Why should we enroll our children in music education?

Assalamualaikum w.b.t

Yesterday I came across a very interesting article in Genius Baby magazine (if I'm not mistaken, that's the name of the mag) talking about the benefits of enrolling your child in music education. My husband and I are actually intend to send our child to music class and learn violin. I want my child to learn music because I personally think music can help him a lot in his later life. e.g in memorizing Quran, in Math, even in language. I believe that music can help us nurturing those skills in him; because I don't think sending to my child to the school alone can help him to expand those needed skills. Not that I don't believe the teachers, but because I know the teachers won't be able to entertain every students (teachers have their own life too,ok? So don't put all the responsibility on their shoulders alone, parents have shoulders too hehe :))Yes, I am very competitive, and I can see my son is, too. Oh how I wish I know how to play any instrument (kompang pun xreti tauuu hahaha)

So without further ado, here are reasons why must we send our children to learn music :

• IT IS MORE THAN JUST MUSIC

Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously. 

“Music learning supports all learning. Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it’s a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity,”

• LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

“When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,"

While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities. According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. 

“The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician. 

“Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”

• INCREASED IQ

A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits not seen in the music-only group.

• THE BRAIN WORKS HARDER

Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. “There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain,” 

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research.

• SPATIAL-TEMPORAL SKILL

Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence, which means that understanding music can help children visualize various elements that should go together, like they would do when solving a math problem.

“We have some pretty good data that music instruction does reliably improve spatial-temporal skills in children over time,” explains Pruett, who helped found the Performing Arts Medicine Association. These skills come into play in solving multistep problems one would encounter in architecture, engineering, math, art, gaming, and especially working with computers.

My love. future violinist :)

There are tons of other benefits, I hope you can find it yourself hehe So, all in all, music can improve your child's abilities in learning and other non-music tasks, but it's important to understand that we must integrate other lessons too. Learning music alone doesn't make you a genius, but it will help you with certain skills, being disciplined, being part of something that you can be proud of, and most importantly, music makes your child happy :) When your child is happy, he or she will have the tendency to be creative and do great things in life, In Sha Allah :)