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Music Training's Cognitive Benefits Could Help "At-Risk" Students
AthanasiusKircher writes In recent years, emphasis on standardized testing and basic skills has forced many schools to cut back on things like arts and extracurricular activities. A study out this week from Northwestern University hints that schools may be hurting "at-risk" kids even more by cutting such programs. Just two years of music lessons were shown to have significant effects on brain activity and language processing which the researchers argue could help close achievement gaps between at-risk students and more affluent students. Aside from better brain response to language observed in the lab, practical effects of the interventions were readily apparent: 'Leaders at Harmony Project approached the researchers after the non-profit observed that their students were performing much better than other public school students in the area. Since 2008, over 90 percent of high school seniors who participated in Harmony Project's free music lessons went on to college, even though the high school dropout rates in the surrounding Los Angeles areas can reach up to 50 percent.' Note that this is only one of several ongoing studies showing significant cognitive benefits for music training among at-risk students; an article last year from The Atlantic gives a more detailed summary of related research.
Ooh! Count me in before someone mentions bringing the top down!
While (correlation != causation) and all that, there really is a pretty extensive research base showing the benefits of music (and the arts in general) for students.
Education these days has been very, very focused on something called convergent thinking - basically, being able to choose the right answer from a short list. We've bought into the myth that all you need to succeed in STEM fields is convergent thinking, so that's what's taught.
The arts, by contrast, develop divergent thinking. Creativity, and the ability to generate multiple possibilities for the same problem. ("Should I lay out my artwork this way or that way? What if I try improvising a new melody in this part?")
In reality, we need both. Students who are "Masters of STEM" in K-12 often run into trouble when they realize the world isn't full of convenient lists from which we have to pick the right answer.
Think about the job of the guy who has to build a bridge over a river. He isn't handed a list of four bridges, conveniently labelled A through D, and has to pick between them. No, he first needs to generate a variety of possible bridges (divergent thinking) and then sort through them to find which one is most optimal for his constraints (convergent thinking). There's often not a clear "right answer" - one bridge might be 20% more expensive, but 2% less likely to collapse in a major earthquake.
So even if you don't use the arts directly, they can be very useful for cultivating a different mindset from what we're beating into our students these days.
So the kids that were dedicated enough to do two years of music training went on to university did they?
Who would have thought?
We've bought into the myth that all you need to succeed in STEM fields is convergent thinking
Don't use the "we" when it was you who thought so
STEM was never, is never, and will never be a product of "convergent thinking"
And I have a problem with your description of art being the source of "divergent thinking"
Take the so-called "art" that we have, for example - Music ... these days you listen to one song you listen to all songs --- all of them sound so similar as everybody tries to sound like everybody else --- the beats, the rhythm, who the fuck cares anymore who sings what since they all sound just so much alike
Creativity ? Where IS creativity nowadays ?
Certainly not in the art field --- When a guy put a crucifix into a container filled with urine that guy instantly becomes an "artist" and his "crucifix in urine" was described as "creative", I dunno about you, but "creativity" sure ain't the right adjective to use in this case
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The problem does not rest on that so-called "study" alone
Slashdot editors also must shoulder part of the blame
Instead of posting submissions that carry weight they publish submits which got nothing to do with REAL SCIENCE nor technology
Is it the same as the misuse of the word 'vulnerable' to describe criminals who happen to be under 18?
