How early are we exposed to music and how our music education is structured, are issues that have lifelong repercussions for our capacity to learn and adapt to a changing world.
Dr Gary McPherson, course coordinator for Music Education at the University of New South Wales in Sydney is one year into his land-breaking study of the musical development of 150 NSW primary school children.
Funded by the Australian Research Council, the study charts the progress and skills children acquire during their first three years of music instruction.
The research is being conducted in collaboration with Dr Jane Davidson from the University of Sheffield, with the two planning to write a book that describes the environmental and personal factors that shape musical ability.
Emerging from the research is the answer to the vexing question of just why some learners persist with music into adulthood, while others simply give up. Exposure of the child to music at an early age, McPherson believes, works in symbiosis with the brain’s natural development and triggers growth in intelligence.
In order to interpret and make music, you are using a variety of ways of processing information, McPherson says.
Working musically, such as listening to or thinking about music, singing, playing an instrument or even moving to music involves auditory, visual, cognitive, affective and motor skills that rely on cerebral structures of the type that we believe may have positive benefits for other areas of learning.
McPherson quotes from a US study that followed a group of young violinists and found a strong relationship between the age a child began learning to play an instrument and the magnitude of the neuronal activity.
The earlier a child started playing an instrument, the greater the effect.
The study, says McPherson, gives an insight into the opportunities for using music to stimulate learning when the human brain is in its most profound development phase.
The brain’s greatest development spurt draws to a close around the age of 10, when it starts to destroy its weakest synapses, and preserves only those that have been magically transformed by experience.
If a child has not received quality musical experiences before this age, his or her potential in music and other areas of learning as well, may be seriously eroded for the rest of their life.
In another US study, psychologist Frances Rauscher and neuro-scientist Gordon Shaw tested preschool children who were given weekly keyboard instruction and daily singing lessons.
The researchers found the test group had significantly increased their spatial reasoning abilities. Compared with a carefully matched control group the children who received structured musical training were found to have improved their spatial reasoning by an average of 46 per cent. Those children in the control group who did not receive musical instruction improved by an average of six per cent, less than that expected by chance.
Since spatial reasoning- the ability to mentally visualise shapes, objects or ideas and their relationship is essential to carrying out mental tasks in maths and science, the study is a strong indicator that the benefits of a musical education at a crucial age affects all areas of learning.
Seeing the child’s overall creative, intellectual, social and affective development as anchored in quality musical training, McPherson, in his capacity as national president of the Australian Music Education, hopes the present study will lead to improvements in music teacher training and classroom teaching.
The essential qualities for the first teacher is one who makes lessons fun. Personal warmth is a vital characteristic of a teacher during the initial stages of development. They can communicate well with the child, and they show their love for music in everything they do and their liking for their child.
Inculcating the child from the outset with the notion that music is an adventure, to be played and experimented with, is essential for interest to continue, says McPherson. ” My research shows that one of the most important reasons kids don’t continue with their music into adulthood is that they don’t have the skills necessary for continued success “, he said.
McPherson’s advice for parents is that a musical background isn’t a prerequisite for encouraging their children to play. But they do have to be supportive and interested, occasionally sitting with their child while they practice, complimenting them on their progress, encouraging them to perform for members of the family. Let them feel important and that learning to play is something special.
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