Music and cognition

When educational budgets are cut -- which they are, every year -- inevitably what is hit the hardest are programs for the arts, music, theater, and other electives.

This is ridiculous, and I say that as someone who spent thirty-two years teaching science, a so-called "core" subject.  And I don't mean to criticize the importance of having a good "core" education; we all need to be able to read and write, do mathematics, understand the history of humanity, and have a basic and broad grasp of scientific principles.

But that's not the be-all-end-all of education, or at least it shouldn't be.  I mean, consider not what gets you a job, what allows you to do mundane chores like balancing your checkbook, but what actually brings joy to your life.  What are your hobbies, things you spend your spare time doing, things you'd spend much more time doing if you had the leisure?  My guess is very few of us fill our free time doing chemistry experiments, even admitted science nerds like me.  No, we paint, sculpt, garden, play an instrument, sing in the choir, play or watch sports (or both), cook elaborate meals, write stories.  And while those do take a basic 3-Rs education -- I wouldn't be much of a fiction writer if I had a lousy vocabulary or didn't know how to write grammatically -- for many of us, our real fascinations were discovered in the classes that go under throwaway names like "electives" and "specials" and "optional courses."

So cutting these subjects is, for many students, taking away the one thing about school that makes it tolerable, and robbing them of the opportunity to find hidden talents and undiscovered passions that will bring them joy for a lifetime.

But a study has shown that it's more than that.  Research by Katherine Sledge Moore and Pinar Gupse Oguz of Arcadia University, and Jim Meyer of Elmhurst College, has found that music education correlates strongly with the development of flexible intelligence -- and that those gains translate across disciplines.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jacob Garcia from Reus, Spain, The Cello Player, CC BY 2.0]

In "Superior Fluid Cognition in Trained Musicians," published in the journal Psychology of Music, the researchers found that the degree of experience a person has in playing music (or singing), the higher they score on a variety of metrics -- episodic memory, working memory, attention, executive function, and processing speed.

It's hardly surprising when you think about it.  As the researchers put it, fluid intelligence skills "are highlighted in musical training," which involves "quickly comprehending a complex symbolic system, multitasking, reasoning, and more."  I can say from personal experience that performing music -- not just playing it at home for your own entertainment -- takes those skills up an additional notch.  I was a performing musician for years, playing flute in a Celtic dance band called Crooked Sixpence.  Being up on stage requires that you think on your feet, and often make lightning-fast alterations to what you're doing.  As an example, most of what my band played were medleys of three or four tunes, and we almost never planned ahead how many times we were going to play any one of them (nor who'd be playing melody and who'd be playing harmony).  Our fiddler, who was more-or-less in charge of the band, just gave me a wiggle of the eyebrow if she wanted me to take a solo, and said "hep!" if we were switching tunes.  Sometimes the inevitable happened -- the fiddler and I both jumped to harmony at the same time, or something -- but almost always, one of us recognized it in under two seconds and slipped right back into playing melody.  Despite the complexity of what we did, the times we had a real crash-and-burn on stage were very few and far between.

So this study is spot-on.  And its conclusions are further evidence that we should be expanding arts and electives programs, not cutting them.

Not, honestly, that I expect it will have an effect.  Sorry to end on a pessimistic note, but the educational establishment has a long track record of completely ignoring research on developmental psychology in favor of "we've always done it this way."  The most egregious example is our determination to start foreign language instruction in seventh or eighth grade, when we've known for years that our brain's plasticity with respect to learning new languages peaks around age three or four, and declines steadily thereafter.

Or, as one of my students put it, "So we start teaching kids languages at the point they start to suck at it."

A close second is that researchers have been saying for years -- with piles of evidence to support them -- that children need recess or some other unstructured play time in order to improve overall behavior and attitudes about being in school.  Not only that, but recess time correlates with better scores on tests, so like music, it's an investment that pays off across the board.  Nevertheless, schools across the country have been gradually reducing unstructured leisure time, in some places to twenty minutes or less per week, in favor of devoting more time to preparing for standardized tests.

Now there's a way to make kids look forward to going to school in the morning.

I'd like to think that this research will influence educational establishments and (especially) budgetary decisions, but I'm not holding my breath.  Any change on that count is likely to be very slow to come.  But still, every piece of evidence counts.  And anything we can do to foster the development of fluid intelligence, positive attitudes, and confidence in children is movement in the right direction.

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Music and cognition

When educational budgets are cut -- which they are, every year -- inevitably what is hit the hardest are programs for the arts, music, theater, and other electives.

