steady rhythm aided learning more than songs with an unpredictable rhythm. They claim that things are easier to remember if we have a beat that we associate them with, and the key to memory is something clear and calculated. Whether it be through increased memory retention or the ability to make new memories, music still has a special niche that can’t be filled by anything else.

In conclusion, the strengths of music in a learning place heavily outweigh the weaknesses. Whether it be through reducing student anxiety, aiding productivity, or amplifying memory, we can find a lot of good by simply turning on our favorite song during Focus. So next time you’re doing homework or studying in your room, consider something musical to bring motivation to anything monotonously monotone.