Making music encourages education of children

Music lessons promote education of children

18/12/2014

The assumption that music lessons for children promotes the later skills of the music students far beyond the artistic field, has been around for some time. A long-term study by the DIW's Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) confirms this assumption. "Young people from less educated families in particular benefit from music lessons," says SOEP director Jürgen Schupp.

His co-authors and he found that teenagers who received music lessons as a child later achieved better results in school than those who did not have music lessons. Thus, the study would have shown that in children who had music lessons, the chance of a high school graduation followed by study was eight percent higher than in students who had no music lessons. In addition, they would become more open, conscientious and ambitious adolescents. „Especially young people from less educated families benefit from music lessons“, says SOEP Director Jürgen Schupp, who created the study together with the DIW economist Adrian Hille. "Youths of low or middle socioeconomic status are more optimistic about their future prospects.“

However, a similar promotional effect could also be found in other early childhood activities such as sports, dance and theater. So would „athletically active adolescents develop similar ambitions regarding high school graduation and study, as students who would have had music lessons. In addition, teenagers who dance or play theater are similarly optimistic about their future.“

„Nevertheless, the impact of music, in terms of cognitive abilities, grades and conscientiousness is much stronger than that of sports, theater and dance“, states in the study. „The strong impact of music education on a variety of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities shows that music is an important contributor to the skill production function.“

Singing is also healthy
Swedish researchers at the University of Gothenburg have also found that the heart rate of people who sing together, synchronized. Rickard Astrom published the scientists in the journal „Frontiers in Neuroscience“ The results of the study concluded that "not only does singing generally have a positive effect on well-being, but it also has both a subjective and a biologically calming effect, and good for cardiovascular function“ is. So then, a happy and above all healthy singing "(jp, sb)