Great Expectations
©Nancy Dunkin
©Nancy Dunkin
Harvard psychologist and profession, Robert Rosenthal, published the results of his "Oak School" Experiment in a book called Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development. In this experiment elementary teachers were told that certain students in grades 1-6 (about 20%) had scored extremely high on a test given in the fall. The teachers were told to expect a spurt of intellectual growth and development in these particular students.
The students were again tested at the end of the year. The students designated showed significantly greater gains than the students in the control group. Not only did these students demonstrate considerable growth in their normal school work, but some gained as many as 27 IQ points. The teachers also found these students to be above average in "personal adjustment," "happiness," and "affection."
In actuality, the "gifted" students were selected at random rather than from any test results. James Rhem, Executive Editor of NTLF, a national teaching and learning journal, says, "Simply put, when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways."
Every thinking teacher can come up with remarkable anecdotes to support the findings in this experiment. I, personally, raised my expectations every year I taught and not once did my students fail to meet them. It is an awesome responsibility for a teacher. The power we hold over our students is staggering. Teachers literally hold the future of our civilization in their hands.
Rosenthal offers an example of college juniors he teaches at Harvard: "I ask them to define a research problem, search the literature, design an experiment and come in with results all in one semester. Now nobody can do all that in one semester. I can't do that in one semester, but these are juniors: they don't know it can't be done; so they do it. They do amazing things."
Just thinking something appears to make it so. We communicate something unwittingly, but formidably compelling, in our attitudes and beliefs toward the students we teach. This very powerful experiment has been replicated over and over with students of all ages. In fact, it has been replicated with laboratory animals. The parallel between laboratory animals and students may seem amusing, but it lends credence to the very real power of our thoughts and increases the urgency of the message:
When expectations are high, students meet them.
When expectations are low; students meet them.
The results of the Oak School experiment have an important message for parents as well. Your children will learn exactly as well as you and their teachers expect them to learn. It behooves parents to be proactive in their schools.
The implications for those anywhere near a classroom are profound. Rosenthal says, "Superb teachers can teach the 'unteachable;' we know that." Then he goes so far as to say, "I think what this research shows is that there's a moral obligation for a teacher: if the teacher knows that certain students can't learn, that teacher should get out of that classroom."
Are there any lessons here that we as a society should be learning about how we train, choose, evaluate, treat and pay our teachers? Can we afford our attitude that teaching is a low paying, low prestige job with a long summer vacation? Maybe we should be looking for the highest possible thinking people for teachers, educating them to their ultimate potential and responsibility, and paying them at least as much as we pay our politicians and athletes.
The students were again tested at the end of the year. The students designated showed significantly greater gains than the students in the control group. Not only did these students demonstrate considerable growth in their normal school work, but some gained as many as 27 IQ points. The teachers also found these students to be above average in "personal adjustment," "happiness," and "affection."
In actuality, the "gifted" students were selected at random rather than from any test results. James Rhem, Executive Editor of NTLF, a national teaching and learning journal, says, "Simply put, when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways."
Every thinking teacher can come up with remarkable anecdotes to support the findings in this experiment. I, personally, raised my expectations every year I taught and not once did my students fail to meet them. It is an awesome responsibility for a teacher. The power we hold over our students is staggering. Teachers literally hold the future of our civilization in their hands.
Rosenthal offers an example of college juniors he teaches at Harvard: "I ask them to define a research problem, search the literature, design an experiment and come in with results all in one semester. Now nobody can do all that in one semester. I can't do that in one semester, but these are juniors: they don't know it can't be done; so they do it. They do amazing things."
Just thinking something appears to make it so. We communicate something unwittingly, but formidably compelling, in our attitudes and beliefs toward the students we teach. This very powerful experiment has been replicated over and over with students of all ages. In fact, it has been replicated with laboratory animals. The parallel between laboratory animals and students may seem amusing, but it lends credence to the very real power of our thoughts and increases the urgency of the message:
When expectations are high, students meet them.
