Making New Zealand Small Again Part 2: Evidence

Although Part 1 of my reaction to the government’s short-sighted, ill-informed, and regressive attitude to education, is predominantly based on personal experience and observation, it’s still, surely, valid, compelling and reliable evidence.

But there’s also a wealth of thoroughly researched evidence which supports my observations, and which has often surprised the researchers and confounded those who seek to dismiss their findings.

One such researcher is Dr Anita Collins, an educator, researcher and writer in the field of neuroscience and music education at the University of Canberra, who believes that music education is the key to raising literacy and numeracy standards.

After publishing her research nearly ten years ago, Dr Collins summarised her findings for the Sydney Morning Herald where she writes: “Based on neuroscientific research, the approach used at present of ‘more time in the basics means better results’ may well be flawed.” She goes on to say that “it may be time to consider a very old idea that has been made new again by neuroscientific research, that is: music education – the neural network enhancer.”

Some of us have known this for many years from personal experience. I, like many school music teachers, chose my profession (and stayed in it) because of my belief in music’s value in education. We’ve consistently observed that kids who learn a musical instrument or participate in a school orchestra, jazz ensemble, rock band, or choir, demonstrate far greater engagement with other aspects of their learning. I can name many former students who would have left school much earlier but for their involvement in music. I will even confidently go so far as to say that students who miss classes in order to attend music lessons, or to rehearse in a school production or music group, are noticeably better organised, focused and positive, not to mention having higher self-esteem and, thus, a better foundation for learning, than those who don’t.

I could also name many socially reticent, shy or otherwise insecure students who, once they ventured to learn a musical instrument, blossomed, thrived and succeeded in other aspects of school, as well as in their lives beyond. All of this is confirmed by Anita Collins’s findings when she concludes that “Two decades of research has now found that music education grows, hones and permanently improves neural networks like no other activity. Children who undertake formal, ongoing 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.”

I can remember one rare year at the school where I worked, when the dux prize, considered the supreme achievement at prizegiving or graduation, was awarded to a student of whom I was totally unaware; an individual who had not participated in any performing arts or sport or club or school communal activity; a student who had, as I saw it, taken and not given; one who had failed to engage or contribute to the community from which they benefitted. Thankfully, it was predominantly the school’s musicians, actors and sports participants who achieved the award – the students whose engagement in learning, participating and contributing was beyond the measurements that examinations or standardised tests can demonstrate – and beyond the parameters imposed by Christopher Luxon’s stated intention in this year’s budget of “Teaching the Basics Brilliantly”, because his concept of what constitutes ‘the basics’ is alarmingly flawed and limited.

Ten years ago Anita Collins faced government meddling similar to that which the PM and his coadjutors are now trying to impose on New Zealand. At the time, she wrote that “research flies in the face of suggestions in the Australian Government's Review of the Australian Curriculum this year that music and arts education should only be started after Grade 3 so students could get a handle on the core literacy and numeracy requirements.”

In our county’s current climate of government cuts and premature interference, it’s sobering to read Collins’s evidence that finds there is more harm being done than improvements made: “Music education is often one of the first programs to be cut or scaled back when the purse strings are tightened in a school. Again, when considering the research that now exists, this also seems flawed. Many of the intervention programs that are in operation in schools may find they are less in demand if music education is viewed not as an extra but as a concurrent neural enhancer to literacy and numeracy education.”

And Dr Collins’s research is verified and reflected in the work of many others, just a few examples of which include:

• Holly Kirby (2023) – ‘Music training can be a literacy superpower’
• Deborah Farmer Kris (2021) – ‘How music can help kids learn literacy skills’
• ‘Mr Rob’, on the Prodigies website, summarises a wide range of scientific research on the topic

​But that’s just the formal, scientific research. From the 1980’s, the late Sir Ken Robinson was a famously insightful commentator on the essential nature of music and the arts in education. His inspired and engaging ‘stand-up’ style presentations were derived from observation, perception and insight and, for anyone who is serious about understanding the benefits of music in education, his 2007 TED talk (available on YouTube) ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ is essential viewing.

Three minutes into his talk, Robinson contends that “Creativity is now as important in education as literacy” and goes on to develop a hypothesis that endorses Picasso’s famous dictum that “All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Again, there are numerous articles and papers that support this including Tham Khai Meng, writing in The Guardian (2015), who asserts that “Everyone is born creative, but it is educated out of us at school”, and he goes on to describe how “We spend our childhoods being taught the artificial skill of passing exams”.

Further worthwhile (and often entertaining) viewing on these topics (the arts, literacy, creativity) include another Robinson presentation – ‘Boundless Possibilities’. Ironically, Sir Ken Robinson’s knighthood was for ‘services to the arts’; a rather limiting substitute for what surely should have been ‘services to education and the arts’.

But perhaps I do Christopher Luxon a disservice; perhaps he actually does understand the value of music as a literacy enhancer. Maybe it’s just that he can’t say that in the face of his voters, so his quick-fix solutions are all about seeming to have the answers, however temporary – just as long as it takes him through to the next election. In the meantime, he has no qualms about pretending to care about education and purporting to know better than experienced educators about what should be done.

“Isn’t it great to be in government?” asked the deputy National party leader in her opening statement at the party’s recent conference. Could there be a clearer indication that their policies are nothing more than populist vote-catchers, even if that results in New Zealand sinking into artistic, scientific and political insignificance – id est: Making New Zealand Small Again.

Finally, as much for your entertainment as for your erudition, watch singer-songwriter Bobby McFerrin’s ‘The Power of the Pentatonic Scale’ at the 2009 World Science Festival.

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