Music Is Education!!!

In the same way they learn language by being in its mere presence, children learn music. This is how and why children make up tunes and songs. We learn music as naturally and automatically as we learn language. We do so because, like with language, we have a musical instinct.

This is an important point to understand. A child not exposed to language during the critical period of language learning will never learn to speak. The same is true of music. More than that, the more vocabulary a child is exposed to early on, the more they can learn over their lifetimes. Again, the same is true of music. The language instinct and the music instinct are built the same way, with similar structures and similar windows of opportunity of learning. Please note that saying one has an instinct to do something does not mean that one can do it automatically. It just means it is able to be learned very quickly and automatically. Lions have an instinct to hunt, but must still learn how to hunt.

People have the mistaken belief that learning music means learning to play an instrument or learning to read music. However, nobody believes that learning language means learning to write or read. Writing is a technology we use once we have learned to speak in the same way musical notation and playing an instrument are technologies we use once we have learned music. Further, once a child has the basics of language down, we can teach that child more vocabulary. And, once a child has the basics of music down, we can teach that child its more complex vocabularies.
We do learn music automatically, the same as language, but we spend much more time teaching our children the technologies of reading and writing that now go along with speech than we do the similar technologies of reading and writing music. Thus, our children develop skills associated with language, including storytelling and understanding complex narratives such as those told by the sciences. However, in our neglect of music, our children often fail to develop the skills associated with music, including mathematics. It is well established that students who learn a musical instrument do much better in math. Thus, an early childhood education in music is preparing your child to do better in math.

This understanding is not new. It is as old as Medieval education, which emphasized the three language arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and the four musical arts of music, math, astronomy (what we would now simply call “science”), and geometry. Math was understood to be theory, music as practice. So music was the practical application of math. As with most things, we have to understand the practical application of something before we can learn the theory. We learn to speak before we learn grammar. We learn music before we learn math.
To have a fully developed child, one who is ready for any educational challenge, we have to not just expose our children to music, but give them a true musical education. Early childhood education in music is just as important as reading to your children who cannot read. Reading to your young child is the foundation on which reading is built. Early education in music is the foundation on which further learning of music is built. And on that is built a world of math and science, song and poetry.

A Great Music Together Moment

One of the most rewarding things about teaching Music Together is seeing a child make a real breakthrough in her growth.

I had a not quite 2-year-old in a class who was very shy about participating in any way. Bella (not her real name) clung to her grandmother most of the time, and didn’t interact much with the other children. Her grandmother wisely kept bringing her to class, realizing that Bella was, in fact, not really shy, but rather preoccupied with observing everything that was going on around her.

Sure enough, the quantum leap came on the last day of the semester. We had just finished “I Had a Little Frog,” when Bella got a very excited look on her face. I could tell something big had dawned on her. Suddenly, she stood up in front of the whole class and recited the chant, all by herself, in perfect rhythm, complete with hand motions! It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that everyone in the room was watching her! She was beaming! Thrilled, her grandmother gave her a big hug. I gave her a big smile, and exclaimed, “Right, Bella!” It was an inspiring moment for the whole class.

Of course, other children may respond differently, but this is one instance which bears witness to the fact that children process music in their minds, even though it may not be visible to us at the time. The longer children are exposed to quality early childhood music instruction, the more they’ll retain, and the more noticeable the end product.