Young people who participate in the arts for at least three hours on three days each week through at least one full year are:
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem
Young artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to:
- Attend music, art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently
- Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently
- Read for pleasure nearly twice as often
- Perform community service more than four times as often
(Living the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth Organizations, Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph, November 1998)
Music education helps other disciplines of learning...
- According to Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, tracing neurological development through childhood provides the answer. Prior to a major spurt of neural integration in the brain during the elementary school years, learning occurs through movement and quick emotional associations. For example by age two, the brain has begun to fuse with the body via marching, dancing, and developing a sense of physical rhythm. The more music children are exposed to before they enter school, the more deeply this stage of neural coding will assist them throughout their lives.
- Skills learned through music carries over into study skills, communications skills and cognitive skills useful to all parts of life. For example, research supports that music helps prepare the mind for specific disciplines of learning. One such study referenced in a 1997 article in Neurological Research indicated that music training is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills, the skills necessary for learning math and science.
- Even our elected officials have realized the importance of music for our children. Recent federal law, No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, states, “Studying music encourages self discipline and diligence traits that carry over into mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history and geography.”
The facts are that arts education...
- makes a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has proven to help level the “learning field” across socio-economic boundaries.
- (Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School, James S. Catterall, The UCLA Imagination Project, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA, Americans for the Arts Monograph, January 1998) has a measurable impact on youth at risk in deterring delinquent behavior and truancy problems while also increasing overall academic performance among those youth engaged in after school and summer arts programs targeted toward delinquency prevention.
Proud Mama To
