Music and Learning

Childhood is a thrilling, amusing and challenging period of a child’s life. In fact, every new experience is a chance for a child to learn and grow. Plus, it is the most critical time to form the physical, mental and emotional foundations that will support the child for the rest of his or her life. As parents, sisters, brothers and beloved ones, we should give our children the tools to build a successful life. Therefore, what we must answer is whether music should be placed in education or not, and what effect it has on a child’s life. Actually, music’s place in American schools is still uncertain. On one hand, the “essentialists” dispute that music should only be learned for its own sake; whereas on the other hand, the “instrumentalist” emphasize the fact that music is not placed in a vacuum but it is rather a tool to learn fundamental concepts and has external benefits. Although, music is not taught in inclusion from a child’s education at school (math classes, languages, etc…) many researches argue that music is an important tool for a child’s cognitive development and skills in learning.
The Media, scholars and psychologists gave a lot of attention to the idea that music can make children “smarter”. In fact, a research was made in the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada by E. Glenn Schellenberg in 2003, which showed that music can cause an increase in a child’s IQ. The question is: how can we explain the correlation between music and the boost in one’s IQ? As far as we know, a simple attendance to class and the procedure of learning the school’s instruction affects well enough a child’s performance. However, this research has shown that music not only boots one’s IQ but it helps improve a wide range of abilities and skills. To be more specific, the study led by Dr. Schellenberg inspected the effect of extracurricular activities on the intellectual and social development of children around the age of six. The experiment involved 144 children...