Battle of Jutland LO7787

DHurst1046@aol.com
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:34:08 -0400

Replying to LO7747 --

[Host's Note: I had to shorten David's subject line... He added "and the
Value of Music in Teaching!!!" ...Rick

Hi Ray Harrell,

Many thanks for your enthusiastic response to my piece on the Battle of
Jutland - I have enjoyed all your postings to the LO List.

You wrote:

>The local government and business interests seem dedicated to
>turning the natural complexities of education into the simple
>search and maintenance of a job. Sort of a grand Trade and
>Industry Vo Tech approach to learning. With children who
>can't type, never had a bookkeeping course, think shorthand
>is a foreign language, believe that a bigger and better something
>is preferable to good literature and great music.

If you haven't seen it, there is an article in the latest Economist (June
1-7, page 79) which reports on the benefits to children of learning music
and the visual arts. It reports on two studies. The first is the the work
of Martin Gardiner at the Music School of Providence in Rhode Island which
shows that the systemic development of musical and artistic skills in 5-7
year olds had a remedial impact on their reading and mathematical skills,
especially the latter. In the second study with 7-15 year olds in Europe,
music was substituted for language and math lessons. A control group
received the normal curriculum. After three years the "music" children
were as good as the control group in math and better at languages. They
also were also more socially co-operative with each other than the control
group!

This is fascinating stuff because (to me) it is preliminary "hard"
evidence that the teaching of pattern development and recognition through
participation in music and the arts has some kind of systemic resonance
across apparently diverse subjects such as languages and mathematics (and
even community building!). Famous mathematicians and scientists, when
asked how they process problems, have often responded, that they are
attracted to solutions which appeared to be aesthetically pleasing!
Perhaps we can begin to understand why this is so.

Best wishes,
David Hurst (dhurst1046@aol.com)
Speaker, Consultant and Writer on Management

-- 

DHurst1046@aol.com

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