Charles Brown

Professor Justin Bendell

English 1102

26 February 2013

Is cutting money from the arts helping or hurting students grades?

Since elementary school, students have been introduced to the basics of the arts, but in

the past few years, budget cuts to public schools in the U.S. has forced many of them to cut their

arts programs. Is cutting arts programs first the best decision to save money and at the same time

keep the current level of learning the same? Also would the lack of school programs leave us

with an uncultured future where there is no music, paintings, or dancing? Throughout my years

in elementary school I vividly remember that my favorite part of the school day was lunch time,

but my second favorite part about school was music. We sang songs and learned to read notes

and played instruments. If not for learning about music in school, I might not have picked up the

trumpet and I wouldn't be playing to this day. This sad realization led me to explore in this essay

the question of Do the arts help or hinder students in their academic studies?

After I asked myself this question I dove into piles of papers and articles to debate this

topic. The first article I came across was one that involved a scientific experiment on how music

enhances IQ. Basically it was a test to see if music would allow children to perform better

academically than children who did not play any kind of music.

The present experiment provided a direct test of the hypothesis that music lessons

enhance IQ. It included random assignment of a large sample of children to four

different groups, two of which received music lessons (standard keyboard, Koda

ly voice) for a year. The other two were control groups that received instruction
 in a nonmusical artistic activity (drama) or no lessons. Drama instruction was

chosen as a comparison activity because, like music, it is an artistic activity with a

primary auditory component. Both types of lessons involve practice and rehearsal,

memorization, learning new scripts or pieces, expressing emotion, and so on. The

use of two music groups made it possible to assess the generality of possible

effects of music instruction and whether nonmusical aspects of Kodaly

instruction accounted for the effect reported by Gardiner et al. (1996). The

primary outcome measure was the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third

Edition (WISC-III; Wechsler, 1991). The WISC-III is the most widely used test of

intelligence in childhood, with a variety of subscales that examine particular

subsets of intellectual abilities. Hence, it allowed an evaluation of the claim that

music lessons improve a limited subset of cognitive tasks, specifically, those

requiring verbal memory (Ho et al., 2003) or spatial-temporal or mathematical

reasoning (Hetland, 2000a; Rauscher, 2002). A standardized test of educational

achievement was also administered to examine whether observed changes in IQ

are accompanied by improvements on more applied measures. Finally, a test of

social functioning (with measures of adaptive and maladaptive behavior) was

included to evaluate whether music lessons affect some aspects of development

(i.e., intellectual functioning) but not others. All tests were administered before

and after the lessons. (Schellenberg)

The gist of the entire experiment isn't very complicated. Basically, children were isolated

differently while carrying on their own lives so that a final outcome, about a year after the

experiment started, could be observed. The outcome would show that playing a musical
instrument can actually give small boosts in IQ which make learning an instrument all the better.

However, in regard to other arts, in the same experiment some of the children who were not

learning music were placed in drama lessons. There were different results in both cases. For the

young musicians, their IQ's tended to be better and they could take tests better, but for the young

actors of drama, they did better socially and they worked better in social environments. The

young musicians did not change socially from where they had started however. This can be used

to conclude that the arts each focus on a different part of the brain and they each help in a

different area academically. I can relate to the argument of music because for all the years that I

have been playing my trumpet, I can definitely say that learning music is like a new language

altogether. When you read the notes, it's like you are reading a book with all its emotions within

the sheet music. Each crescendo and decrescendo speaks in its own tone and voice. It gives a

whole new perspective on life to learn music.

I kept searching on the topic of this specific experiment and luckily I came across E.

Glenn Schellenbrgs reply to commentaries from Bialystoks (2011) and Hargreaves and

Aksentijevics (2011) commentaries on Schellenberg (2011). In his response Schellenbrg

addresses criticisms on his study, for example Hargreaves and Aksentijevics hypothesis that

high-IQ children take music lessons because music engages mechanisms subserved by the left

and right cerebral hemispheres and Bialystoks claim that the test used in his expirement was

unsuitable for children in his sample. He disproves both of his critics.

Knowing that one source was not enough, I had to find some more articles to confirm that

what I was reading was correct. Another article that I ran into was one that informed about how

musical lessons help with spatial learning which is needed for professions like engineering and

surgery. Could it have been the fact that I took music lessons that led me to choose mechanical
engineering as my major? There is always the theory of the Mozart effect which is pretty much

a theory where even listening to music passively can help increase the learning ability in the

brain. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is hard to measure, so a different method has to be used.

There is another theory called the neural connections which I preferred the most in the article.

Basically this theory implies that the musical and spatial processing centers are overlapped, and

in effect they are linked (Hetland 180). So when the musical portion of the brain increases, so

will the spatial part of the brain. This is helpful because it means that as long as a person has

been increasing their musical mind from a younger age, in the long term their spatial center of

their brain will increase proportionally with the part of the brain that is used to learn music.

I had already gotten two sources but I was still hungry for more information on the ability

of the arts to enhance learning, so I looked for another source. For my next search I was looking

for cold hard facts so I found another source that actually showed statistics of schools that

showed children's abilities on exams who were learning and who knew music. It showed that

most children with musical talents scored higher than the majority who did not know music. In

the same article it informed about how music is directly related to spelling and reading because

just as young musicians use FACE to decode the notes on sheet music, this helps to help read

words in English. It also said that children who have trouble in math that play music actually

have a better time than those that do not because the neurological process that involves playing

music is very similar to those of mathematical reasoning (Oddleifson). This is yet another thing

that I can relate to because I, although I hate to brag, I am actually exceptional at math. I do tend

to get lazy when it comes to math to be honest, but I actually have a gift in mathematics which I

believe actually can be related to my ability to play music. I also did an interview with another

musician who agrees that it music enhances intelligence. She stated that It definitely enhances
intelligence and helps you to learn things. It also teaches discipline as well. The discipline you

need to learn an instrument is also used in learning other things. I agree with her because it

takes years of practice to master an instrument. And when your used to practicing you practice

everything you do. I remember learning from my music teacher that only perfect practice makes

permanent.

In conclusion, through my research, I believe that it can definitely be concluded that the arts

significantly helps with the development of the brain. However, it is clear that each art has its

own purpose for the brain. Therefore, I believe that cutting the arts out of public schools is a

huge mistake. Not only will it take wonderful culture out of public schools, but it has the

potential to restrain young childrens' minds and potentials. I know that I always looked forward

to going to my music classes after lunch and playing my silly little recorder with the rest of the

class, so I do not think other children should be deprived of the things I enjoyed so much. I

believe that the arts inspired my desire for learning the trumpet, along with a few pushes from

my parents, and I think that cutting the arts out of these schools might also influence the amount

of children that will want to play instruments. This, in the long term, might cause bands to

decrease in size in high-schools, which I also loved, and in effect lessen the population of music

players. It is a pretty sad thought to think about and so I stand firm by my belief.
Works Cited
Hetland, Lois. "Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning." University of Illinois

Press (2000). web. 13 March 2013.

Oddleifson, Eric. "A Fifty School Arts Education Demonstration Project." New Horizons for

Learning's On The Beam XI.1 (1990). web. 13 March 2013.

Schellenberg, E. Glenn. "Music lessons and intelligence:." British Journal of Psychology (2011).

web. March 13 2013.

Schellenberg, E. Glenn "Music Lessons Enhance IQ." Psychological Science (2004). web. 13

March 2013.