On Fri, 17 Jun 2005, John Adams wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu>
>
>> Here's an interesting conceptual replication, though: researchers
>> randomly assigned grade school children to music lessons, drama lessons,
>> or no after school program. Academic performance a year later was
>> significantly higher for the children who participated in the music
>> program. I don't have the reference here at home, but there are
>> a number of examples of rigorous experimental studies with the same
>> result: music education/exposure enhances cognitive ability.
>
> Well, we'd really need some sort of non-art enrichment program, too, so
> we'd see whether it was the art or just the extra attention which helped
> the kids.
Note: the music kids did better than the drama kids!
> But what really interests me about this--and I don't think any sensible
> person would disagree that arts classes in schools help kids, though
> people might differ about how much to allocate to those classes--is that
> it's described, not as the "music effect" but as the "Mozart effect".
> It's less a claim about art than about class--listening to _the right
> music_ will make you smarter. Let's test those kids with _Kind of Blue_
> (or, hell, Vince Guaraldi) and see if there's a "Miles effect", in some
> better world.
The type of music is more or less irrelevant to the cognitive enhancement effect. --Although one thing stands out in the studies I'm referring to: the children are actively learning rhythm, how to read music, the relationships of tones in a chord. They're not just passively listening. The "Mozart" (or Miles) effect is a great synecdoche for American consumer culture: get something without having to actually put any effort into it! --It reminds me of those fat pill commercials: "I just took the pill and the weight came off!"
Miles