The Value of Art and Music Education for Children

Normal students in two Rhode Island elementary schools who were given an enriched, sequential, skill-building music education program that showed marked improvement in reading and math skills. Students in the enriched program who had started out behind the control group caught up to statistical equality in reading, and pulled ahead in math.

??Music-making is part of what makes us human.

— Gardiner, Fox, Jeffrey and Knowles, as reported in Nature, May 23, 1996 

Learning to play an instrument connects, develops, and refines the entire neurological and motor brain systems.

-- Frank Wilson, assistant clinical professor of neurology at the University of California School of Medicine

The benefits conveyed by music education can be grouped in four categories: