The young mind can be positively impacted by the more in-depth education of music at a young age. I’m sure you all had the halfhearted music class in elementary school where you “played” the recorder and maybe learned a little sheet music but let’s be honest that just isn’t enough. Research shows that music isn’t just fun for the kids, but it also promotes brain development as well as improves skills in other subjects. In a study performed in 1975 by Dr. Herwitz he gave two groups of children the same standardized test with all the children being of nearly the same age and IQ. The only difference in the two groups is the second group was put through a general music ed class prior to taking the test. The first group scored in the 77th percentile while the group put in the music ed class scored significantly higher averaging in the 88th percentile. Studies have also shown that children involved in music such as Band, Orchestra, or Choir have a much lower truancy rate throughout middle and high school. To continue students at university that are involved in music have a much higher retention and graduation rate as compared to other students. A link between musical ability and literary reading ability has also been found that young children that can better differentiate between sound pitches also have greater phonemic awareness which means they are better able tell if a word begins and ends with the same sound. It is also known that playing some instruments like keyboard violin and some woodwind instruments significantly improve the fine motor function of children who play them. Even education in music can help facilitate a child’s intellectual development throughout their school years and into young adulthood. In another study performed by Dr. Rauscher (1997) had preschool aged children receive keyboard training and before and after each lesson take a spatial-reasoning test to measure the child’s reasoning skills. The tests showed that children who received lessons in keyboarding had significant improvement in this test just in three weeks of the lessons while the control group showed little to no improvement when given the same test. So not only because music is a fun activity for any kid to participate in, it is also very important to their development and can help them do well in school and keep skills that will help them all throughout their life. 
WeinbergerI, Norman M. “The Music in Our Minds.” Association for Supervision and Curriculum Developments, 1998, http://www.ascd.org.
Austin Broughton
Ms. Harner's EN100 Blog 