There are a myriad of opinions surrounding the existence of music education in the public school system. Some people are all for it and frequently back it publicly, while others are vehemently against it, and will nearly stop at nothing to make sure it doesn’t use resources that could be allocated elsewhere (Richerme). This essay will aim to use credible and reputable sources, like peer-edited journals, credible periodicals, and other relevant media to answer the question, “Why/why isn’t music education good for public school students?”

To start with the most obvious, Juliet Hess, the Associate Professor of Music Education at Michigan State University, says in her article for the Music Educators Journal, titled “Equity in Music Education: Why Equity and Social Justice in Music Education?”, that an education in music helps to broaden the cultural horizons of students and introduce them to new concepts they may not yet be familiar with. Hess says in her article that 

According to Brazilian educator and author Paulo Freire, teaching is always, first and foremost, a political act. Selecting repertoire, learning goals, and the strategies we will use in teaching reflect our values as teachers, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences. We transmit these values through teaching, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. (Hess). 

She says that when teaching music, or anything for that matter, the things you select to teach, in the case of music, what repertoire, composers, or history, is important in a level more than that of just a student's’ musical improvement. Here, Hess hints at the fact that students can learn many things in addition to music, when they are given a quality education in music. She states that to help students learn, “we can shape a curriculum and a pedagogy that purposefully places classroom music alongside students’ own music, experiences, and interests.” (Hess). She says that by creating a curriculum that helps students see their own culture and themselves in their education, in this case, the music that they are learning about, they can learn more about their own culture, if they don’t know, or students not a part of that culture can learn the intricate details of that culture that are portrayed or demonstrated through its music. With this kind of education being given to students of public schools, the easiest place to get information to students, these students can expand their cultural horizons and learn about cultures they may not have had access to before. 

Hess also talks about using music education to help students realize their value of individuality and help their self-esteem. She states that “when we ask about and teach music that students care about deeply, we communicate that we value their experiences and their passions” (Hess). She says that when we teach the kind of music that students are interested in, they feel validated and they understand that their voices and opinions are important and relevant in places that are not necessarily exclusive to music. In this way students can easily learn that they are important to every facet of life, and it helps them understand that other people have opinions as much as they do, and that they are equally as important. 

In addition to helping students with cultural awareness and their own self-esteem, music education has been linked directly to general success in life. In an article published in the New York Times, Joanne Lipman, former editor of The Wall Street Journal and current editor-in-chief of the USA TODAY network, writes that “Condoleezza Rice trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard. Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?” (Lipman). By presenting these facts to her readers, Lipman sets up for a presentation of studies that show a correlation between music training and overall success in all fields. She says that if you “Look carefully and you'll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC's Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft's Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.” (Lipman). Lipman cites that many of the top executives of companies across many different fields have backgrounds in music, some of them have extensive backgrounds, even as far as taking classes at famous conservatories. Paul Allen, the chairman of the Seattle Seahawks, provides an answer to people asking why this correlation exists. He says that music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create”. What he means, in more descriptive words, is that learning how to play and understand music, and being able to do it well, builds the ability to make what you want, when you want, how you want it. That, with the confidence that comes with having a well-developed skill, gives these and any other musician another skill, which Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, describes very well. He says that musicians are able to “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses”. He says that musicians take the skills they learn in their music studies, and their performance practice, and can apply it to all facets of life, allowing them to have success wherever it is they wish to have it.

Lisa Richardson of the LA Times takes that concept and narrows it to look specifically at success in young students, typically between two and three years old. Richardson cites a study at UC Irvine that shows that piano lessons coupled with computer work done on puzzles and basic math problems greatly increases student’s academic success later down the line. She tells the reader that “

For the study, researchers worked with 135 second-grade students at 95th Street School in Los Angeles. Some children received four months of piano keyboard training and time playing with newly designed computer software. Those children scored 27% higher on proportional math and fractions tests than other students in the study. Also, students who took piano lessons but did not work on the computer scored better than students who were given computer training but not piano lessons (Richardson).

What Richardson aims to prove by citing this study is that it is clear that these piano lessons that the students are taking are greatly improving their success in the classroom. Richardson’s research into these student’s piano lessons reflects what Joanne Lipman found in her research into the music education of corporate executives, in the fact that Richardson also found that a music education increases the ability to recognize patterns and reinforces creativity, even in very young students, who may not know exactly what is going on at the time. A large portion of this academic success comes in mathematics, Richardson finds. The researchers at UC Irvine quote the music teachers as saying that it is impossible to teach music without teaching math. Richardson writes that “At the Junior Music Academy in Orange, teachers work with students on what they call music-math. Although unaware of the study at 95th Street School, Junior Music teachers do exercises almost identical to some of those that Shaw's researchers practiced with the school children.” (Richardson). The music training that students go through is very similar to normal basic mathematics, though it doesn’t necessarily feel like doing math, but the students gain the same skills, while most likely not even realizing what they are learning. 

