Music's role in education

[Bryn]

If You Want Smarter Kids Teach Them Music, Not Coding, According To MIT

[oddoneout]

If You Want Smarter Kids Teach Them Music, Not Coding, According To MIT

Teach them both. The music is a good foundation builder for other skills but that doesn't man those other skills shouldn't be taught.
I find this puzzling given the speaker's professional interests

“If someone told me then about the possibility of changing the wiring of my brain,..."

as that is something which has been around for quite a while. Some 30 years ago now my son had sound (not music) therapy to try and help the right and left sides of his brain work in synch rather than opposition. Perhaps its origins as alternative therapy have kept it off the academic radar? Although I believe some of those studying brain changes in dementia have become interested.

[cloughie]

Not a good heading to the article - I had to check what ‘coding’ meant! Maybe I need to get more IT savvy and get out less!

[ardcarp]

Article a bit loosely presented perhaps, but...

early music training could help children to develop stronger neural pathways

...I have no doubt of that, even if the word 'training' isn't flavour of the month. Quite apart from the nuts and bolts of music (notation, technique, etc) hearing music bypasses bits of the brain concerned with speech, vision, etc and goes straight to the soul (?) emotions (?)...can't think of a suitable word. Such a shame that class singing and the much loved BBC programme Singing Together disappeared long ago.

Going back to fashionable vocab, the dreaded word 'learning' now has to appear at least 20 times in any sort of discussion about schools. Education is more than just 'learning' in the sense that it's used, i.e. learning facts, reaching targets, being coded.....

The hippoampus is a fascinating part of the brain which is subject to neuroplasticity, i.e. not just making new pathways, but actually becoming larger the more it is used. It is though that spatial awareness, navigation, and the memorising of music...sometimes vast amounts....all rely on the hippocampus. It has been shown by brain-scans that 'the knowledge' of London taxi-drivers causes changes in this mysterious region.

[Serial_Apologist]

Teach them both. The music is a good foundation builder for other skills but that doesn't man those other skills shouldn't be taught.
I find this puzzling given the speaker's professional interests as that is something which has been around for quite a while. Some 30 years ago now my son had sound (not music) therapy to try and help the right and left sides of his brain work in synch rather than opposition. Perhaps its origins as alternative therapy have kept it off the academic radar? Although I believe some of those studying brain changes in dementia have become interested.

I don't think it has to do with music education, though music accesses that part of the brain that has more to do with intuition than reasoning. The problem arises from a dualistc way of thinking that posits reason and instinct as being in opposition, as you say. Long term, I would think that the emphasis on conceptually mediated religious teachings in our Judaeo-Christian traditions (Islam included), in comparison with older eastern spiritual traditions which put the stress on the intuitive, right side of the brain, and that same emphasis driving our Western philosophical inheritance, has also played a major part in all this. It was no accident that the cultural influence of Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism on the radicalised 1960s youth generation, placing the emphasis on wholism and inter-dependence, was not one which chimed with the oppositional, competitive model of humanity, which needed boulstering to ensure that future prosperity would be governed by capitalist rather than co-operative criteria. It had to be destroyed - even though the ecologically devastating consequences of maintaining the model and its ideology had been foreseen back in the 1960s by people such as Gregory Bateson, harking back not only to the ancient wisdoms of the East but also to the seers within our own tradition such as Blake.

It would not be long before the populist trashing of alternative lifestyles based on ideals of sustainability and anti-materialism by tabloid opinion-shapers was ditched in preference for admonishing the consumer generation for pricing themselves out of jobs. See, the endemic problem with capitalism is systemic, nothing finally to do with greed!

[oddoneout]

Not a good heading to the article - I had to check what ‘coding’ meant! Maybe I need to get more IT savvy and get out less!

The local library has been running coding for the under 5s sessions this half term, and it's been part of the primary and secondary curriculum since 2014 apparently. Wonder if it's having any effect yet on skills availability for business.*

* It would seem not https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56479304

[ardcarp]

though music accesses that part of the brain that has more to do with intuition than reasoning.

Isn't intuition quite important? And latter-day education (to GCSE level anyway) doesn't seem to set much store by reasoning. Cramming (which they call 'learning') seems to be the target-driven mode.

[Serial_Apologist]

Isn't intuition quite important? And latter-day education (to GCSE level anyway) doesn't seem to set much store by reasoning. Cramming (which they call 'learning') seems to be the target-driven mode.

I agree, absolutely!

[burning dog]

Isn't intuition quite important? And latter-day education (to GCSE level anyway) doesn't seem to set much store by reasoning. Cramming (which they call 'learning') seems to be the target-driven mode.

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”