A 14 page research paper that examines recent scientific studies that indicate that music instruction can
significantly aid academic achievement. The writer discusses how the back-to-basics movement pushed art education in general into the background and then goes on to offer arguments that show that this action was to the detriment of the students. Some of the scientific research regarding the effect that music as on spatial-temporal reasoning, the so-called 'Mozart effect,' is truly amazing. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_Musimpor.doc
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
instruction from the public school curriculums. This article explores the current thinking toward musical education as well as the results of some fascinating empirical studies that demonstrate the effect that
listening to certain kinds of music, usually Mozart, can have on spatial-temporal reasoning. The Importance of Music Education at the Elementary Level ? January, 1999 Over the last
several decades, the public has become more and more concerned over the dismal performance of US students in math, reading, and science when compared to foreign students. Consequently, art education
has come under attack and public school music programs have been under virtually continuous pressure since the early 1970s (Undercofler, 1997). A number of factors contributed to this situation
and most of them possess at least some economic overtones. These factors have included a wide variety of elements. For instance, theres the publics rising expectations that the school would
take on a host of medical and social problems (Undercofler, 1997). There was pressure put on schools to include additional areas of study?without increasing the length of the school day
or year (Undercofler, 1997). Add to this a general unwillingness by the taxpayers to continue to support certain public services and it becomes easy to see how musical instruction became
a factor that fell through the cracks in the local school budget. Art, and specifically music education, came to be viewed as a "frill," an attractive extra that it
would be nice to throw into a standard curriculum, but certainly shouldnt take precedence over more important subjects such as reading and math. This sort of back-to-basics thinking inevitably left
out music education as a subject that should be included in standard curriculums. Nevertheless, there are those in the educational community and the public in general who would argue that