The Effects of Music Instruction: Separating Hopes, Dreams and Reality      

By William V. May 
Associate Dean, University of North Texas College of Music Denton, Texas  

In our zeal to promote music, the art and the school program that we love so very much, we music advocates often have made unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of music instruction. We have translated our somewhat biased views, including our greatest hopes and dreams for our students, into noble interpretations of experience that may or may not be the whole truth.

Yet another reminder of this dilemma came in a somewhat uncomplimentary Texas Monthly magazine article by Carol Flake about Texas high school marching bands entitled "Time Marches On." It was one of those typical human-interest articles filled with part truth, part nostalgia, part fiction all mixed together. The article was interesting until it began to poke tongue-in-cheek fun at some of our claims regarding the effects of music instruction in the schools. After my initial distress, I was reminded once again that we must be very careful in what we claim music instruction will or will not do. Years ago, music educators proclaimed that "a boy who blows a horn won't blow a safe." Flake quoted us, likely incorrectly, as claiming that if one listens to Mozart instead of Pearl Jam just before a test, one's score will be higher. Neither of these claims is based on fact and merely opens us to mistrust, at best, and, at worst, to ridicule.

What then can we claim? Here are a few ideas, some supported by research, others by logic, which may be useful to you.

• Our business community keeps reminding us that they want individuals who are good at problem solving, higher-order thinking, risk-taking, teamwork, discipline, and creativity. These are constituent parts of fine arts instruction--parts that can easily be confirmed and explained to taxpayers.

• Music instruction has been causally linked to improved performance in reading, reading comprehension, and language developments.

• Arts instruction has been related to higher achievement in reading; mathematics; general academic achievement; verbal, perceptual, and spatial mental abilities; ability to use and manipulate symbols; conflict-resolution skills; and, very importantly, positive self-esteem.

• Abstract concepts, like those in math, become concrete in the music classroom, and, likewise, concrete ideas can be transformed into abstractions.

• The arts help retain students in school and so improve graduation rates. Some children have cited arts participation as their primary reason for coming to school each day. That might not be the best motive, but if it gets the child to school, I, for one, will accept it.

• Arts teach that not all problems have single, correct answers. Solutions to problems can take many forms. Some classes cannot include this notion. Creativity in spelling class, for example, is not a virtue, but it is a virtue in the arts class.

• Students in the arts learn how to work cooperatively toward shared goals. This leads to more positive relationships among students from diverse ethnic and social groups.

• Indifference to the refinement of perception and inattention to the development of imagination limit a child's mental growth. One will find no indifference to these issues in the arts classroom.

• Music instruction is not a panacea for all educational problems, however. For example, our old "won't blow a safe" adage is not founded in fact. In studying moral development and identity formation, researchers have determined that participation in music ensemble classes has no effect. And, the finding of the much-quoted "Mozart effect on IQ" has been retracted due to the inability to replicate results. Interestingly, the more controlled replication studies have not attracted the interest of the popular press.

 The list is a lengthy one, and strangely not everyone views this list as positive. Some may even fear the arts. Fear the arts? Yes. It is easy to regulate what a course centered on a particular textbook is teaching the children. It is far harder to keep control of what students are learning in a course that gives them the freedom to range across disciplines and to arrive at a variety of solutions to problems they may have set for themselves. Yet those are precisely the kinds of tasks that define the daily lives of most adults in a free society. And, those are the skills and the risks of the arts class.

As was noted in Texas Monthly, with comparatively high music budgets in some schools and, at the secondary level, relatively low student participation rates, music programs continue to be called into question regarding their value. As a result, music education's public image is very important to us. Let's be very careful that we do not stretch the truth in our attempts to close this public image gap. The truth actually is better than fiction anyway.

1  Flake, Carol. "Time Marches On," Texas Monthly, December 1995.

3  See Hanna, J., Connections: Arts, academics, and productive citizens, Phi Delta Kappan, April 1992, 73, 8, 601-607; Gardiner, M., Fox, A., Knowles, F., and Jeffrey, D. Learning improved by arts training, Nature, 1996, 381 (n6), 284; Gates, A., Extra-musical benefits of music education: Preliminary investigation, Research report to the Australia-Japan Foundation, April, 1980; Growing Up Complete, the report of the National Commission on Music Education, Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, March, 1991; Trusty, J. and Oliva, G. The effects of arts and music education on students' self-concept, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 1994, 13, No. 1, 23-28; Wolff, K., The nonmusical outcomes of music education: A review of the literature, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 1978, No. 55, 1-27;.

4  Crain, R., Mahard, R., and Narot R. Making Desegregation Work: How Schools Create Social Climates, Cambridge, MA: Balinger, 1982,188-189.

5  Manners, P. and Smart, D. Moral development and identity formation in high school juniors: The effects of participation in extracurricular activities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 1995.

© 2005 TMEA
Updated: 12/16/05