Dr. Ken Petress analyzes a National Association for Music Education website in her research into why music education is beneficial for students. Petress writes that “The National Association for Music Education (NAMC) suggests in their Music Education Facts and Figures website' four categories of benefits of music education; these categories are: success in society, success in school, success in developing intelligence, and success in life.” (Petress). The NAMC provides a clear and obvious statement about their views on the benefits of music education, and provides the information and facts to prove it. The NAMC quotes Michael Greene, the president and CEO of the universally acclaimed Grammy Awards, as saying that"...scientific evidence proves that an education in the arts makes better math and science students, enhances spatial intelligence in newborns, ... and are a compelling solution to teen violence." (Petress). Michael Greene spends all of his time in both the professional world and in the music world, and has a certainly unique point from which he can view and comment on the happenings in the world of music education. The NAMC also cites a study from Auburn University that reports “significant increases in overall self-concept of at-risk children participating in arts programs that included music… as measured by the Piers-Harris Children’s Self Concept Scale.” (Petress). This particular study only helps to add to the idea that an education and dedicated study in music can only be good for a young student, and provide them with a certain stability of self that is difficult to otherwise provide. The organization also spoke to Doctor Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., the former leading heart surgeon out of The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. The NAMC quotes him as saying that “Studying music encourages self-discipline and diligence ... promotes self-expression, and provides self-gratification while giving pleasure to other” (Petress). This great doctor, clearly a successful man in his field, cites the power of music in contributing to the cultivation of skills required to achieve success in all areas of life, no matter the magnitude, be it minute or earth-shattering, even in young children. 

Mari Tervaniemi explores another approach to music education in her report for the book Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain. In her article, she explores the auditory learning process in young children. She found that “music learning was recently empirically shown to start already at the fetal stage. This was evidenced when pregnant mothers-to-be were committed to listen to researcher-selected auditory material during late pregnancy. The sounds were presented with loudspeakers so that they were audible also in the womb. After the babies were born, their sound-related brain responses were compared with the babies whose mothers had not listened to this material. Right after their birth and even at the age of four months, the babies brain responses reflected the existence or lack of music exposure (Partanen,Kujala,Tervaniemi, & Huotilainen, 2013)” (Tervaniemi). The ability to learn from music begins very very early in life, before a baby is even born. The research Tervaniemi studies concluded that the brain responses of the music-exposed babies were stronger than those of the babies who had not been exposed to music while still in the womb. In the same study, researchers used a different type of auditory stimulus along with music. During the study “linguistic material was used during the exposure and during the recording. It was found that pseudo word “tatata,” and its modifications with a pitch change resembling a prosodic change, evoked larger brain responses in the babies whose mothers had been listening to the sounds, whereas the brain responses to different kinds of pseudowords were indiscriminable in babies who had not been exposed prior to birth (Partanen, Kujala, Näätänen, et al., 2013).” (Termamiemi). Here, the researchers used these “pseudo words”, which are just sounds mashed together to form something that resembles a word, and had them played and/or read to the children while in the womb. In doing this, for some babies they added pitch changes to the different syllables in the pseudoword, and did not change pitches in others. The babies that heard the pitch changes showed even stronger brain readings than the babies that just heard the music, and the babies that heard the pseudo words showed no change in the strength of their brain readings. This part of their study shows that adding music to what seems like an average learning technique exponentially increases the value that the children get out of said exercise. Tervaniemi looked into the effects of music on a child’s brain development as well. She says that there is “now empirical evidence about the possibilities of music to enhance children’s neurocognitive development as well. The most robust effects are with regard to phonological skills which carry importance for learning to read (Degé & Schwarzer, 2011; Kraus et al., 2014; Slater et al., 2014): children involved in musical training have more sensitive encoding of the phonemic information when compared with their non-trained peers.” (Tervaniemi). The study she presents studied the development of the ability to read in children exposed to music and children not exposed to the music. They found that the children who were exposed to music and like things developed the ability to read and understand more difficult passages that the children that were not exposed to music during their development. The study also found that even general household activities can show the same boost in development. They found that “voluntary and self-initiated dancing, singing, and listening to music at home were associated with advanced attentional neural functions (Putkinen, Saarikivi, & Tervaniemi, 2013; Putkinen, Tervaniemi, Saarikivi, & Huotilainen, 2015). Although this original finding was obtained with toddlers with intact hearing abilities, these casual music activities were also highly beneficial in deaf-born children who learnt to hear after receiving a cochlear implant (an electric hearing aid; Torppa et al., 2014). In them, the frequency of music activities was positively associated with improved linguistic skills.” (Tervaniemi). The study shows just how easy it is for children to be exposed to a type of learning that is fun, and is proven to give them a developmental boost that may help them succeed in life.

In a TED Talk, published on YouTube on the TEDxTalk channel, Richard Gill describes the effects of music on a young student’s imagination. He describes the way that music stimulates the imagination of young children and helps them to focus. As an example, he uses nursery rhymes. He talks about how when adding a musical pattern to a student, one is introducing them to their first aural experience, in which they must listen, and through listening, they must repeat. This kind of listening requires focus, a focus that the children are likely not accustomed to. He tells the audience that this kind of learning keeps the children engaged, as they are likely to find it fun. This kind of focus is required in life to be successful.

Music Education has been proven to provide students with the abilities they need to succeed in life. Numerous studies have investigated how and why an education in music is so good for students, and while they may not have been able to figure out why it works, these researchers are only able to determine that it does work. In all the research I did, I found not one study that even suggested that music study was bad for students. Of all the thousands of studies out there about music education, there wasn’t one that said that music was detrimental. Basically, while it is not known why music study is good for students, it is proven that it absolutely is great for a young child’s development. 