You know, they do have a ton of code words that they throw around a lot, something like
"At risk"
"Underprivileged"
"[insert noun] - challenged"
"Vulnerable"
... and so on
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The fact that school bands create much better students has been well understood for many decades. That doesn't mean that our screw ball society has done anything with that information. First music breaks up boredom. Apparently having something to do stops a lot of drug use and other crimes in general. Then a school band relies upon cooperation. Obviously a band will not sound very good with a lot of kids out of tune or playing the wrong note so every band member has a serious incentive to help every other member. Basic behaviors are also taught. Showing up on time with your instrument, your music and your complete uniform are all part of school band programs. And if you look at playing an instrument as a very competitive action things become even more obvious. What other form of performance in which competition takes place also completely avoids violence? Football, soccer and even track events all involve pain and certain forms of violence. For minority groups the individuals become valued for their ability and performance. The white student can highly value and respect the brown black, red or yellow student who stands out for excellence. There is no student that could not help themselves through being in a rigorous band and concert group all the way from 3rd. grade through college. Then we have a world dynamic as well. If Americans are illiterate for math, science and the arts they are even more in worse shape with their knowledge of music. Ask your next door neighbor why Chopin is so highly respected and there is a 99% probability that all you will get is duh. That leads to a life long lock down on the ability to associate with truly educates people. So our dullard students are left with a life of drinking beer and getting into all kinds of negative lives with high mortality rates.
This very site used to see arguments against Microsoft's Windows — and one of the potent ones was that a "monoculture" is dangerous because, should a flaw appear in it, the entire field can be lost at once.
The "recent" discovery, that fat is not nearly as bad for you as the sugars put into "fat free" products to make them edible, shows, how the similar effect can happen, when the government decides, what's best for all of us: the science is declared "settled" and "guidelines" (backed by the carrots of subsidies and sticks of fund-withdrawals) start touting the new best method.
The field of pedagogy is just as unsettled as that of dieting advice or economics. Maybe, local (private or public alike) schools ought to decide, what and how to teach? With some music or with more math instead? With essays or with puzzles or with multiple-choice tests... That way, at least some of them are going to get it right and, maybe, even show others how to do it.
Now, we know, that teachers dislike the standardized exams imposed by the Federal law(s). Sorry, no dice — the exams must be standardized, otherwise the results of the different approaches used by different schools can never be meaningfully compared.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
While learning a difficult skill like reading/playing music builds confidence and certainly exercises the brain for the somewhat intelligent students (the dumb ones are terrible and annoy the whole class with their lack of learning ability), another overlooked benefit is the mentorship that the instructor provides. In high school, marching band (and later concert and jazz band) students spend a lot of time under the bandmaster and team's influence which means that if the instructor's good, he'll try to implant moral and life training at the same time he's teaching them music.
The requirements are standard. The actual manner of teaching is not. Education standards are about what to teach, not how to teach.
You might find recommendations on how to teach, but they are not enforced as requirements. Find me an example of enforced methods of teaching, rather than curricula (which is just a laundry list of what needs to be taught, not how).
=Smidge=
A big part of school is socialization and learning how to cooperate with other people. Most of the time teachers and administrators take this to mean students need to just do as they say and not give them any grief. Students learn to fake obedience along with their interest in anything they have to study. It's cynical and sad. BUT the very act of playing music in a group requires that students cooperate with the people around them not because an authority tells them to, but because beautiful sounds won't get created unless they do. Playing music in a group gives people feedback they can use to learn self-control, self-discipline, cooperation, and responsibility. It's much more effective than letters on a piece of paper handed out by hypocritical adult authority figures.
Distinction with no (or little) difference. The giant Federal Department of Education is paid for by our tax-dollars ($70bln per year give or take). If it issues "recommendations", they are either followed or are rejected necessitating local replacements (paid for by more tax-dollars).
The argument that a citizen (or a local government) are free to reject the (higher) government's "free" help is bogus, because we aren't free to refuse paying for it, whether we use it or not.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Think about the job of the guy who has to build a bridge over a river. He isn't handed a list of four bridges, conveniently labelled A through D, and has to pick between them.
Actually, in certain - increasingly common - regulatory environments, this is exactly what happens.
Big "iconic" bridges like Brooklyn, Golden Gate, Sunshine Skyway - o.k. sure, those are artistic projects - but the vast majority of the I-20 (and similar) river crossings are handled with one of a few basic, proven construction techniques, and any highway engineer who wants to get his next career promotion on-schedule is much more likely to do that by saying "Build the MM 293 bridge with pattern C construction, like the bridges at MM 287 and 245, which are situated on similar soil types and elevation profiles and have proven to be trouble free. Do not opt for types A, or D construction because these have had problems X, Y, Z in service in similar areas."
