Music has a powerful effect on people. It has the power to change emotions. It can make people move, cry, and laugh. Therefore, it is not surprising that music education can greatly affect a community. Music education has been shown to have an impact on the learning skills of children.
One of the reasons why music education has such a powerful impact on children, and by extension on the community that they live, is because learning to play music involves more than just using a person’s voice to sing or using their fingers to play the piano or the guitar. Learning music requires multitasking and using multiple different skills at the same time. For example, as a child learns to play music, they must synchronize the movements of their eyes, the small muscles in their hands, and use their ears. All of these skills support learning. It is not that learning how to play music makes a child smarter, but it does force the child to stimulate their mind in a way that other activities do.
Music education plays an important role in language development. When a child is born, their body is already tuned to listen to and to decode the sounds that they hear in the world around them. Learning to play music enhances the natural abilities that children are born with. In order for children to get the most of their innate language abilities, their skills need to be practiced, reinforced, and then celebrated. All of these things can be accomplished through a formal music education.
Researchers have seen evidence that proves that as a child learns music, they physically develop the left side of their brain. This side of the brain is linked to the processing of language. Research has actually shown that learning music can wire a child’s brain in specific ways. Interestingly, if music education is used to teach a child new information, the information will become imprinted on a young person’s mind.
The benefits that music education and of programs that do things like provide pop up pianos in New York are not only seen on an individual child, but they are also seen in the community as a whole. As more children are able to receive a musical education within a community, the more the community will flourish. The community will flourish because it’s members will receive a stronger understanding of the world of art.