When expectations are low; students meet them.
The results of the Oak School experiment have an important message for parents as well. Your children will learn exactly as well as you and their teachers expect them to learn. It behooves parents to be proactive in their schools.
The implications for those anywhere near a classroom are profound. Rosenthal says, "Superb teachers can teach the 'unteachable;' we know that." Then he goes so far as to say, "I think what this research shows is that there's a moral obligation for a teacher: if the teacher knows that certain students can't learn, that teacher should get out of that classroom."
Are there any lessons here that we as a society should be learning about how we train, choose, evaluate, treat and pay our teachers? Can we afford our attitude that teaching is a low paying, low prestige job with a long summer vacation? Maybe we should be looking for the highest possible thinking people for teachers, educating them to their ultimate potential and responsibility, and paying them at least as much as we pay our politicians and athletes.
TEN QUICK TEACHING TIPS
1. Ask, don’t tell
2. Accept any answer as legitimate - have them explain why
3. 10% teach talk, 90% student talk--and/or do.
4. Never let an answer (right or wrong) stand—Why? What makes you think so? etc.
5. Eliminate negative words from yours and your students’ vocabulary
6. Mistakes are good.
7. Use all learning modalities
8. Work from the Gestalt
9. Keep Expectations High
10. Have fun
2. Accept any answer as legitimate - have them explain why
3. 10% teach talk, 90% student talk--and/or do.
4. Never let an answer (right or wrong) stand—Why? What makes you think so? etc.
5. Eliminate negative words from yours and your students’ vocabulary
6. Mistakes are good.
7. Use all learning modalities
8. Work from the Gestalt
9. Keep Expectations High
10. Have fun
QUESTIONS FOR PEOPLE INVOLVED WITH SCHOOLS
What should parents look for?
Is my student happy? If not, where is the problem? Is it school or something else?
Check early and often.
Does my student look forward to school most days?
Are teachers well trained?
Are teachers supportive, and interested in my student?
Is the activities pedagogically sound and based on research
Are there right-brain activities?
Is homework reasonable, productive, self-motivated?
Is my student working for him/her self or for some extrinsic reward?
Is my student taking responsibility for himself and his learning?
Am I given choices for schools that meet the goals for my student?
Are programs and assessments designed by educators keeping research in mind?
Are parents welcome in the school?
What should students look for?
Am I talking care of myself?
Am I taking responsibility for my learning
Am I being coerced to learn?
Are my teachers supportive and collaborative in my learning?
Is there a good atmosphere in the school?
Is assessment reasonable and designed by me and my teachers?
Do I enjoy school for the most part?
What should teachers look for?
Are programs designed and administered by educators keeping research in mind?
Are programs designed and administered with students’ needs in mind?
Am I designing good lessons?
Am I happy teaching in this school?
Are other teachers happy in this school?
Is my administration supportive?
Do I have a lot of out-of-school work?
Do I use extrinsic rewards?
Am I free to teach?
Are my students making good progress?
Are my students happy interested and happy?
Do I have a lot of discipline problems?
Is my pay commensurate with my duties?
What should administration look for?
Are the teachers happy?
Are there teachers that need help?
Are the teachers using good pedagogical techniques?
Are our programs designed with good education in mind?
Is our assessment procedure consistent with our goals?
Are our programs designed by educators keeping research in mind?
Are our students progressing satisfactorily?
Do our students take responsibility for themselves?
Do we have many discipline problems?
Do our parents seem happy?
Do we need to educated parents or public?
What should Board Of Education look for?
Are our teachers, parents and students happy?
Do we give equal support to every school in the system?
Are we listening to our constituency?
Are our schools (all of them) happy schools?
Do we have a lot of complaints?
Are we giving good choices of schools for different families?
Are our programs built and administered by and for educators?