It's not just bridges, any "commodity" industry that has a lot of historical data is reduced to copycat best practices, vs. "bold, innovative, risk taking ideas." Occasionally, somebody has a desire to make a statement, break new ground, try something different - but the majority of the world operates under actuarial tables that require data from similar endeavors before giving approval to proceed.
Having said all that - all copy and no think makes Jack a dull boy, and I'd rather not be a dull boy, so I try to color outside the lines whenever given the opportunity. But it certainly is easier to keep your head down and follow the herd.
>Now, we know, that teachers dislike the standardized exams imposed by the Federal law(s). Sorry, no dice â" the exams must be standardized, otherwise the results of the different approaches used by different schools can never be meaningfully compared.
You're assuming too much:
1) That exams do not do so much harm to the educational process as to undo any good you see in them (which when we look at the actual patterns of behaviour that emerge seems to be highly unlikely).
2) That comparing schools is both a necessary and a good thing to do.
The two countries with the best education outcomes in the world today: Finnland and South Korea both had some of the worst 5 decades ago - interestingly their systems by which they turned this around are almost polar opposites in every regard.
Yet there is a few things they have in common:
1) *EVERY* school is a good school, nobody is allowed (in the broadest possible sense of the term - which would include everybody from teachers, the local community right up to the minister of education) to run a bad one - they don't have to compare schools to see which one is better - since they are all excellent.
2) Teachers are highly valued and extremely well paid. This is actually a criteria for 1 to be achieved, you can't have good teachers unless really smart and talented people with the ability to follow any career they want - can actually make a decent living as teachers.
Finnland approached it by closing 80% of their teacher colleges in the 1970's and only accepting the top 10% of applicants - making teaching one of the hardest courses to get into in a Finnish tertiary education. Those who do are among the best of the best of their generation - and THAT is who you want preparing the next one !
And it doesn't end with a diploma, Finnish schoolteachers spend less than 300 hours a year actually teaching - nearly all the rest are spent LEARNING - various forms of professional development that they are expected to engage in increasing their skillset continuously throughout their careers.
That is ultimately the difference between a good or a bad school system - how many of the smartest people it produces go back to work in it.
The saying goes that those who can't - teach.
That's a guaranteed way to create a really, really bad education system.
If you want a good one - there is a very simple cure: pay teachers extremely well, and then make it very hard to become one, so that those who teach are not just who CAN - but those who can EXCEPTIONALLY WELL.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I'm teaching calculus; I teach it as a foreign language. So many of the concepts, words and glyphs are foreign, as is the "grammar" that I've found I have to reteach math as a foreign language so they can have enough understanding of the algebra to grasp the calculus principles. I really don't care if they can algorithmically apply calculus rules; I can train a monkey to do that with enough bananas, and CAS systems are what they'll use beyond the junior year of engineering school, if that long. However, if they speak the language, they can read, write and converse in the language.
I'm guessing by your excessive use of " " you're trying to question the validity of the study based on the name of the university. http://www.northwestern.edu/
... things that are basically common senseor at least have been for about a century are 'discovered'?
Everything said here reads exactly like a bona fide copy of what alternative educational - i.e. non-mainstream one-dimensional eductation - methods have been preaching since the dawn of broad public schooling, right down to the insights into the development and function of the human brain. So diversity in education helps the brain and soul develop better? Wow, what an insight. ... No wonder our culture is in such a sad state.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
First, lets remove the term STEM from the conversation as that is a classification of graduate, not a classification for Education System.
Education systems are the real problem, or at least what we are using as an education system. Your statement regarding a lack of convergent thinking is real problem, and is a direct result of our current education system. Our current system is based on the Prussian education system. This system was designed with the purpose of making soldiers smart enough to calculate and fire artillery, but not smart enough to question authority. Beat math into the persons head, but ignore Philosophy (ethics, morality, critical thinking). This system has been refined further and further since the US started pushing this as the education method in the 1930s (in fairness the biggest transitions started in the 40s).
