Music And The Arts Should Not Be Cut From Schools

Keeping a “Sharp” Mind

Music and the arts should not be cut from schools because of the academic benefits they provide for students. These benefits include boosting IQ's and hand eye coordination, along with many other real life skills. Over the past eight years, 80% of schools have given cuts to the funding of their music and arts programs or removed them from the schools’ curriculum completely. Does cutting the fine arts from school really benefit the students, or does it harm their education? There are both advantages and disadvantages of having the extra arts classes, but does one outweigh the other? Fine arts programs provide students with social and academic advantages, and by cutting fine arts programs, students are potentially deprived

Most people can’t pick up an instrument and play it flawlessly, let alone play a proper note, on their first try. However, by playing an instrument you gain not only musical skills, but “real life” skills. When it comes to school, students who participated in the arts had improved in verbal memory along with auditory and audiovisual processing of speech (Schneider & Klotz, 10-11). With an improvement in memory, students can learn more and have those ideas stick with them. There have also been improvements in the different types of learning: kinesthetic, auditory and visual. With this development in understanding how humans learn, children can discover which of these styles works best to their benefit (Kraus, 2). Music also works in other specific areas of education. As stated earlier, music has a direct link to math and language arts. Every single note is worth a beat, or part of a beat, and each measure can only have a certain number of beats (Schellenberg, 2). While reading music, the musician is dividing and subdividing all of these notes. Some may not realize it, but they are constantly doing math problems in their head to make sure they are playing the right rhythm. Music especially makes us more familiar with our own and other languages (Schellenberg, 2). For example, the terms used to describe elements and descriptions of music are based on the Italian language. For example, the word accelerando,

When playing an instrument it doesn't make just one part of the brain active, the whole brain is put to work (Kraus, 1). There are four major parts of the brain: the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the limbic system and the brainstem. In the cerebrum, there are four different sections. In the auditory cortex frequencies and information in music like volume, pitch, speed, melody and rhythm are analyzed. The inferior frontal gyrus is in charge of memory, which helps musicians remember the fingerings and positions of their instruments. Another section of the cerebrum is the dorsolateral frontal cortex, which produces images that are associated with the sound, and visualizes the music. The motor cortex is the final part of the cerebrum and controls movement. The cerebellum is the part of the brain that provides sight, the limbic system is what makes us react to music emotionally, and the brainstem is what controls breathing. By using the brainstem, an instrumentalist can sustain each breath over a long period of time and have breath support with each inhale (Gardner, 5) . Every single part of the brain is working when music is being produced. In the picture shown above, high brain activity is shown with red and yellow (Krause, 4). When exposed to music, the brain lights up with red and yellow contrary to a brain at rest. Over time, changes to the brain and its activities can be seen. An experiment conducted