Are we careful to use research and students needs in our programs?
Are we feathering nests that have nothing to do with education?
What should businesses look for?
Are graduates well prepared to enter my training program?
Do we have to do a lot of remedial work that belong to schools?
Are graduates problem solvers?
Do graduates take responsibility for themselves?
What should politicians look for?
Are our constituents happy?
Are we supporting or regulating schools?
Are we catering to good education rather than outside interests?
Why Teach Music In The Schools?
© Nancy Dunkin
© Nancy Dunkin
Music is innate. There has never been a culture anywhere on earth that has not had music as a significant facet of their society. Musical instruments are among the most sophisticated artifacts found in archeological digs and no dig has ever been devoid of evidence of musical activities.
This takes music out of the realm of scholastic "subject matter" and throws it into the realm of human necessity. Our modern culture has left behind its inherent musical behavior: mothers and grandmothers singing to babies, indigenous children's games and songs performed naturally in a neighborhood environment, and constant musical activities for every facet of life. In our unnatural and impoverished "civilization," schools need to step up to the plate.
The schools have gradually assumed the role of nurse, cook, nutritionist, psychologist, disciplinarian, policeman, and chauffeur for our children. Yet, they often balk at one of the most critical developmental aspects of our culture. Music and art, the two most innate, inherent, and essential attributes of our humanness are often the step-children of the school curriculum.
What does this say about our society? Perhaps Mark Twain was right. "First God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then he created school boards."
Not only is it essential that we provide a strong music program for our children, it is important that music be taught in such a way that it approximates its indigenous cultural format. Music and movement are inseparable for children. In fact, how many adults are able to listen to music without toe-tapping or some visceral, physical response? The way music has expanded is through improvisation. Individuals in most cultures are encouraged to improvise, compose and contribute to the body of their culture's music.
There can be no sitting still in a desk in a good music program. Children need to move. They need singing games and dances; they need movement to enable them to listen carefully; they need to experiment with their bodies in response to music.
Children need to experience a variety of musical instruments. They need to learn to play them with known music; they need to improvise their own music on them; they need to learn how to reproduce the music of their choice.
And, most of all, children need to sing—sing often, sing in tune and sing joyously the songs of their ancestors, songs of their contemporaries and songs of their own.
To deny any part of this in a music program is to negate the human need to make music.
This takes music out of the realm of scholastic "subject matter" and throws it into the realm of human necessity. Our modern culture has left behind its inherent musical behavior: mothers and grandmothers singing to babies, indigenous children's games and songs performed naturally in a neighborhood environment, and constant musical activities for every facet of life. In our unnatural and impoverished "civilization," schools need to step up to the plate.
The schools have gradually assumed the role of nurse, cook, nutritionist, psychologist, disciplinarian, policeman, and chauffeur for our children. Yet, they often balk at one of the most critical developmental aspects of our culture. Music and art, the two most innate, inherent, and essential attributes of our humanness are often the step-children of the school curriculum.
What does this say about our society? Perhaps Mark Twain was right. "First God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then he created school boards."
Not only is it essential that we provide a strong music program for our children, it is important that music be taught in such a way that it approximates its indigenous cultural format. Music and movement are inseparable for children. In fact, how many adults are able to listen to music without toe-tapping or some visceral, physical response? The way music has expanded is through improvisation. Individuals in most cultures are encouraged to improvise, compose and contribute to the body of their culture's music.
There can be no sitting still in a desk in a good music program. Children need to move. They need singing games and dances; they need movement to enable them to listen carefully; they need to experiment with their bodies in response to music.
Children need to experience a variety of musical instruments. They need to learn to play them with known music; they need to improvise their own music on them; they need to learn how to reproduce the music of their choice.
And, most of all, children need to sing—sing often, sing in tune and sing joyously the songs of their ancestors, songs of their contemporaries and songs of their own.
To deny any part of this in a music program is to negate the human need to make music.