When we moved to the Prussian system, we dumped the Classical education system. The "Classical" education system was improved over thousands of years. The curriculum was updated as we made progress, Alchemy being replaced by Chemistry for example. The focus of this system was to start with the foundation of critical thought and basic concepts. Rhetoric was taught at a very young age which encouraged dialogue and debate, along with basic math and language (reading/writing/spelling, etc...) Students took classes which advanced in a logical progression. If you teach someone Algebra at the same time as Physics, Algebra makes more sense. Teach someone music, and I mean actually teach them how the wave forms behave, and Trig makes more sense (music is the topic). Teaching ethics and morality at the same time as history provides the means to better evaluate future decisions.
Further, we have some good science backing how music directly impacts our thoughts. Certain sounds, patterns, and rhythms can cause the brain to produce chemicals that can enhance learning, or increase aggression, etc.. Teaching this along with music would certainly be of benefit to students.
So yea, music needs to be added back into schools. Our education system should be fully evaluated and revamped. Many teachers try and teach critical thought, so the problems we see are not related necessarily to teachers. Making teachers and students cram constantly for the next test has impacted even the best teachers. Teachers are evaluated on how well their students take the government mandated tests, not how well they can actually teach students.
Some terms to study outside of "Classical education" and "Prussian education" are the Trivium and Quadrivium.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And how do we know that? Without exams of some sort?
Sure. And I too am an excellent singer — so long as you don't compare me with anyone else.
That "difference" seems rather self-serving. The purpose of a school system is not produce good teachers. It is to prepare students for all pursuits they may choose — not just teaching.
I still don't understand, how you would know, your education is particularly good without some means to compare the results...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sit Down, Shut Up, and do your schoolwork or you're going to be "at risk" of getting you ass kicked out of this school. Once you finished your assignment, you can listen to music. That's the correlation I got when I was a kid.
>And how do we know that? Without exams of some sort?
You can see how they perform in life maybe ?
You do know that the even the most struggling students in Finnland graduated trilingual right ?
>Sure. And I too am an excellent singer â" so long as you don't compare me with anyone else.
Comparing people and comparing schools are not analogous. The latter is a system - and there is absolutely no logical reason why all of them can't be as good as the best one is now or better.
>That "difference" seems rather self-serving. The purpose of a school system is not produce good teachers. It is to prepare students for all pursuits they may choose â" not just teaching.
That's an idiotic way to read it. The point is that if the best of the best are CHOOSING to become teachers then EVERYBODY gets the best education they can -regardless of what THEY choose to do.
Even Linus Torvalds did a stint teaching !
>I still don't understand, how you would know, your education is particularly good without some means to compare the results...
Of all the ways to measure a students abilities, exams are just about the LEAST accurate.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No, I don't know a single Finn or Korean. And even if I did, one person's circle of acquaintances is not sufficient to make meaningful conclusions about the quality of school system in any of their countries.
Big deal. I graduated trilingual too (Ukrainian, Russian, English) — and most of Europe does, I guess, out of necessity. I don't know, how well they write (in any language) or whether all the graduates can solve a quadratic equation. If you have any evidence, that Finns (or South Koreans) are, indeed, the best educated in the world, you should've offered citations two posts ago...
I apologize. Because there could not possibly have been anything wrong with how you wrote it, all of the idiocy must be on the reader's side...
That "point" of yours is rather dubious. In fact, I think, it is not true at all. Being a master of something and being able to teach it to others are two very different things...
Great example! Were you going to add, that Linus quit teaching, when he discovered a better programmer and OS-designer teaching in a classroom next door?
That was a great opportunity to list some MORE accurate alternatives, but you missed it. Likely, because none exist.
Thanks for playing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
between at-risk students and more affluent students who take music lessons?
