Hilliard Community Music School
Music Education That's Fun
Hilliard Community Music School would like to congratulate Bryan Percoco who recently had one of his compositions performed by the Janacek Philharmonic. What a great accomplishment! You can listen to the performance of Involutions of an Abyss on SoundCloud below.
Bryan teaches guitar, piano and composition.
With recent advancements in technology, recording and audio production has become an inexpensive and popular way for today’s artists to make music.
When it comes to education, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is the new buzz word. There is a good reason for it. The US is lagging behind many European and Asian counterparts when it comes to these subjects. And without strong STEM programs our future ability to innovate and compete in the global marketplace may be affected.
The striking reality is that when faced with budgetary issues music and art education is the first to go. recent changes to the Ohio Education Standards now requires just 2 semesters of art education sometime during the students 7th to 12th year. In the age of increased standardized testing teachers are being forced to teach to the test more than they are empowered to inspire their students.
Music education has long been thought of as a separate compartment in the overall curriculum. However study after study confirms that music education directly affects all other subjects as well. Students getting music education do better in math, science, and reading. They are on average, more creative and are able to solve problems better than students not receiving a music education. In one study, music education even helped underprivileged children catch up with their language benchmarks and exceed them.
Implementing music education with piano lessons, strings, guitar, or anything your child shows interest in will provide a tremendous benefit well beyond the knowledge of playing an instrument. The reason is simple: Children who study music know how to work together collaboratively in groups, to value the efforts of all team members, and that every person has the ability to make a worthwhile contribution to the group’s work.
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlights solutions to the perpetual education problem in the U.S.. American students fall ever farther behind their international peers. It’s estimated that illiteracy costs American businesses $80 billion a year in lost productivity.
The author suggests that there is a growing body of evidence that music education could be the most cost effective fix for underperforming districts. Not only do high performing students typically have some music education new research indicates that low income students can benefit dramatically as well. Music training has been shown to activate neurological centers that also improve communication ability, the ability to learn math and boosts general cognitive ability.
Northwestern University neurobiologist Nina Kraus spent two years tracking 44 6-to-9-year-olds in the program and then measured their brain activity. She found a significant increase in the music students’ ability to process sounds, which is key to language, reading and focus in the classroom. Academic results bore that out: While the music students’ reading scores held steady, scores for a control group that didn’t receive lessons declined.
Check out the full article at The Wall Street Journal