The Poor Scholar’s Soliloquy
Stephen M. Corey
1949
Stephen M. Corey
1949
(This essay was given to me at my first faculty meeting. It is used here and in my book by permission)
No, I’m not very good in school. This is my second year in the seventh grade, and I’m bigger and taller than the other kids. They like me alright, though, even if I don’t say much in the classroom, because outside I can tell them how to do a lot of things. They tag me around and that sort of makes up for what goes on in school.
I don’t know why the teachers don’t like me. They never have very much. Seems like they don’t think you know anything unless they can name the book it comes out of. I’ve got a lot of books in my room at home—books like “Popular Science,” “Mechanical Encyclopedia,” and Catalogues—but I don’t very often just sit down and read them through like they make us do in school. I use my books when I want to find something out, like whatever Mom buys anything second hand I look it up in Sears’ or Ward’s first and tell her if she is getting stung or not. I can use the index in a hurry.
In school, though, we’ve got to learn whatever is in the book and I just can’t memorize the stuff. Last year I stayed after school every night for two weeks trying to learn the names of the Presidents. Of course I knew some of them like Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, but there must have been thirty altogether, and I never did get them straight.
I’m not too sorry though, because the kids who learned the Presidents had to turn right around and learn all the Vice Presidents. I am taking the seventh grade over, but our teacher this year isn’t so interested in the names of the Presidents. She has us trying to learn the names of all the great American inventors.
I guess I just can’t remember names in history. Anyway, this year I’ve been trying to learn about trucks because my uncle owns three and he says I can drive one when I’m sixteen. I already know the horsepower and number of forward and backward speeds of twenty-six American trucks, some of them Diesels, and I can spot each make a long way off. It’s funny how the Diesel works. I started to tell my teacher about it last Wednesday in science class when the pump we were using to make a vacuum in a bell jar got hot, but she didn’t see what a Diesel engine had to do with our experiment on air pressure so I just kept still. The kids seemed interested though; I took four of them around to my Uncle’s garage after school and we saw the mechanic, Gus, tear a big Diesel truck down. Boy, does he know his stuff!
I’m not very good in geography either. They call it economic geography this year. We’ve been studying the imports and exports of Chile all week, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. Maybe the reason is I had to miss school yesterday because my uncle took me and his big trailer truck down state about 200 miles and we brought almost 10 tons of stock to the Chicago market.
He told me where we were going, and I had to figure out the highways to take and also the mileage. He didn’t do anything but drive and turn where I told him to. Was that fun! I sat with a map in my lap and told him to turn south, or south-east, or some other direction. We made seven stops, and drove over 500 miles round trip. I’m figuring now what his oil cost, and also the wear and tear on the truck—he calls it depreciation—so we’ll know how much we made.
I even write out all the bills and send letters to the farmers about what their pigs and beef cattle brought at the stockyards. I only made three mistakes in 17 letters last time, my aunt said, all commas. She’s been through high school and reads them over. I wish I could write school themes that way. The last one I had to write was on. “What a Daffodil Thinks of Spring,” and I just couldn’t get going.
I don’t do very well in school in arithmetic either. Seems I just can’t keep my mind on the problems. We had one the other day like this:
“If a 57 foot telephone pole falls across a cement highway so that 17 3/5 feet extend from one side and 14 9/17 feet from the other, how wide is the highway?”
That seemed to me like an awfully silly way to get the width of a highway. I didn’t even try to answer it because it didn’t say whether the pole had fallen straight across or not.
Even in shop I don’t get good grades. All of us kids made a broom holder and a book end this term and mine were sloppy. I just couldn’t get interested. Mom doesn’t use a broom anymore with her new vacuum cleaner, and all our books are in a bookcase with glass doors in the parlor. Anyway, I wanted to make an end gate for my uncle’s trailer, but the shop teacher said that meant using metal and wood both, and I’d have to learn how to work with wood first. I didn’t see why, but I kept still and made a tie rack at school and the tail gate after school at my uncle’s garage. He said I saved him ten dollars.