However, how we test dictates how we teach. You can give students a liberal arts education in the classroom but if the tests are CCSS, there's little or no incentive for them to participate in class. In effect, the tests directly inform students what's expected of them in class. If they can fool around and misbehave in class and then just cram a few hours/days/weeks before a big test and still get good grades, guess what'll tend to happen? For more info, look up John Biggs' SOLO taxonomy and the idea of Constructive Alignment.
>No, I don't know a single Finn or Korean. And even if I did, one person's circle of acquaintances is not sufficient to make meaningful conclusions about the quality of school system in any of their countries
Are you allergic to thinking ? Nobody suggested that. Luckily we have these things called science and statistics which work well together and lots scientists and statisticians who make detailed studies of education - including how it compares around the world and what does and doesn't work well. We also have huge organisations like UNICEF which funds international studies of this nature. We don't have to GUESS who have the best school systems - we have FACTS.
Among the things these scientists compare is - how many students manage to get in to high quality tertiary education (what Americans would call Ivy League schools) - and how they perform there (the first year drop-out rate is one of the best measurements of the pre-university school system).
>Big deal. I graduated trilingual too (Ukrainian, Russian, English) â" and most of Europe does, I guess, out of necessity. I don't know, how well they write (in any language) or whether all the graduates can solve a quadratic equation. If you have any evidence, that Finns (or South Koreans) are, indeed, the best educated in the world, you should've offered citations two posts ago...
We were comparing with America, not Europe where multilingualism is common. As for citations - google -it this is an EXTREMELY well studied field and there is very high consensus because there is such a massive abundances of ways to measure outcomes and they have little to no dissagreement. I gave one example above, another would be the likelihood of somebody to find work straight out of high-school compared to a drop-out. The number of people who manage to get PHDs is another.
>That was a great opportunity to list some MORE accurate alternatives, but you missed it. Likely, because none exist.
No, because I didn't realize I was talking to a person with absolutely no knowledge of the subject he is making such absolute statements about...
Well - one example of a MUCH more accurate measurement is through continuous grading via projects and assignments.
Exams barely, if at all, reflect actual skills in a subject - they reflect skill at passing exams and these skills rarely correlate.
Exams create disrupted educational incentives causing teachers to teach "to the exam", students to study "to the exam" and NOBODY to actually LEARN anything - not to mention as Stevin Levitt so conclusively proofed standardized testing GUARANTEES the highest degrees of teaching and corruption of any form of student assessment.
There are many, many educational systems without exams - even large universities like Harvard are moving away from them because the evidence of their complete lack of reliability is becoming too large to ignore.
People who think exams are the only, let alone a GOOD, way to measure ability are almost always people who went to school before anybody really studied this stuff - never really encountered any other ideas and think their experience is the only one that's possible - that BY ITSELF proves they had an inferior education.
The Waldorf education system (considered universally as one of the most comprehensive and highest quality education systems there is - found in the most expensive private schools around the world) for example is completely exam-less. In countries where matriculation requires a final government-mandated exam, their students still take those exams and outperforms those students who had, had exams throughout their school career - DESPITE not having been coached to exams every year since they had never HAD an exam before.
I have some personal issues with Waldorf (too much religion in there for my liking) but even so I can recognize that it's massively superior to the Prussian-style public school systems that still dominate most of the world DESPITE producing inferior outcomes everywhere it's used.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Small correction:
standardized testing GUARANTEES the highest degrees of cheating (including teacher-assisted cheating) and corruption of any form of student assessment.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>Great example! Were you going to add, that Linus quit teaching, when he discovered a better programmer and OS-designer teaching in a classroom next door?
The scary thing is that you think that proves YOUR point when, in fact, it proves mine.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Maybe in some areas, but I think standardized testing still has it's merits. It's that standardized testing shouldn't be a means to withdraw funding from schools, but rather show that the individual schools need assistance somehow. And these tests should focus more on problem solving rather than just "robotic" answering. To put it another way, if it's a math test, maybe it shouldn't be dozens of problems to solve, but rather a few problems in which one must solve for the solution(s).
One thing that is missing from early math education would be axioms. Proofs. We need to deal with that early on rather than in high school/college.