Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. “There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain.”

The cognitive structures developed through music instruction “exposed and illuminated more general organizing structures relevant for multiple disciplines.

An analysis of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 demonstrated a significant correlation between participation in school music groups and achievement in math and English.

“A broad education in the arts helps give children a better understanding of their world…We need students who are culturally literate as well as math and science literate.”

Children from “arts-rich” public schools score higher on expression, risk-taking, creativity-imagination, cooperative learning, and academic self-concept than children in “arts-poor” systems.

“An elementary school that treats the arts as the province of a few gifted children, or views them only as recreation and entertainment, is a school that needs an infusion of soul. That arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing, and arithmetic.”