Learning music develops and improves learning abilities. Music education develops basic cognitive and learning skills that improve student performance across all subject areas. This claim is supported by a wide range of Australian and international academic literature across areas of brain research, psychology and behavioural studies.
Learning music improves auditory skills. Neural researchers at Northwestern University in the United States have found that students who had musical training in childhood were better able to pick out a wider range of essential elements of sound, like pitch, timing and timbre. This ability to discern the components of sound plays a major role in developing a child’s capacity to make sound-to-meaning connections, learn to speak and learn written languages, including foreign languages.
Learning music enhances early childhood development of the brain. Research at the University of California has found that learning and playing music builds or modifies neural pathways related to spatial reasoning tasks, which are crucial for higher brain functions. This study showed that preschool children who received basic piano keyboard instruction scored an average of 34 per cent higher on tests of their reasoning skills than children who were given computer and singing lessons.
Learning music can enhance non-musical abilities. A two-year Swiss study involved 1,200 children in 50 schools. They were taken from regular classes for three additional one-hour music classes per week. At the end of the experiment, despite missing regular classes, these students were better at languages, learned to read more easily, had better social relations, demonstrated more enjoyment in school, and had a lower stress level than those who remained in regular classes. Learning music improves test scores in key academic subjects. A 12-year study linked to Harvard, Stanford and Columbia universities that tracked more than 25,000 students, found that across all backgrounds, music students get higher marks in school tests than students who do not study music.
