The Importance of a Music Education Essay

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Plato, a famous Greek philosopher, once stated, “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.” Often times, humans can be seen possessing the inner desire to achieve greatness through hard work and dedication to an ideal. Some aspire to accomplish simple everyday goals, such as getting up in time for work. Whatever the case may be, teens often try to find ways to achieve social and academic “checkpoints” so that their future seems heartier. Over the years, studies have been conducted regarding whether or not music has an influence on these achievements. These experiments have shown that music does help with many aspects of …show more content…
Using standardized tests from several states (Hodges), Studies have shown that elementary school students participating in exemplary music classes achieved higher scores on both the English and mathematics on their respective standardized tests (Johnson), considering each state has their own standardized tests. Considering this research provided, one may observe the effect that music education can have on academic achievement. To further emphasize the point, a Kansas University professor, Christopher Johnson, found that students at a school with a superior music program or even a low quality program scored higher on a consistent basis than those who did not participate (“KU professor”). Not only can music education influence academic achievement in test scores, but it may also affect achievement outside of test scores. Background music can be defined as “any music played while the listener’s attention is focused on a task or activity than listening to music” (Hodges). Studies have been conducted based on the fact that some students claim that background music helps them “study and learn more effectively” (Hodges). One study focused on the correlation between background music and English, finding a “statistically significant impact for both sight-word recognition and reading comprehension” (Hodges). Within further research, researchers found that music education impacts IQ

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