Music instruction no frill

For San Diego's North County Times

When my high school basketball coach wasn't putting us through our paces on the court, he was in the classroom teaching math to 10th-graders. He told those struggling with algebra the brain was a muscle that needed exercise. That didn't persuade those of us who thought of our brains as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge and reasoned that some students had larger containers than others. And if our brains are muscles, we asked, couldn't they be exercised in less boring ways?

Today's California teachers can tell their students they need to master math so they can solve those eighth-grade algebra problems on the high school exit exam. They can appeal to their school spirit by explaining how low test scores categorize schools as losers.

Math and English are understandably the two untouchable subject areas when it comes to budget cuts. The most vulnerable are the arts, for which student proficiency goes unmeasured, and schools neglecting them go unpunished.

The latest example of our academic pecking order can be found in the Vista school district's plan to eliminate music education for 10,000 students in the district's 16 elementary schools next year. The seven music teachers facing layoffs have added fundraising to their teaching duties to try to raise the $400,000 required to keep the program alive.

The teachers have been praised on this newspaper's editorial page for seeking private funding ("Teachers who don't wait," Nov. 23), acknowledging the merits of music education, but tacitly relegating it to an academic frill by not questioning the need to depend on the generosity of individual donors to save it.

It's hard to imagine English and math teachers having to go hat in hand to save their jobs. But a recent report on brain research by Northwestern University neuroscientist Nina Kraus ("Music Training Helps Learning and Memory," Psychology Today, William Klemm, July 31, 2010) shows music instruction may be equally as important in a child's education.

Kraus's study focused on the ability of the brain to change chemically and physically as the result of learning experiences. Music training, her research shows, can improve learning skills, language learning and listening ability. It's akin to physical exercise for body fitness, toning the brain for auditory fitness. In other words, there's evidence music education could help students improve their test scores in math and English.

Depriving economically disadvantaged kids of music in school is especially troubling. Sixty-one percent of Vista's elementary school students are from low-income families qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches. The Northwestern study suggests they will face one more obstacle to their success in school next fall if the music teachers' fundraising campaign fails.