Why Study Music?

I have a son who is in a very "Left Brain" environment! Ben's a sophomore at Michigan Tech studying mechanical engineering. He does keep his right brain involved! He plays his viola with the Keweenaw Symphony.

• A 2000 Georgia Tech study indicates that a student who participates in at least one college elective music course is 4.5 times more likely to stay in college than the general student population.
  – Dr. Denise C. Gardner, Effects of Music Courses on Retention, Georgia Tech, 2000
  
• The part of the brain responsible for planning, foresight, and coordination is substantially larger for instrumental musicians than for the general public.
  – “Music On the Mind,” Newsweek, July 24, 2000
  
• A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reports that music training - specifically piano instruction - is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning math and science.
  – Dr. Frances Rauscher and Dr. Gordon Shaw, Neurological Research, University of California at Irvine, February, 1997
  
• Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate majors of medial school applicants. He found that sixty- six percent (66%) of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. Forty-four percent (44%) of biochemistry majors were admitted.
  – “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994
  
• College students majoring in music achieve scores higher than students of all other majors on college reading exams.
  – Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999
  
• Music students demonstrate less test anxiety and performance anxiety than students who do not study music.
  – “College-Age Musicians Emotionally Healthier than Non-Musician Counterparts,” Houston Chronicle, 1998
  
• On the 1999 SAT, music students continued to outperform their non-arts peers, scoring 61 points higher on the verbal portion and 42 points higher on the math portion of the exam.
  – Steven M. Demorest and Steven J. Morrison, “Does Music Make You Smarter?,” Music Educators Journal, September, 2000
  
• Researchers at the University of Muenster in Germany have discovered that music lessons in childhood actually enlarge parts of the brain. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in musicians compared to people who have never played an instrument. The earlier the musicians were when they started musical training, the bigger this area of the brain appears to be.
  – Pantev et al., Nature, April 23, 1998
  
• Research shows when a child listens to classical music the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain “light up.” Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking.
  – Dee Dickinson, “Music and the Mind,” New Horizons for Learning, 1993
  
• The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania School District analyzed its 1997 dropout rate in terms of students’ musical experience. Students with no ensemble performance experience had a dropout rate of 7.4 percent. Students with one to two years of ensemble experience had a dropout rate of 1 percent, and those with three or more years of performance experience had a dropout rate of 0.0 percent.
  – Eleanor Chute, “Music and Art Lessons Do More Than Complement Three R’s,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 13, 1998

These quotes I found here at UAH's Music auditions webpage. It's this article: Why Study Music? by Dr. Don Bowyer and the whole page is fun to read.