Articles
It’s true, music makes you smarter
Toronto Star, Sept 2006
Penny-wise and pound foolish. Google the quote’s origins and you’ll find that famous author, Anonymous, cited as the originator, along with at least two countries named as its birthplace: some sites say it’s an English proverb, others insist it’s French.
Whatever its provenance, the pithy truism has stood the test of time and the message is always the same: failing to spend enough money on a good product can end up costing you much more in the long run.
The message was driven home again this week when The Telegram reported the findings of a McMaster University study on the value of music to the developing brain.
According to the study of 12 young brains - carried out courtesy of both imaging machinery such as CAT scans and memory tests given to the subjects - music lessons make you smarter. More specifically kids who took music lessons for a year scored higher on memory tests than kids who didn’t.
That’s hardly news to many people, who’ve no doubt heard of studies that draw the connection between music and academic ability.
But the McMaster study is one of the first to compare brain images to music and non-music students, taken before and after exposure to music lessons. And those images show distinct changes in the area of the brain involved in memory.
Ontario paying a price for cutting specialized music teachers in schools
“What the musical training is doing - and it’s probably doing many things - is training the attentional system,” says Laurel Trainor; a professor of psychology; neuroscience and behaviour at McMaster. She’s also director of the school’s Institute for Music and the Mind.
Her conclusion? Music is not only important because it’s fun, but “it’s a benefit for cognitive development. So I definitely think it should be a core part of the preschool and school curriculum.”
Which brings us back to penny-wise, pound foolish. Back in the penny-wise 1990s of Mike Harris’s Ontario, the province reduced spending on countless programs, including school music. The cuts went so deep that boards were forced to do away with specialized music teachers.
The obvious result is a degraded music system that stumbles along without dedicated teachers who have training in music. The less obvious result, if the McMaster study has any merit, are school programs that produce less intelligent students.
What kind of price does society pay for that sort of bargain?
Fortunately, the situation is better in this province, where music has more often been seen as an investment, rather than a cost. Nice to know science is proving us right.
This is an edited version of an editorial in Wednesday’s St. John’s Telegram.
MUSIC TO YOUR EARS (& BRAIN)
Tonic June 2011
Practicing piano may have sucked when you were a kid, but it might pay off later on in life. A recent study in the April issue of Neuropsychology found that people between the ages of 60 to 83-years-old who had played instruments for more than 10 years scored better on cognitive tests than those who had played for under 10 years, and markedly better than those with no musical training at all. This has been attributed to how music and musical training can affect the brain, especially at younger ages.
THE MID-LIFE CRISIS OF PIANO LESSONS
Out of the depths of childhood, “I should never have quit...” haunts the middle years
by Brian Pastoor
Notes Magazine
Reprinted from Education Forum with permission of the author. Mr. Pastoor is a former piano teacher who now teaches English at a Toronto school.
The glamour of Childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the floor of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
I get misty thinking about it. Every Thursday after school, mom would drop me off at the conservatory. For half an hour my teacher would attempt to bridge that awful gap between me and Chopin. Poco a poco my disconcerted sonatas improved and, having been inspired by my teacherʼs flawless renditions, I practised them as soon as I got home - for about five minutes - before playing an AM radio song by ear (probably Meatloaf or Supertramp).
Halfway through high school I quit lessons and became the piano teacher. And then it was my rendition of Leila Fletcher or the Royal Conservatory piece that produced a look of wonder from my student, and an omniscient smile from the parent.
Later at university I began to wonder how my life would be different if Thursday night was still piano night instead of pub night. This feeling continued after graduation, and has been ever- present during these last five years of teaching high school. And I know Iʼm not alone among teachers in this feeling of regret. The time constraints, of course, are all valid: teachers are constantly giving, but will there ever be time for the selfish luxury of being the piano student again?
I posed this personal question to many colleagues, teachers from Caledon, Cayuga, Niagara Falls and Kirkland Lake, who had managed in different ways to make time for music. In their responses there were four points that I found noteworthy (okay, pun intended) - and they just might help sway your own decision to return to the bench.
Sanity Simply stated, taking piano lessons is different from any other educational job. My wife regularly notices how colleagues at staff parties talk mostly about teaching. All that conversation about the IPRCʼd, ESL student with ADD can be alienating. Virtually every article on stress in educational press publications advises getting a hobby, something that is removed from the classroom and the resume. The benefits are real. One colleague described the energy, the “real high” he now feels at the piano since starting lessons at age 51. Learning jazz chords in a disciplined environment provided by his teacher is fun, creative and achievable - three things that are certainly important for his sanity after almost three decades of teaching avoir etre.
Self-confidence We donʼt always see tangible rewards for our efforts in the classroom, but the sense of accomplishment and personal gratification from memorizing, perfecting or improvising on the piano is immediate. “Iʼm a fuller person, a happier person,” one colleague told me.
Solitude Maya Angelou once wrote, “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness” (Gather Together in My Name, 1974). One colleague responded, “after a five-period day with 130 students, I can go for some loneliness.” I think that the importance of having the piano or another instrument to provide a personal sense of sanctuary is really understood.
Student paradigm Taking piano lessons puts us back in the students shoes. Being assigned a new song along with having to practise two or three others that will make the piano teacher squirm in his or her seat is like homework. And, “It goes a long way into helping us understand the plight of a teenager who canʼt quite understand factoring or physics formulae,” one colleague said. Moreover, another teacher mentioned of his student: “They like the idea that Iʼm learning. Theyʼre impressed that their teacher is taking music lessons like them, so it makes me more human.”
It should be mentioned that at mid-life youʼre too young to take up golf, too old to rush the net. It follows that itʼs not easy to restart or begin piano lessons at the age of 45 or 50. “Moonlight Sonata,” like those who really want to play but have doubts, author Catherine Drinker Bowenʼs words from Friends and Fiddlers (1934) might be for you, “I know what these people want; they want music, not by the ticketful, the purseful, but music as it should be had, music at home, a part of daily life, a thing as necessary, as satisfying as the midday meal. They want to play. And they are kept back by the absurd, the mistaken, the wicked notion that in order to play an instrument one must be possessed by that bogey Talent.”
Jazz great Charlie Parker said that “music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.” Music is clearly one way of turning the myth of the inner life outside the classroom into reality. Itʼs something that many of us overworked and under-recognized “front-line service providers” would perhaps do well to make time for music even if we are at the age when the board mind and the narrow wait are beginning to switch places.