More Than Just a Music Education
It was wonderful to see our ensembles play at Bands Explosion on Thursday evening and I particularly enjoyed the experience of listening to the music, while watching the big screens. The event was a highlight of last week and I am sure our Somerville musicians were thrilled to have parents in the VPAC audience. We delighted in applauding each ensemble and we were all impressed by the standard of musicianship.
Dr Anita Collins is a music educator who is interested in the research by neuroscientists and psychologists, showing the impact of music learning on brain development of school-aged children. Collins poses the question - what if a large number of scientific studies found there was one activity that could improve our cognitive function, help our memory systems work effectively, help us learn language, help us moderate our emotional states, help us solve complex problems and help our brains be healthier into later life? .. and what if that activity was also enjoyable for everyone involved?
Collins contends that there is one such activity – and that activity is music education.
I share some of the salient points from her article, as it is such interesting reading. Dr Collins goes on to explain that we have learned how music education improves working memory, phonemic awareness, development of complex spatial skills, impulse control development, auditory development that protects our brains from ageing, and reading and comprehension skills. In fact, learning music is a full brain workout.
She advocates that learning a musical instrument and skills like clapping in time, singing in tune and moving to music are some of the most complex cognitive activities the brain can undertake. This is because they involve the auditory, motor and visual cortices communicating at an astonishingly fast rate, while the cognitive, reward and sensory networks are sharing information, and the perception, emotion and cognition networks are making personal meaning from all the logical information the brain is processing.
Evidently, music learning develops an extensive list of skills and abilities, which can be sorted under three main areas – language development, executive skills and social skills development. After doing something so complex, our brains look at other tasks like reading, problem solving and conceptualisation and say: “Well, this is easy in comparison to music learning!”
So, how does learning music improve brain development? The parts of the brain that are responsible for learning music and language are overlapping. This means we hear music as language when we are babies, and we use that understanding to then learn how to decode language and speak it. This is why musically trained children tend to acquire language quicker, learn how to read earlier and develop comprehension skills earlier. This is the very foundation of all learning at school: the ability to use language.
The act of learning music requires children to use many different parts of their brains at once. One particular area that gets a great workout is the prefrontal cortex, where our executive functions live — the area where we very slowly, through our entire school career, learn how to manage ourselves.
Music learning requires the use of the executive system (in a small way), every single time we pick up an instrument and do a musical activity. It is the slow, permanent and effective development of the most complex part of our brains. Playing music in a group, whether keeping a beat or playing a symphony, requires subtle, non-verbal social skills. These are the manners and explicit behaviours we work so hard to teach our children, whether as parents or teachers. These are the subtle, deeply human social skills that employers seek when they interview someone. These serve musically trained children well into adulthood as they develop solid relationships, manage their wellbeing, and are empathic and compassionate towards others.
Dr Collins has a very strong belief regarding the big myth about music education, and shares that she often hears parents say, “My children aren’t going to be concert pianists so why should they keep learning music?”
It's a fair question, but one that's informed by old thinking and a lack of understanding of the new research. Music is a wonderful art form and one that will enrich your children regardless of how proficient they become. Learning music to pursue it as a profession is not the point of music education for every child in school.
Learning music provides children with the cognitive foundations for effective learning, which ultimately helps them become confident learners, ready to make the most of their education. Finally, music brings such joy … which is reason enough for one to study it! Life would be very dull without music. Where would we be without the music makers?
Thank you to Mr Will Eager, Mr Bob Schulz, Ms Anna Kho, Ms Kristine Handley for your fine work as conductors, with a special thanks to the musicians for providing such a wonderful evening of entertainment last Thursday evening.
Congratulations to our Rowers
Big congratulations to our Rowing crews and coaches and Ms Samara Quinlan, Director of Rowing for completing a great season of Rowing in 2022. The Head of the River was a wonderful culmination to the regattas held throughout Term 3. Thank you to all parents who supported their rowing daughters in 2022.
Mrs Kim Kiepe
Principal