Fine arts and why you should care

I was exceedingly indecisive about what my blog post was going to be until about noon yesterday. Then Sean and Patrick came to visit me at the piano in the band room, where I often am a little before lunch two on B days. Pat joked about how Sean had practically no music education, and I thought to myself how incredibly depressing that was.  Before that moment, I was already thinking about doing a post about music and some of its emotional effects. I was in choir for many years till my schedule could no longer fit it this year; I've been in band since fourth grade and doing piano since I was five- I'm a band geek through and through. Then I realized the incredible task I would be undertaking, and I could never, ever do justice to it. It also reminded me of a quote that once made me chuckle:

"If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong." -Aaron Copland

So I'm not going to talk about how music makes you feel I'm going to talk about music education and why it's good, yay. =) As a preface, this might turn out to be a lot of logos and light on the ethos, but I don't think anybody's done something like this before.

As probably a lot of you know or suspect, when underfunded schools need to cut something, a fine arts program- i.e., orchestra and band or sometimes choir -is usually the first to go. And it seems to make sense- in elementary schools it's often not a 'real' class, instruments are expensive, etc. But giving a kid an instrument is not just...giving them an instrument (bear with me here).  It's giving them a lot of other academic benefits that you probably don't even realize. Wonder no more!

A lot of times music education is dropped in favor of math or science. Again, makes sense. People in India or China or any other developing country want your job.  But music involves a *lot* of counting and can give you a significantly better hold on math by the time you're a high school senior. Kids with a music background are four times as likely to do a math or science fair.  They also have better attendance and are more likely to win awards for grades. Students with a musical education score 107 points better on the SAT than kids with no musical education.

But there's also a lot of effects that are less, or less obviously, related to scores and such. Students in band or orchestra are the least likely group in a school to do illegal drugs. It teaches how to work with a group, self-discipline, and tenacity. The children read for fun about twice as much. And not to mention, music is just fun- it's a social activity as well, seeing the same people on a regular basis and making a connection through music.

So when schools cut out music and fine arts programs from their curricula, they're really putting the students at a disadvantage in many areas.

But here's my questions for you guys- if you're in the music program at your school, do you like it? Do you feel it's made you smarter or whatever? If you're not in the music program at your school, have you been in the past? If not, do you regret it at all? Do share. =)

Sources (just in case):

http://www.americansforthearts.org/public_awareness/artsed_facts/001.asp

http://www.summerhaysmusic.com/News/musicadvocacy.html