It is a dark time for education in California. In an environment of chaotic and devastating budget cutbacks, we are grateful to our district administration that we still have a basic music program in place. Arts and music programs are being sacrificed in our county and across the state because they are deemed “less important,” than the “3 R’s.” However, new research is confirming what educators and people who have been involved in music have suspected all along: music is highly beneficial.
For example, in an article by Robert Hotz of the Los Angeles Times, Study: Music improves Brain, Disorders may be repaired,” he reports findings from a presentation of the Society for Neuroscience in Los Angeles: “The newest findings…underscore how music-as an almost universal language of mood, emotion, and desire-orchestrates a wide variety of neural systems to cast its evocative spell…Music is biologically part of human life, just as music is aesthetically part of human life…Music can stimulate parts of the brain in certain disorders…we could retrain the brain…Overall music seems to involve the brain at almost every level.”
We need to be on our guard to keep our music programs thriving, because indeed, “Music Is Key.”