This is ridiculous, and I say that as someone who is in his 32nd year of teaching science, a so-called "core" subject.  And I don't mean to criticize the importance of having a good "core" education; we all need to be able to read and write, do mathematics, understand the history of humanity, and have a basic and broad grasp of scientific principles.

But that's not the be-all-end-all of education, or at least it shouldn't be.  I mean, consider not what gets you a job, what allows you to do mundane chores like balancing your checkbook, but what actually brings joy to your life.  What are your hobbies, things you spend your spare time doing, things you'd spend much more time doing if you had the leisure?  My guess is very few of us fill our free time doing chemistry experiments, even admitted science nerds like me.  No, we paint, sculpt, garden, play an instrument, sing in the choir, play or watch sports (or both), cook elaborate meals, write stories.  And while those do take a basic 3-Rs education -- I wouldn't be much of a fiction writer if I had a lousy vocabulary or didn't know how to write grammatically -- for many of us, our real fascinations were discovered in the classes that go under throwaway names like "electives" and "specials" and "optional courses."

So cutting these subjects is, for many students, taking away the one thing about school that makes it tolerable, and robbing them of the opportunity to find hidden talents and undiscovered passions that will bring them joy for a lifetime.

But a recent study has shown that it's more than that.  Research by Katherine Sledge Moore and Pinar Gupse Oguz of Arcadia University, and Jim Meyer of Elmhurst College, has found that music education correlates strongly with the development of flexible intelligence -- and that those gains translate across disciplines.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jacob Garcia from Reus, Spain, The Cello Player, CC BY 2.0]

In "Superior Fluid Cognition in Trained Musicians," published two weeks ago in Psychology of Music, the researchers found that the degree of experience a person has in playing music (or singing), the higher they score on a variety of metrics -- episodic memory, working memory, attention, executive function, and processing speed.

It's hardly surprising when you think about it.  As the researchers put it, fluid intelligence skills "are highlighted in musical training," which involves "quickly comprehending a complex symbolic system, multitasking, reasoning, and more."  I can say from personal experience that performing music -- not just playing it at home for your own entertainment -- takes those skills up an additional notch.  I have been a performing musician for years.  (If you're curious, I play flute in a Celtic dance band called Crooked Sixpence.)  Being up on stage requires that you think on your feet, and often make lightning-fast alterations to what you're doing.  As an example, most of what my band plays are medleys of three or four tunes, and we almost never plan ahead how many times we're going to play any one of them (nor who'll be playing melody and who'll be playing harmony).  Our fiddler, who is more-or-less in charge of the band, just gives me a wiggle of the eyebrow if she wants me to take a solo, and says "hep!" if we're switching tunes.  Sometimes the inevitable happens -- the fiddler and I will both jump to harmony at the same time, or something -- but almost always, one of us will recognize it in under two seconds and slip right back into playing melody.  Despite the complexity of what we do, the times we have a real crash-and-burn on stage are very few and far between.

So this study is spot-on.  And its conclusions are further evidence that we should be expanding arts and electives programs, not cutting them.

Not, honestly, that I expect it will have an effect.  Sorry to end on a pessimistic note, but the educational establishment has a long track record of completely ignoring research on developmental psychology in favor of "we've always done it this way."  The most egregious example is our determination to start foreign language instruction in 7th or 8th grade, when we've known for years that our brain's plasticity with respect to learning new languages peaks around age three or four, and declines steadily thereafter.

Or, as one of my students put it, "So we start teaching kids languages at the point they start to suck at it."

A close second is that researchers have been saying for years -- with piles of evidence to support them -- that children need recess or some other unstructured play time in order to improve overall behavior and attitudes about being in school.  Not only that, but recess time correlates with better scores on tests, so like music, it's an investment that pays off across the board.  Nevertheless, schools across the country have been gradually reducing unstructured leisure time, in some places to twenty minutes or less per week, in favor of devoting more time to preparing for standardized tests.

Now there's a way to make kids look forward to going to school in the morning.

I'd like to think that this new research will influence educational establishments and (especially) budgetary decisions, but I'm not holding my breath.  Any change on that count is likely to be very slow to come.  But still, every piece of evidence counts.  And anything we can do to foster the development of fluid intelligence, positive attitudes, and confidence in children is movement in the right direction.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker.  This book is, in my opinion, the most lucid and readable exposition of the evolutionary model ever written, and along the way takes down the arguments for Intelligent Design a piece at a time.  I realize Dawkins is a controversial figure, given his no-quarter-given approach to religious claims, but even if you don't accept the scientific model yourself, you owe it to yourself to see what the evolutionary biologists are actually saying.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Fiddling while the education system burns

It's late February, and if you're a teacher, you know what that means:

Time to start worrying if you'll have a job next year.