Civics is hard for me, too. I’ve been staying after school trying to learn the “Articles of Confederation” for almost a week, because the teacher said we couldn’t be good citizens unless we did. I really tried, because I want to be a good citizen. I did hate to stay after school, though, because a bunch of us boys from the south end of town have been cleaning up the old lot across from Taylor’s Machine Shop to make a playground out of it for the little kids from the Methodist home. I made the jungle gym from old pipe, and the guys made me Grand Mogul to keep the playground going. We raised enough money collecting scrap this month to build a wire fence around the lot.
Dad says I can quit school when I am fifteen, and I am sort of anxious to because there are a lot of things I want to learn how to do, and as my uncle says, I’m not getting any younger.
No, I’m not very good in school. This is my second year in the seventh grade, and I’m bigger and taller than the other kids. They like me alright, though, even if I don’t say much in the classroom, because outside I can tell them how to do a lot of things. They tag me around and that sort of makes up for what goes on in school.
I don’t know why the teachers don’t like me. They never have very much. Seems like they don’t think you know anything unless they can name the book it comes out of. I’ve got a lot of books in my room at home—books like “Popular Science,” “Mechanical Encyclopedia,” and Catalogues—but I don’t very often just sit down and read them through like they make us do in school. I use my books when I want to find something out, like whatever Mom buys anything second hand I look it up in Sears’ or Ward’s first and tell her if she is getting stung or not. I can use the index in a hurry.
In school, though, we’ve got to learn whatever is in the book and I just can’t memorize the stuff. Last year I stayed after school every night for two weeks trying to learn the names of the Presidents. Of course I knew some of them like Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, but there must have been thirty altogether, and I never did get them straight.
I’m not too sorry though, because the kids who learned the Presidents had to turn right around and learn all the Vice Presidents. I am taking the seventh grade over, but our teacher this year isn’t so interested in the names of the Presidents. She has us trying to learn the names of all the great American inventors.
I guess I just can’t remember names in history. Anyway, this year I’ve been trying to learn about trucks because my uncle owns three and he says I can drive one when I’m sixteen. I already know the horsepower and number of forward and backward speeds of twenty-six American trucks, some of them Diesels, and I can spot each make a long way off. It’s funny how the Diesel works. I started to tell my teacher about it last Wednesday in science class when the pump we were using to make a vacuum in a bell jar got hot, but she didn’t see what a Diesel engine had to do with our experiment on air pressure so I just kept still. The kids seemed interested though; I took four of them around to my Uncle’s garage after school and we saw the mechanic, Gus, tear a big Diesel truck down. Boy, does he know his stuff!
I’m not very good in geography either. They call it economic geography this year. We’ve been studying the imports and exports of Chile all week, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. Maybe the reason is I had to miss school yesterday because my uncle took me and his big trailer truck down state about 200 miles and we brought almost 10 tons of stock to the Chicago market.
He told me where we were going, and I had to figure out the highways to take and also the mileage. He didn’t do anything but drive and turn where I told him to. Was that fun! I sat with a map in my lap and told him to turn south, or south-east, or some other direction. We made seven stops, and drove over 500 miles round trip. I’m figuring now what his oil cost, and also the wear and tear on the truck—he calls it depreciation—so we’ll know how much we made.
I even write out all the bills and send letters to the farmers about what their pigs and beef cattle brought at the stockyards. I only made three mistakes in 17 letters last time, my aunt said, all commas. She’s been through high school and reads them over. I wish I could write school themes that way. The last one I had to write was on. “What a Daffodil Thinks of Spring,” and I just couldn’t get going.
I don’t do very well in school in arithmetic either. Seems I just can’t keep my mind on the problems. We had one the other day like this:
“If a 57 foot telephone pole falls across a cement highway so that 17 3/5 feet extend from one side and 14 9/17 feet from the other, how wide is the highway?”
