Don't Cut Music - Increase it!

​When Christopher Luxon says that he is “prepared to see schools deferring the arts and music curriculum to raise achievement in maths and reading”, he shows such a dearth of understanding of how the arts enhance maths and literacy, that he is already a leading cause of their further deterioration.

In my final year of school, I persuaded my parents to allow me to take music. That led to it becoming my major university study which, when he discovered that my original maths and science focus had changed to music, caused my father to express the hope that “it will end in a job”. Eventually ‘job’ status was achieved and I became a secondary school music teacher.

My own performing and composition continued alongside ‘the job’ which proved to be a life-long learning experience that benefitted me as much as it did my students. And working with young people continues to enhance and sustain all the music-making that I’m still fortunate to be involved in.

As a teacher, I always enjoyed the support of colleagues who valued and often participated in the music-making that brought fulfilling rewards to the school community. There was the odd short-sighted ‘academic’ who believed that music was a distraction from real subjects and real learning; one even referring to the performing arts as “the entertainment subjects”. And now we have a prime minister who promotes that same antediluvian attitude.

But ‘entertainment’ is far from the core value of music. It’s both an art and a science. Its sound properties require scientific understanding; its rhythms are mathematically complex; its stylistic variety and use in different cultures provide unique lessons in history and sociology; its variety of foreign words and terms gives insight into languages and how different cultures think (Another lesson for today's NZ government?) Its need for co-ordination, good posture and stamina contributes to physical fitness; and its symbols, terms and notation are enhanced literacy in action.

But most importantly, music is an art which brings all of those disciplines together for emotional expression, intellectual insights, poetic and imaginative creativity, cultural identity and humanity.

Although my personal reaction to the government’s short-sighted and regressive attitude to education is based on personal observation, there’s also a wealth of thoroughly researched evidence which has often surprised researchers and confounded those who seek to dismiss their findings.

One such researcher is Dr Anita Collins, whose work in the field of neuroscience and education at the University of Canberra, has found that music education is the key to raising literacy and numeracy standards.

Ten years ago Dr Collins summarised her findings for the Sydney Morning Herald, writing: “Based on neuroscientific research, the approach of ‘more time in the basics means better results’ may well be flawed. It may be time to consider an old idea that has been made new again by neuroscientific research: music education – the neural network enhancer.” i.e. music stimulates the neural circuit (sometimes called the ‘reading’ circuit) of the brain.

Some of us have always known this. We’ve consistently observed that kids who learn musical instruments or participate in school music groups, demonstrate far greater engagement with other aspects of their learning. I can name many former students who would have left school earlier but for their involvement in music.

I could also name many socially reticent or otherwise insecure students who, once they ventured to learn a musical instrument, blossomed, thrived and succeeded in other aspects of school, and in their lives beyond. This is confirmed by Collins’s findings that “Two decades of research has found that music education grows, hones and permanently improves neural networks like no other activity. Children who undertake musical education have significantly higher levels of cognitive capacity, specifically in their language acquisition and numerical problem-solving skills. They also continue in education for longer, reverse the cognitive issues related to disadvantage and earn and contribute more on average across their lifetime.”

Christopher Luxon’s stated intention in this year’s budget of “Teaching the Basics Brilliantly”, shows an alarmingly flawed concept of what constitutes ‘the basics’. Ten years ago, Anita Collins faced similar government meddling, writing that “research flies in the face of the government's Review of the Curriculum that music and arts education should only be started after students get a handle on the core literacy and numeracy requirements.”

Collins’s research is verified and reflected in the work of many others. The late Sir Ken Robinson was a famously insightful commentator on the essential nature of music and the arts in education and his TED talk ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’, in which he contends that “Creativity is as important in education as literacy”, is essential viewing.
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So if the government continues with its regressive policies, New Zealand will sink into artistic, scientific and political insignificance – making New Zealand small again.

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