In my own school district, we're just starting to see the proposed cuts being announced.  And while out of respect to my friends and colleagues whose jobs are on the line I won't give any details about what's come out thus far, I will say: it ain't gonna be pretty.

The problem is, it hasn't been pretty for years.  This is the seventh year in a row that my little upstate New York school district has had major staffing cuts.  We've seen classes dropped, curriculum lost.  Veteran teachers are being reduced to half-time, are teaching in two different buildings, are teaching four and five different subjects, are teaching classrooms in which every available seat is occupied.  Other, less fortunate individuals have simply been axed.  And every year we're told that the administration is really, really sorry about all of this, that they and the School Board and the Board of Regents and the State Department of Education have the students' interest in mind and are doing their level best to Keep Excellence in Education.

When are we, as a nation, going to wake up and point this out as the falsehood it is?

Oh, it's not that any of them are setting out to harm children; but if that's the ultimate outcome, does that really matter?  Shouldn't someone who is responsible for the oversight of education recognize this, and have the balls to point it out?  And, perhaps, do something about it?  But no; we're stuck with the same antiquated system of school funding, that places a stranglehold on poor and rural schools, that puts local school boards in the Hobson's choice of either raising property taxes or else cutting school staffing to the bone.

And school boards are elected positions, and the votes come from residents, who pay property taxes.  Guess how the decision almost always plays out?

The problem is that this kind of thinking -- today's dollar, today's tax increase, today's elementary school student -- ignores the fact that schools represent an investment in the future.  We don't know yet which third-grader is going to be the next Krishna Shenoy, finding a way to give quadriplegics the ability to walk again.  Which will be a Jocelyn Brown, who developed a device to help infants with compromised respiratory systems to breathe.  Who could be a Paige Cramer, who discovered that an old cancer drug could be used to ameliorate the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's.

And we're going to need the Shenoys, the Browns, the Cramers.  As a society -- and, perhaps, as a species -- we will face in the next couple of decades some of the most significant challenges we have ever seen.  Type-2 diabetes is rising so fast worldwide that doctors are calling it an "epidemic."  The effects of anthropogenic climate change are being felt across the globe.  (And sorry, deniers; it is happening, and it is anthropogenic.  The US National Academy of Sciences and the UK Royal Society issued a joint paper just yesterday that was unequivocal.  Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said, "We have enough evidence to warrant action being taken on climate change; it is now time for the public debate to move forward to discuss what we can do to limit the impact on our lives and those of future generations.")  Supplies of fresh water and clean air are imperiled; we are using fossil fuels and other resources at a rate that is unsustainable.

And what are our politicians focusing on?  Here in the US, state legislators are monkeying around with bills in twelve states that are versions of the "Turn Away the Gays" bill that was just vetoed in Arizona.  Think about it; our elected officials think that reenacting the Jim Crow laws is a higher priority than assuring that our children receive a solid education. 

This is worse than fiddling while Rome burns.  This is having a Ku Klux Klan meeting while Rome burns.

The problem is, much of the benefit from education is (1) unquantifiable, and (2) realized only in the future.  So, to our legislators, and (unfortunately) to many voters, it doesn't exist.  If you can't show that the damage being done here and now by funding cuts to schools is causing a drop in the Almighty Standardized Test Scores, then we must be doing just fine.  Never mind the larger class sizes; never mind the loss of electives, music, and the arts.  Never mind the demoralized teachers who are right now reconsidering their choice of a career.  Never mind the students who, if you don't afford them the opportunity for learning and expanding their horizons, will never accomplish what they could have accomplished, for their own good and for the good of humanity.

[image from a ca. 1899 postcard, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

For some, that's not an immediate enough problem to warrant doing anything about it.  Easier to keep doing what we've always done, figuring that we'll find our way forward somehow.  But remember; like canoes, societies have tipping points.  They don't often flip as spectacularly as canoes do, which means that we can pass the point of no return without being aware of it.  The signs of an incipient crash are already here; failing inner-city schools, poor rural school districts that are merging in order to survive or else going bankrupt, overcrowded classrooms with nothing to offer but the bare-bones graduation requirements.  We have to ask, as a society, if we are willing to accept this -- seeing a whole generation growing up without the skills, knowledge, enrichment, creativity, and critical thinking ability that will be needed to lead us forward.

If the answer is no, and yet we fail to act, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.