That seemed to me like an awfully silly way to get the width of a highway. I didn’t even try to answer it because it didn’t say whether the pole had fallen straight across or not.
Even in shop I don’t get good grades. All of us kids made a broom holder and a book end this term and mine were sloppy. I just couldn’t get interested. Mom doesn’t use a broom anymore with her new vacuum cleaner, and all our books are in a bookcase with glass doors in the parlor. Anyway, I wanted to make an end gate for my uncle’s trailer, but the shop teacher said that meant using metal and wood both, and I’d have to learn how to work with wood first. I didn’t see why, but I kept still and made a tie rack at school and the tail gate after school at my uncle’s garage. He said I saved him ten dollars.
Civics is hard for me, too. I’ve been staying after school trying to learn the “Articles of Confederation” for almost a week, because the teacher said we couldn’t be good citizens unless we did. I really tried, because I want to be a good citizen. I did hate to stay after school, though, because a bunch of us boys from the south end of town have been cleaning up the old lot across from Taylor’s Machine Shop to make a playground out of it for the little kids from the Methodist home. I made the jungle gym from old pipe, and the guys made me Grand Mogul to keep the playground going. We raised enough money collecting scrap this month to build a wire fence around the lot.
Dad says I can quit school when I am fifteen, and I am sort of anxious to because there are a lot of things I want to learn how to do, and as my uncle says, I’m not getting any younger.
Ethnicity and Music in the School
©Nancy Dunkin
©Nancy Dunkin
(This study was done in early in the 21st century just as music programs began to be cut wholesale. Used with permission by Teaching Music)
In a banner testing breakthrough in Florida, results show that all students, regardless of race or ethnicity, have equal chance to succeed in music. Unlike reading, writing, and math, which showed much greater disparity among the ethnic groups, the disparity among music scores was 20 points or less with Asian/Pacific Islanders scoring highest. This was about 1/3 less disparity in music than in all other subject matters.
The test, developed by the Florida Music Educators Association and the Florida School Music Association, was under the guidance of the Florida Department of Education, which administers tests in the other subjects as well. Demographics in both samples were exactly comparable to those in reading, writing and math.
Tests were administered to approximately 9500 fourth graders from 42 of the state's 67 counties. It was a broad cross-section of the entire state of Florida.
Schools with higher music scores tend to have higher reading, math and writing scores. This research was reported in the June, 2008 issue of Teaching Music, a periodical from Music Educators National Conference. Timothy Brophy, chairman of the project and associate professor of music education at University of Florida's School of Music said, "We shouldn't ignore the significant implications of these [test] results.”
What, exactly, are the implications of these results?
Catherine Applefeld Olson reported two months earlier in the same periodical a study from the University of Kansas which showed that there was a huge disparity in test scores between school with excellent music program and those that had either poor programs or none at all. "I found the results absolutely shocking," says University of Kansas director of music education.
The country was divided into four regions: West, Midwest, East, and South. Regional professionals, who knew and understood classroom musical experience, determined the quality of the music program in each area of the country. Since this data was collected from all levels— elementary, middle and high school—it covers both required and elective situations. There was no substantive difference between the results in the different levels.
Administrators and School Boards who eliminate or water-down school music programs in their quest for economy show remarkably poor judgment for both the students themselves and for their test scores.
In a banner testing breakthrough in Florida, results show that all students, regardless of race or ethnicity, have equal chance to succeed in music. Unlike reading, writing, and math, which showed much greater disparity among the ethnic groups, the disparity among music scores was 20 points or less with Asian/Pacific Islanders scoring highest. This was about 1/3 less disparity in music than in all other subject matters.
The test, developed by the Florida Music Educators Association and the Florida School Music Association, was under the guidance of the Florida Department of Education, which administers tests in the other subjects as well. Demographics in both samples were exactly comparable to those in reading, writing and math.
