Research Assessment #3

Rebekah Barnett
Date: Friday, October 21, 2016
Article Title: The Benefit of Music Education
MLA Citation: Brown, Laura Lewis. "The Benefits of Music Education." PBS. PBS, 2003. Web.
21 Oct. 2016.
Analysis:
As I began to research my topic of music education more, I found an article
entitled The Benefit of Music Education by Laura Lewis Brown. This article held a
multitude of information depicting the importance of music education and how it
benefits children when taught at an early age. This article gave me a wider
understanding of the impact of music education on children and what it means to be
a teacher giving this specific knowledge to those young students.
Brown touches on the different benefits that a child can gains from being
taught music at an early age. She discusses the impact that music has on language
development, IQ level, brain labor, special-temporal skills, and test scores. First,
music helps improve language development. It does this by helping enhance the
natural abilities to decode words and sounds. Studies show that musical training
helps develop the left side of the brain that is known to be involved with processing
language. Information can also be imprinted into young childrens mind through the
linkage of the new information to songs. Second, music has a small effect on IQ
level in students. According to tests run, young children who have consistently been
involved in music education have an IQ a few points higher than those who have not
been involved in music education. This wasnt a major change, but there was still a
small difference in the students with music education and the students without.
Next, the brain works harder in children with music education. A musicians brain
works differently than a nonmusician. There is larger growth of brain activity in
children who have been involved in music training because those children have to
use more of their brain when the play an instrument. The students in a study who
received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor skills.
Next, spatial-temporal skills are improved with music. Understanding it can help
children visualize various elements that go together. Over time, these skills are
improved by music instruction. Lastly, the article stated that being involved in music
education leads to improved test scores. A study showed that students in
elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around twentytwo percent higher in English and twenty percent higher in math scores on
standardized tests. Music training can help with basic memory recall that, when
used, can help students memorize important information.
Music has an incredible effect on a childrens learning development. It can
improve a childs abilities in learning and other nonmusical tasks. But all of this does
not mean that music makes an individual smarter. What it does help children with
are benefits such as being disciplined, learning a skill, managing performance, and

even struggling with a less than perfect teacher. This article showed me that the
primary reasons to provide a child with a musical education should be to help them
become more musical, to appreciate aspects of music, and to respect the process of
learning an instrument or learning to sing. It, again, is not to make a child smarter.
Music is for musics sake, as Dr. Eric Rasmussen said. The important point that I
pulled from this article was that, although music education has a multitude of
benefits in other academic areas, it is there for the purpose of improving music and
bringing the joy of music into a childs life.
As my third research assessment, this article was very informational and
beneficial for me. It revealed to me the positive effects of music education on other
areas of academics but also reminded me that music education is important for
music itself. It is important for a child to get involved in music education at an early
age because it helps with learning abilities, but also because music is an incredible
art form to be a part of. If, as an elementary school music teacher, I can give that
gift of music to young children every single day, I know that job would be the one
that I would love and truly be happy with. Through this research, I have learned how
important it is to me for children to have the opportunity to be involved in music.
There is so much value in music and in music education itself and I have learned
that every student must receive the chance to get involved with it early so that they
can carry on with it for the rest of their lives. As far as the research has shown me,
there is no reason not to put a child into music education. Music is important and it
should be taught to as many children as possible at an early age.
The Benefit of Music Education by Laura Lewis Brown was an informational
article that taught me so much more about music education that I hadnt known
about before. The article itself helped further my knowledge on the positive effects
of music education and caused me to fall in love with the idea of elementary music
education even more. After reading this article, I desire to continue in more research
and study on early childhood music education and discover what else that the job
has to offer.