And so the debate continues - Vicky Williamson rebuts Louisa Diller's reading of Schellenberg's work and who knows how the politicians will vote! Should society pay for music education - in the long term is there a net benefit - is there a positive ROI?
At the moment it's all in the framing of the argument - the unfortunate positioning of the "Mozart Effect" and its commercial exploitation that Music will increase your IQ, we now know to be false. But to quote Michael Jackson - we shouldn't allow one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch of girls!
The research is clear that there are cognitive benefits - though they may seem secondary in nature. For example, musical training improves auditory processing which in turn develops language processing, which in turn can develop classroom performance, something we know to be true - and yet - because it doesn't improve your IQ - should we just ignore these more subtle benefits?
Clearly I'm on the "music is good for you" side and I believe that if society does pay for early music training we will see a net benefit. The sooner our scientists can understand how it works and publish verifiable data - the sooner we can convince our politicians that it's the right thing to do.
Image Credit: Untitled - Hilary Boles - Flickr
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