Tests were administered to approximately 9500 fourth graders from 42 of the state's 67 counties. It was a broad cross-section of the entire state of Florida.
Schools with higher music scores tend to have higher reading, math and writing scores. This research was reported in the June, 2008 issue of Teaching Music, a periodical from Music Educators National Conference. Timothy Brophy, chairman of the project and associate professor of music education at University of Florida's School of Music said, "We shouldn't ignore the significant implications of these [test] results.”
What, exactly, are the implications of these results?
- Music is innate; music is universal; music cuts across all cultures and ethnicities. It's place in the curriculum should be a given if for no other reason than this.
- Music is a non-verbal art. Because it is not necessarily tied to language skills, it is a place where every child can succeed. It is the "melting pot" of all melting pots, and it gives every school with a diverse population the opportunity to meld their similarities and celebrate their differences.
- Research has shown again and again that schools with a strong music program have higher reading, math and writing scores. In this day of test score mania, what more could you ask of a program?
Catherine Applefeld Olson reported two months earlier in the same periodical a study from the University of Kansas which showed that there was a huge disparity in test scores between school with excellent music program and those that had either poor programs or none at all. "I found the results absolutely shocking," says University of Kansas director of music education.
The country was divided into four regions: West, Midwest, East, and South. Regional professionals, who knew and understood classroom musical experience, determined the quality of the music program in each area of the country. Since this data was collected from all levels— elementary, middle and high school—it covers both required and elective situations. There was no substantive difference between the results in the different levels.
Administrators and School Boards who eliminate or water-down school music programs in their quest for economy show remarkably poor judgment for both the students themselves and for their test scores.
Which Came First—the Chicken or the Egg?
©Nancy Dunkin
©Nancy Dunkin
Are students in the music program good students because they are in the music program? Or are they in the music program because they are good students?
There is no question that students in the school music program are better students than the general school population. That statistical information has been available for decades. Music students have better grades, fewer dropouts and are less often in trouble either in school or with the law.
What has been less clear is the reason for it. Do the better students gravitate to the music program simply because they are already good students and need that extra challenge? Or does music somehow cause them to be better students?
Gathering hard statistical evidence to learn whether music increases a student's scholastic ability requires withholding music study for a control group who would normally participate in music. Parents and music educators alike have forever been reluctant to deny music to any student in order to get that hard evidence. Anecdotal evidence certainly supports the belief that music is not only crucial to our humanness, but that it contributes to students' desire to stay in school, and enhances ability to choose friends and out-of-school activities wisely.
The post-mortem study of brains of our musical geniuses have shown us that their brains are larger and more dense than those of ordinary mortals. But until recently there was no way of knowing if they were musical geniuses because their brains were denser and larger; or if their brains were larger and denser because they were musicians.
With the advent of MRIs and CAT scans, neurologists can actually see what is happening in the brain as it occurs. They can measure size, density and development and compare over time what goes on with individual brains. There is now burgeoning evidence that music actually does increase the development of the brain.
A 20-year study of inner-city children who would normally have neither private lessons nor an excellent music program is now close to it's half-way point. Children with similar IQ's, economic background, family structure, and neighborhood were separated into two groups. The first group was given extensive private study on a variety of instruments, a strong music program in their school, and provided with performing groups in which to participate. The control group was given no special musical attention. They attended their regular school which had either a marginal music program or none at all. While it is still early in the study, the results are quite suggestive that music actually does make a physical difference in the development of the brain and increases IQ.
So, like the chicken and the egg, there are still no absolute answers as to why music students have better grades, are more likely to stay in school, and are less apt to get into drugs and alcohol. But it is becoming more and more clear that music participation does develop the brain.
Such evidence makes it incumbent upon school systems to provide this crucial developmental resource to their students. To ignore the importance of music in the life of their constituents imperils the integrity of the school system.
