Keeping Music Education in Schools

Kate Warlick

English III-Honors

Mrs. Carol Cox

15 October 2007
 Outline

Thesis: Out of all of the fine arts, music education is the most beneficial to all areas of learning

and should be made available to students of every age and background regardless of the cost.

I. Cultural Background

A. Historical Music Geniuses

1. Mozart

2. Beethoven

B. Musical Contributions

1. New Orleans

2. Harlem Renaissance

3. Broadway

II. Cultural Benefits

A. Historical Pieces

B. Travel Opportunities

III. Studies

A. Standardized Test Results

B. Music-Spatial Reasoning Link

C. Mozart Effect

IV. Personal Experiences

A. Interviews with Music Educators

1. High Academic Achievers

2. Good Work Ethics

B. Interviews with Student Musicians

V. Opposition

A. Lack of Time

B. Lack of Funding

C. Lack of Importance

VI. Future of Music Education

A. Government Involvement

B. Celebrity Involvement

C. Local Involvement
 Keeping Music Education in Schools

In today’s increasingly competitive educational world, educators are beginning to focus

more on strictly academic courses, such as maths and sciences rather than on the fine arts classes.

The fine art classes such as art, band and chorus, drama, and others are just as necessary to a

well-rounded education as algebra or chemistry. Out of all of the fine arts, music education is the

most beneficial to all areas of learning and should be made available to students of every age and

background regardless of the cost.

Throughout the history of civilization, musical geniuses have helped sculpt generations

into the cultures that we now recognize. These cultures have helped mold today’s society in

uncountable ways. Ted Turner stated in the Ted Broadcasting System, “Music has a great power

for bringing people together. With so many forces in this world acting to drive wedges between

people, it’s important to preserve those things that help us experience our common humanity.

(MENC 2007). Today’s students need to be taught about the musical contributions of the past in

order to understand the world they experience today. There have been a few extremely major

musical eras which tremendously shaped the course of history.

One of those was the jazz era that grew in New Orleans. When the tragedy of Hurricane

Katrina occurred, many students who did not have the benefit of having a music history

education probably didn’t understand the disastrous ramifications of the destruction.

Another important musical era was the Harlem Renaissance. This period in time was a

blooming of the African American culture. It housed the beginning of such groundbreaking

artists as Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, and Jelly Roll Morton among others, and introduced new

music genres such as ragtime. (Johnson sec.1) When students have the benefits of having music

classes, such as in this case, jazz ensembles where they play music stemming from this period,
they are able to learn first hand about the culture. Jazz also helps develop management skills. J.

Richard Hackman, a professor of organizational psychology at Harvard University stated, “IF

you are in an improv jazz ensemble or a small chamber group, you learn to think fast on your

feet and how to be flexible and to collaborate and compromise, and that may yield a creative

outcome” (Qtd. in Zipkin 67). They can then take this knowledge into their history and literature

classes and therefore receive a more rounded educational experience.

The music of Broadway has also greatly affected our country’s history. The show tunes of the

big stage helped our country deal with such events as World War II, and The Great Depression.

This information, when taught in a music class, could help students going on into a

psychological field understand the effects of music on the masses. Learning about all of these

time periods and the effects they had on out culture today can help students better understand

their history classes, and the literature of the time that they might be discussing in English class.

When students take part in music ensembles such as band or chorus, they come into

contact with a tremendous amount of historically rich pieces. Every piece of music played in the

band room or sung in the chorus room has a historical reason behind it. Whether it’s written for a

fallen military hero, or written in praise of a cultural icon, each piece is teeming with historical

and cultural information.

There are also many educational travel opportunities available when a student is involved

in band or chorus. Many ensembles go on annual trips to cultural hotbeds such as New York City,

Orlando, and Nashville. When music students are here they can experience first hand things that

other students would normally not have the opportunity for. Without music classes in schools,

many students might never get to visit these historical places and could grow up ignorant of

some of America’s finest cities.

There have been countless studies on the effects of music education on standardized testing

results, the link between music and spatial reasoning, and certain phenomena as the “Mozart

effect”. The fact that music education improves standardized testing scores is no longer even

debatable. In a 1998 publication of Educational Leadership, Norman M. Weinberger stated,

First graders who received instruction in music listening has significantly higher

reading scores

than those first graders who didn’t receive the instruction but were similar in age,

IQ, and socioeconomic status...The instructed students scored in the 88th

percentile for reading performance and the non-instructed students scored in the

72nd percentile (Weinberger, p38).

Spatial-reasoning and spatial intelligence are the type of random brain functions used for

playing chess, attempting abstract mathematics, and basic intellectual development. A study done

by Dr. Frances Rauscher and physicist Dr. Gordon Shaw using four groups of pre-schoolers

showed that those who received piano lessons scored 34% higher on tests used to determine

spatial-temporal ability than the groups who did not (“Music Training” p35).

Another highly tested theory is the “Mozart Effect”. According to Richard Voss, almost

all music, especially Mozart, uses a simple mathematical formulation that expresses how notes

change in pitch over the course of a musical piece. When people are subjected to listening to

Mozart, no matter what age, their spatial-temporal ability is temporarily enhanced (“Growing up

Complete” par.7).

Music educators themselves are the people who are most concerned with the threats of

removing music education from schools. In personal interviews, the majority of music staff

members confirmed that instead of hindering other parts of education, in fact, their music
students were part of the academic elite. The discipline that is needed to work together as an

ensemble carries over into all other areas of the student’s education. Interviews with student

musicians revealed much of the same. When asked about his college experiences with music

classes, Don Schlitz, now a Nashville recording artist replied, “I’ll tell you about a class I had…

music appreciation. We were learning…English…We were learning history…We were learning

math…And we were learning to listen. This music appreciation connected my entire studies.

(“Growing Up Complete” Sec. III)

However, some teachers and parents feel that music education should be taken out of

schools altogether. One of the main reasons, they say, is that in order for students to be held in

the rankings for today’s competitive college admissions, there needs to be more of a focus on

classes that will go towards a higher GPA. However, now that it is getting increasingly difficult

to get into college based entirely on an academic level, colleges are now starting to look at

extracurricular activities and fine arts classes as a deciding factor. To college admissions

counselors, students who have remained in band or chorus for all four years of high school show

a tremendous amount of self-discipline and social aptitude. When forced to choose between two

students with somewhat identical GPAs and academic records, the colleges will almost always

choose the student with a more rounded course of study.

Another reason that some people feel that music education should be taken out of schools

is that there is a lack of funding to provide instruments and needed equipment and that the

money could be better used on something “more useful”. Former Governor of Arkansas, Mike

Huckabee, stated to the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) in June of 2007,

When I hear people asking how do we fix the education system, I tell them we

need to do the opposite of what is happening, cutting budgets by cutting music

 programs…Nothing could be stupider than removing the ability for the left and

right brains to function. Ask a CEO what they are looking for in an employee and

they say they need people who understand teamwork, people who are disciplined,

people who understand the big picture. You know what they need? They need

musicians (“Why Music Education?” Sec. 2).

So in reality, music classes are just as important and worthy of funding, perhaps even more so,

than normal academic classes.

There is also apparently a lack of importance to music classes according to some. Many

consider them “fluff classes” used merely to fill in empty schedule places. However, according to

the No Child Left Behind Act, “The term ‘core academic subjects’ means English, reading or

language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts,

history, and geography” (US Dept. Of Ed. Title IX). The government includes the arts in its list

of ‘core academic subjects’ therefore making the fine arts a necessary part of a well-rounded

education.

The supporters of music education are doing as much as they can to ensure that all

students have the opportunity to experience at least a small amount of music education. The

government has done a good deal of help with the aforementioned part of the No Child Left

Behind Act. Celebrities are using their powerful social status to help also. VH1’s Save The Music

has organized many charity concerts to help with everything from rebuilding the music industry

of New Orleans after Katrina to helping needy schools with their meager budgets so that all

children may enjoy the benefits of music education.

Music education needs to be kept in schools. Not only does it help students grow in

intelligence and academic excellence but it also helps them grow more culturally aware. The
children of today are tomorrow’s future. Without musical education in their schools, we as a

country might be looking forward to a socially inept, culturally ignorant society in the future. In

order to have a country and society that works smoothly we need to have a well-balanced

background, and keeping music in schools would solve the problem once and for all.
 Works Cited

“Growing Up Complete: The Imperative for Music Education. The Report of The National

Commission on Music Education.” Music Educators National Conference (MENC).

Reston, VA: MENC, March 1991. 1 October 2007

< http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/growing.htm>.

U.S. Dept. of Education. No Child Left Behind Act. Title IX, Part A, Sec. 11. 2002. 5 Oct. 2007

< http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg107.html >.

“Music Training Causes Long-Term Enhancement of Preschool Children’s Spatial-Temporal

Reasoning”. Neurological Research 19 (1997): 35.

Johnson, William H. The Harlem Renaissance. 2000. 10 Oct. 2007

<http://www.fatherryan.org/harlemrenaissance/>.

Zipkin, Amy. “Learning Teamwork by Making Music”. New York Times. Nov. 2003.

MENC. “Why Music Education?”. 2007. 4 Oct. 2007.

<http://www.menc.org/information/advocate/facts.html >.

Weinburger, Norman M. “The Music in Our Minds.” Educational Leadership. Nov.1998: p.38

39.